171-MATT KEAGAN

Chuck (00:01.81)
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Ashes to Awesome podcast. I'm your host Chuck LaFlandre and with me in virtual studio today is Matt Keegan. How you doing today, Matt?

Matt Keegan (00:10.274)
I'm doing very well, sir. Thank you so much for having me.

Chuck (00:13.13)
Awesome, awesome. Glad to have you on. It's funny how we met virtually anyway, right? I'd seen that Benjamin Lerner had commented on one of your posts here, having a rough day or whatever it was there, and I had no idea who you were at the time. I just saw, oh, this poor guy, right? So I commented with something, you know, kind of encouraging or whatever. And afterwards I was like, oh wow, hey, look who I came across, right? So, you know, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (00:24.534)
Mm.

Matt Keegan (00:32.653)
I remember.

Matt Keegan (00:37.034)
Yeah, small world. Wow, that was an interesting post for us to have connected on, man, because that was at a pretty low point, you know? I was really struggling.

Chuck (00:47.693)
Well, hey, before we get into your story, what was going on that day? Why not, right? Let's, yeah.

Matt Keegan (00:53.118)
I just typically when I get sober I kind of get garner this expectation that I'm just gonna feel good all the time and You know what I mean? I just there was like a five day stretch where I felt like crap every single day and I just could not get around It man and like my everybody thought I looked sick My face was swollen up my eyes were like swollen real bad, and I just didn't know what was wrong I was like I haven't used anything in almost six months like what is the problem? You know what I mean, and I was just getting really frustrated and I shared it because my sponsor

Chuck (00:59.286)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Matt Keegan (01:21.574)
He tasked me with the, you know, he said, you always share, when I first started this platform, he said, you always share the good. He said, I want you to start sharing the bad with the good, you know, share the bad stuff. And I did, and it had a really, it had a big effect. I didn't expect it to do anything like that at all. You know what I mean? And then, yeah, Benjamin reached out and yeah, but I sensed I've gotten past that, I've got through that. And you know, it always passes, that's the thing. It always passes. This two-shelf backpack's real because it does pass.

Chuck (01:35.582)
Wow, wow.

Chuck (01:44.018)
Yeah, right. That's right, that's right. I know whenever I hear that cliche when I'm in it, it's like, ah, piss off with that. But at the end of the day, it's easy to be grouchy when somebody says it to you, but it's so true, right? If you can just hold onto those words. So why don't we get into your story? I always like to, when people start, if you remember the first time you tried a substance.

Matt Keegan (01:51.797)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (01:56.266)
Right. Yeah?

Matt Keegan (02:07.134)
Um, so I was really against substances because I watched my mom abuse them growing up. She's a real bad alcoholic and put me in a lot of tumultuous situations. And, uh, tumultuous, I learned that word from Kaleechee. Uh, you know Kaleechee. He uses that song, he's a busy man, he uses that song in drug addiction tumultuous. Uh, I've used it ever since. But, uh, bad situations, you know, so really against alcohol and drugs. And, uh, something happened, you know.

Chuck (02:21.579)
Oh, I like cleats. I love them. I've been trying to get them on for months, right? Yeah

Matt Keegan (02:36.378)
I was your typical little skater kid. Got really into like that whole movement, you know, and I just started hanging out with like other kids in that area and we started smoking cigarettes. And then I remember I had my first drink, alcohol, it was Mike's Hard Lemonade. I drank a six-pack and I was like 80 pounds, 90 pounds at like 15 or 14 and I fucking threw up everywhere. I puked everywhere. But I tell you man, that first time I did it, the calmness, the effect that it had on me.

Chuck (02:53.342)
Oof.

Matt Keegan (03:03.054)
Because I had anxiety my entire childhood. You know, I had something in the pit of my stomach that separated me from everybody else and a nervousness that I carried with me at all times because of just the eggshells I had to walk on at home. You know what I mean? So I always had this straight off rip and alcohol took that away, you know? And it just kind of made me, it put me in this like zone. You know, I could just be a real smooth operator like that, you know, so.

Chuck (03:15.376)
Yeah, yeah.

Chuck (03:20.842)
Yeah.

Chuck (03:26.778)
Okay, okay, yeah. So ultimately where I'm getting to with that line of questioning is, were you self-aware enough at the time or was it with the benefit of hindsight that you realized what it was doing for you?

Matt Keegan (03:38.462)
Absolutely no self-awareness at that time. You know, I had a long way to go before I would understand any of that.

Chuck (03:41.318)
Yep. Yeah. So...

Chuck (03:46.982)
So that line's about two thirds your answer, one third the opposite. So when I'm asking people, I'm always curious. That's where that question leads to. And then I just kind of stop and let you tell your story. So, you know, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why don't you tell us, where does all start for you? And how do we get to where we are today? Yeah.

Matt Keegan (03:50.359)
There you go.

Matt Keegan (03:58.219)
Like it. Yeah.

Matt Keegan (04:05.282)
Where's it all start? Yeah, I like it. So yeah, right then and there, man, at that pinnacle point, you know, started drinking, loved it. And then I'm like, all right, well, I guess I'm just gonna do all the things now, you know? So then just like any other kid, you know, just start experimenting. And mind you, this is a vastly different landscape than what it is now, you know? Nobody died from experimenting with drugs, you know? I mean, obviously, there were, I mean, the worst story that you heard was the guy that took acid and thought he was a glass of orange juice, and if you...

Chuck (04:27.633)
Those days are gone.

Matt Keegan (04:34.742)
bumped into him and hacked him over. You know, just the silly urban legends. So it wasn't nothing crazy, you know. So started around messing around with a little bit of alcohol, then some weed, and then some hallucinogens, and a lot of robo-tripping, like chugging Robitussin bottles, because that will make you trip balls if you drink a whole bottle of Robitussin. I would do that. Oh yeah? Oh, up in there and can't... okay. Yeah, yep. Oh man. Hardest thing ever. Yeah, absolutely. So...

Chuck (04:35.158)
All right.

Chuck (04:38.695)
Yeah.

Chuck (04:54.206)
Mine was gravel, 20 gravels, same thing though. Yeah, yeah, just, yeah, worse than anything I've ever done by far, right? Yep, yep. Yep.

Matt Keegan (05:04.934)
And that's what, so mind you, I have anxiety, but all that stuff's making it go away. So I'm messing with all these different things. And I remember I took like 20 dexalone pills, which is just dextromethrofen, like the thing that makes you trip the active ingredient. And I took some acid and it was Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon acid. And it's a real deal now. If you're, yeah, sit them together. Cause that's what I have always done is just mix every substance together, you know? But this is when I.

Chuck (05:19.83)
Oh, okay, yeah, yep, yep.

Chuck (05:25.938)
Together you did these two things? Oh.

Chuck (05:32.242)
Wow, wow.

Matt Keegan (05:34.066)
I got stuck into like a perma trip, you know, so I... Now if you know anything about acid, when you put acid on your tongue and paper, it takes like 45 minutes to take effect, maybe an hour. This stuff was on my tongue for like 20 minutes, 15 minutes and I felt like something was wrong. And I remember pulling the wad of paper out of my mouth and I gave it to my friends. I was like, I don't... Yeah, it was two hits and it was like that big, two big thick pieces of hits and I was just chewing on.

Chuck (05:51.242)
The wad of paper? How much acid were you doing? Okay.

Matt Keegan (05:59.106)
So, I knew I was in trouble, man. That's when I had my first bad trip and I just never came out of it. They ended up giving me like a thousand. I freaked out, ripped off all my clothes. I mean, just the run of the mill bad acid trip but with the decks, I never came out of it. Like even today, like if I look at like a floor, like I'll see the floor move. And you know what I mean? Like I see patterns move all the time. But I've since learned to live with it now. But back then that would cause me, that would trip out my anxiety. And some doctor saw fit to give me,

Chuck (06:10.282)
Wow.

Chuck (06:18.575)
Okay, yep, yep.

Chuck (06:26.843)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (06:29.166)
2 milligrams of Xanax, you know, my mom was taking Xanax back then. I wouldn't leave my room, I wouldn't go to school. I was freaking out and they took me to a doctor and the doctor was like, oh yeah, he's just having some... Didn't ask me about my diet, didn't ask me what my home life was like, didn't ask me, didn't teach me any breathing techniques. The first thing the doctor said was, here's 2 milligrams of Xanax a day. Didn't tell me that they were going to be addictive, didn't say nothing, like it was just I was on Xanax for the next 10 years of my life after that, you know?

Chuck (06:48.959)
And pencils are born, right?

Chuck (06:56.102)
Wow, wow. And I'm sorry, you were how old at the time for this? 16, and they're giving you Xanax.

Matt Keegan (06:56.618)
And that's what got me into prescription pills at that point. 16. And Adderall. Because I was a hyperactive kid, so they're feeding me amphetamines, which I'm abusing and selling and snorting. I'm doing all this at a young age. I end up dropping out of school in the seventh grade, and my mom and dad had gotten back together. My dad had a big trucking company, big nice house.

I'd be like poor with my mom, but like middle class rich with my dad. And I would bounce back and forth between like welfare and dad and welfare and dad. Never stayed at the same school for longer than a year. Mom and dad get back together. And this is like in the early 2000s, mid 2000s when the pill epidemic was just exploding. And I mean, they were getting insane amounts of pills and that's how I became a drug dealer is I would say, oh, you know, hey dad, I can go get a hundred Percocet for $3 for eight to $8, $10 a piece.

Chuck (07:41.236)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (07:52.482)
and they're really three dollars so he'd give me ten hundred dollar bills I'd keep seven you know I mean so it was a never-ending flow of these pills and that's what really got me into thing and I became a real big pillhead and just threw all kinds of crazy parties at my house and you know what I mean that was it that was what I wanted to do I didn't want to go I had no dreams of a future no aspirations I just wanted to throw the coolest parties and I threw some pretty wicked parties man you know that was like my

Chuck (07:55.587)
Yeah.

Chuck (08:18.067)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (08:20.458)
That's where I wanted to be in life, you know? And it's crazy, but like I said, man, it's so crazy to think about back then, because you know how we used to identify the pills, is we would send a text message to Poison Control, which was like 111-1111, was Poison Control's text, and it would have the engravements of the pill. So if the pill said like M357 on it, and then you would just text, white oblong pill M357, and then we'd text and be like, oh, and it would come back, hydrocodone, 300, you know, five milligrams, 356.

Chuck (08:40.981)
Yep.

Chuck (08:50.392)
Wow. Now, of course you've got websites for that, right? But like who would, jeez.

Matt Keegan (08:50.59)
and that's what the pill would be. I would... Yeah, yeah, but just to think about, you know, how crazy the fake pills are now. Like, it used to be so loose back then that, like, I would... there would be, like, you know, thousands of dollars riding on a taxback from fucking poison control. That's how you'd find out if it's a real pill or not, you know? It's just so crazy to think about, you know? I'd be sitting in, like... be sitting somewhere in, like, Toledo in, like, a nasty neighborhood with, like, some...

Chuck (09:07.574)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Matt Keegan (09:19.882)
nefarious characters in my car and like I'm about to hand them a stack of money and they're gonna hand me a stack of pills but we got to text this number I was crazy so yeah man like that was a lot of like what I got involved with you know and then I just started selling pills pretty heavy man and there was a never-ending supply and that's why a lot of what my platform focuses on today is like holding these companies accountable for that because it's like we prosecuted the doctors we prosecuted the people but we never prosecuted the companies that

Chuck (09:27.218)
Wow.

Chuck (09:47.167)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (09:49.442)
How is it okay that they produced millions of pills? And they're-

Chuck (09:52.726)
and put out all that false information and the false studies and all the things, right? Like, I don't think anybody really realizes the... I know, I've seen your reels, I know what I'm doing when I say that. So, okay, but I don't think anybody really understands... I don't think a lot of people understand what happened until you watch a movie like Painkiller or The Pharmacist or one of these movies. For me, that was the same thing. I had no real understanding of what had happened there.

Matt Keegan (09:59.135)
Ugh, don't get me started. Heh.

Chuck (10:21.118)
with the Purdue's and that type of thing. And oh man, that's crazy, right? That's crazy.

Matt Keegan (10:25.226)
Yeah, and people will argue with me too, and they'll say, oh, Purdue, you know what, it wasn't just Purdue. You know, there were, every single company was cashing in on this epidemic. It wasn't just Purdue, they were all doing it, because I, as somebody who sold pills, I could sell you five different versions of a Percocet, five different versions of a Oxycontin, five different versions of an Opanah, you know what I mean? The generic versions, the knockout versions, everybody was profiting from this.

Chuck (10:31.864)
Yeah.

Chuck (10:44.714)
right?

Chuck (10:48.042)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (10:51.55)
And for me, it's like, you're right. They bought and paid for those studies. So when somebody comes to me today and they says, oh, this was peer reviewed, it's like, they pay for those, bud, it goes to the highest bidder. And they've been doing that for two decades, probably longer. And it's just like, I can't trust these companies. And I have a deep mistrust for these companies because I was in the thick of that. I was there. I was in the middle of all that. And I seen the way doctors.

Chuck (11:00.99)
Hahaha

Chuck (11:14.439)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (11:18.73)
were weaponized against the people. Or once you used to go to a doctor to get fixed, and now doctors, they're just there to prescribe a medication. Now you know what I mean? Like if I were to have a broken bone, or need surgery, a doctor. But when it comes to like getting my health in order, I don't trust doctors at all, because the medicine, their whole curriculum is taught and funded by these companies that, you know what I'm saying? And so with like the newest response to all the new stuff that's happening,

Chuck (11:26.471)
Yep.

Chuck (11:35.358)
No, no, wow.

Chuck (11:43.521)
Yeah, I do, I do.

Matt Keegan (11:47.646)
I'm very critical to all of it because of like my what happened in the 2000s. So, you know, I'm all for, you know, and I really want to clarify this. I clarify this everywhere I go. I'm all for M.A.T. I am all for medically assisted treatment. I and I respect everybody's pathway to recovery. If somebody is no longer shooting fentanyl on their neck and they're taking two eight milligrams of Suboxone a day, I respect your recovery. I'm glad you're alive. I would rather you be alive than dead. Right. But what?

Chuck (11:58.378)
No. Yep.

Chuck (12:08.242)
Right? Yep.

Chuck (12:13.53)
Absolutely. I often say whatever, if your life is getting better, then you're doing the right thing, right? Whatever that is for you, right? But.

Matt Keegan (12:18.046)
Absolutely, but what I will not stand for is we're not going to call it the gold standard of addiction and people who've never been addicted to something are not going to espouse that because you're not going to tell me another opioid, another addictive to opioid by the way that you can get high off of is the gold standard to opioid addiction. Are you out of your mind? What are you talking about? Now people are saying it has such a high success rate. Yeah, because it's another opiate. You know what I'm saying? Like...

Chuck (12:32.743)
Yeah. Yep.

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Matt Keegan (12:44.958)
If you in there say, oh, well, it's not abusive and they take, yeah, if I took the same milligram of oxy every day, it would stop getting me high after like 30 days. You know what I'm saying? Suboxone for me, I was, when I was in prison, the most highly abused drug in prison, Suboxone. The most easily, the most easiest one to get in because it's the tiny little strips. You don't got to worry about a big bag. You know what I mean? You can get 60, 70 strips up somebody's butt and bring it in there and you know what I mean? You got 10.

Chuck (12:54.15)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Chuck (13:00.874)
the box without a doubt. Yeah.

Chuck (13:13.03)
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (13:13.518)
You've got a lot of money on your hands. You know what I mean? And honestly, Suboxone's got legs. I would buy a five piece, put it in a chapstick cap, snort it, be high all day because I'm sober, I haven't done anything, I'm in prison, I'm not abusing pills on the street. I hadn't done anything, got high in months. When I did that little piece of Sub, I'd be high all day. Has a very high potential for abuse, you know? So again, and people get so upset and hurt.

Chuck (13:18.835)
Yeah.

Chuck (13:35.058)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (13:39.334)
when I tell that truth, because that's the medicine that they take to save their lives, and it's like, I understand it saved your life, and again, I'm glad that it has. I'm glad that it's available for you. But for a lot of us, we've abused it, it gets us high, it makes us miserable. You don't know how many people reach out to me saying, I wish I could get off this medication, but it's got me so wrapped up. And then those same people that will defend Suboxone to the death, forget about the methadone conversation. Methadone is ten times worse. You know what I mean? And not that I'm saying...

Chuck (14:04.102)
Yeah. Yeah, right.

Matt Keegan (14:08.194)
Say anything wrong with anybody who takes it, but go ahead and miss your dose for a day, you know? Miss your dose for a day and come talk to me and tell me that they ain't got hooks in you. And my question is, with all the advances in medical science and all, where we're at in this brave new world, you're going to tell me they can't develop something that helps wean you off opiates that's not addictive like opiates? You know? Just seems like a cash grab to me. You know what I'm saying? So, there's my tangent on that.

Chuck (14:12.532)
Yeah.

Chuck (14:26.834)
Yeah, right, right.

Fair enough, fair enough, yeah, so. All right, it's all right. Oh, I'm not shy, I'll interrupt, but I was kind of expecting this tangent, so it's, you know, we've got that now. I was absolutely waiting for that one, so. Yeah, yeah, and I can't say I disagree. At the end of the day, it's one of the tools in the toolbox, but it can't be the only tool, right? Most certainly, and again, in my mind, if your life is getting better.

Matt Keegan (14:35.494)
I go on tangents. Feel free to interrupt and stop me because I will...

Cool. Go.

Good, good, good.

Great, great.

Matt Keegan (14:56.022)
Yeah, sure.

Chuck (15:00.542)
Whatever path you're on is the right path for you. Figure it out from there, right? You know, if you're not homeless and well, you know, all the things that come along with a serious addiction problem. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (15:02.711)
100%. Yes.

Matt Keegan (15:11.106)
Of course, holding a job down, you're a better person in the community, you're active, you know what I'm saying? There's nothing wrong with that, but I just don't think it should be for everybody. And that's kind of what they're pointing this at, is they want it for everybody. That's what that's called in Harvard, it's called the gold standard to substance abuse disorder. And that's kind of like the mainstream understanding of it. And it's like, well, you should also talk about the downsides of it. It robs you of your libido. A lot of people feel like they're walking around in shells after being on this for so long. A lot of people are losing teeth.

Chuck (15:15.91)
Yeah, exactly.

Matt Keegan (15:40.898)
there's downsides to it, like show me the studies that we've seen people beyond this for their lifetimes and you know what I mean, like I feel like this is a relatively new thing, you know?

Chuck (15:47.726)
Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing, if there's an end to it, and I get they have to, you know, there's a weird scale that has to happen with methadone and suboxone and all that, and the doses go up, but they're supposed to taper off. Well, I think what's stopped recently is the end to it. When I first became aware of MAT, it was a start and an end, and now it's, and maybe I didn't understand it back then the way that I understand it now, but now it's like, okay, well, here you're on it.

Matt Keegan (16:16.522)
yep for life yep there yet yeah absolutely and yeah again to these guys are cashing in on more than ever more than ever because the box and is very lightly regulated in p you can see it on the internet you can do tell a health now and i know multiple people running game on that right now you know multiple people trumping up how much they use it prescribed three eight today

Chuck (16:17.306)
And that's it, that's where the conversation stops, right? And that's kind of where I have a problem with it, right? You know, right? So, yeah, yeah.

Chuck (16:27.795)
Yeah, yeah, right.

Matt Keegan (16:43.162)
There's such a overabundance of Suboxone, all the other med pills, all that stuff has went up immensely, you know, except for Suboxone, because there's such a crazy supply of it, Suboxone's still 20 bucks, spent 20 bucks for 15 years.

Chuck (16:56.614)
No kidding, no kidding, right? Jeez, man, geez. So anyway, back to your story. So, where were we on that one?

Matt Keegan (17:04.15)
Hmm. We're at my house. We're at the House on 101. We call it the 101 House. Having the crazy parties, you know, just, I mean, big. I went to school in two different cities, so I would have friends from two different cities, and they would just come and just, these big fights would erupt. There'd be a hundred people at this house. My mom and dad are high on pills, haven't left their room in three days, you know, and I'm having a hundred, a hundred and fifty people upstairs in this house. Wrecking the house.

Chuck (17:08.66)
Oh yeah, having the crazy parties.

Matt Keegan (17:30.87)
putting holes in the wall, ripping out fixtures, I mean just trash in this house my dad built from the ground up, you know? I guess, and then it means I'm certainly gonna have to make in the future, but you know, they did drugs with me, my mom and dad got high with me, it just turned into this whole thing where they would party with us, and you know, they would get in on the fights, some people like challenged my dad, I remember one time my dad took his plow truck and smashed it into somebody's car who parked in our front yard and pushed the car out in the fucking street, and like, you know, just.

Chuck (17:46.495)
Yeah.

Chuck (17:58.127)
Oh, yeah.

Matt Keegan (17:58.322)
Yeah, I mean, shooting guns off, you know what I mean? Like, it was just, it was wild, you know? But that was normal for me. I was comfortable in that space. Couldn't imagine living any other way, you know? And it was cool to be that guy. You know, I relished that. I wanted to be the man, you know? And then I got involved in some bands. Started being a drummer, just got in death metal bands. Wanted to be a death metal drummer. We'd go...

Chuck (18:08.499)
Yep.

Chuck (18:15.813)
Yeah, yeah.

Chuck (18:23.446)
Okay.

Matt Keegan (18:24.738)
Hack out shows, you know, a bunch of people come watch us play. We play in Cleveland, Toledo, some Dusky. Open up for some pretty big names as like just some kids trying to put it together. Because I didn't listen to rap. I would not let you. You couldn't come to my parties and play rap. I'd throw the CDs out. Death Metal on me. You're coming to listen to Cradle of Filth or Oceano or Slipknot. I was huge into Slipknot back then, man. Obsessed with Joey Jordison. And you know.

Chuck (18:33.087)
Yeah.

Chuck (18:40.59)
I was curious to see where that changed, eh? Right? Yeah.

Chuck (18:49.162)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (18:53.302)
That was, that's when it was good. Cause everybody has that talk when they talk about, you know, at one point it was good and it was. Nobody was doing heroin, nobody was doing meth, those were gross drugs. We looked at people who did that as they were gross, they weren't allowed around. We didn't want nasty people like that coming around. Nobody did stuff like that. And that's where this great thing happened. These companies just turned everybody into the, I really think they played such a huge role because had there not been that, had there not been that.

Chuck (18:55.817)
Yeah.

Chuck (19:03.88)
Yep.

Chuck (19:08.533)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (19:22.058)
that welcoming committee to opioids where they made opiates almost seem not mainstream. Yes, that's the word I was looking for. They made it seem mainstream. That's what opened the door to let heroin and fentanyl in. Fentanyl would never have made the impact that it made had we not had Oxycontin, Oxycodone and all that stuff. You know what I mean? Because who would have been able to make that jump to just everybody doing fentanyl? But so many people, you know, that's like a line in my song. It was like,

Chuck (19:26.162)
Mainstream, right? Right, yeah. Yep.

Chuck (19:38.822)
Oh, there's no way. No, you're right. Absolutely.

Matt Keegan (19:48.934)
parents who never smoked weed or you know they went to their doctor with the hurt back and the doctor turned them out and the doctor thought they were helping you know because the doctor was given wrong information too and you know I know so many parents who never did drugs their whole lives and they went to a doctor and that's what led them to becoming the people that they are you know and so

Chuck (19:59.573)
Yep.

Chuck (20:08.159)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (20:10.33)
Slowly that happened over time, you know what I mean? Slowly the party started getting a little less bright and fun and it just really became more and more about the drugs and the drugs began to change. And then meth started coming around, you know what I mean, after.

Chuck (20:22.77)
So do you remember, Matt, do you remember a moment in time, for myself, I remember one day waking up and going, what the fuck, man? Like what happened? Where am I, how did this happen? And not even really realizing that slow progression. Did you ever have one of those, oh shit, here we are, or, you know.

Matt Keegan (20:41.246)
Yeah, I was in a basement smoking heroin off of foil. And I, yes, I had an aha moment where it came to me. And I was like, what the fuck is, what is this a dirty basement? I'm down here with some dirty folks. We're going to buy crack after this. Like, what happened? Cause we used to be, there used to be, we only do, like I remember, I used to say, I only do good drugs. I don't do fucking nasty. I only.

Chuck (20:46.761)
Yeah.

Chuck (20:56.778)
Right? Right.

Chuck (21:01.339)
Hahaha, right?

Chuck (21:06.166)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Matt Keegan (21:08.138)
I'll only snort ketamine and take acid and take moly and take xanax and pop burgessite. I don't do those other bad drugs.

Chuck (21:13.562)
See, and I was on the other side of it, right? Like pills, oh fuck man, that's no way, no way, right? I don't want nothing to do with that, right? So here we are opposite sides of the street, right? You know, yeah, yeah. Damn straight.

Matt Keegan (21:17.81)
Really? Yeah, of course. Yeah, yep. But same outcome though, you know? So it became that space. Then I got involved in music festivals. I'm not sure what all music festivals you guys got up there, but we got some pretty big ones here, like Dubstep, Electronic Music, Electric Forest, Lost Lands, Ohio, Michigan are big for them, but you can walk in there and sell drugs like crazy. That's what I got involved in.

Chuck (21:38.118)
Okay, okay.

Chuck (21:43.496)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Keegan (21:44.67)
And I was pretty much a poser. I would just dress like Hunter S. Thompson and carry around a briefcase full of drugs, you know, and just think that I was fucking stupid. It's so cringy. There's pictures of me dressed like Hunter S. Thompson with the cigarette. And I watched Purell, Northanger, Las Vegas once and then I was like, all right, now I just have to do all the drugs. Trash hotels, you know. So, you know, emulated that got involved, started running around with this heavy guy, got plugged in with this guy. And this guy got.

Chuck (21:58.026)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (22:12.854)
weight this guy moved away like real big weight and uh

Chuck (22:15.194)
Yeah, yeah. What a feeling that is, eh? When you meet that guy, you're like, yeah, right, yeah, I got the connect, right? And I, oh, fuck, right?

Matt Keegan (22:18.782)
Yeah, yep. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, I thought I was yeah. Yeah, I was coming back home thinking I was you know, just pulling out ridiculously large bags in front of people just you know insecure very insecure and flexing Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny now that uh, you know, you get that understanding, you know, but I can tell you this This is this I can tell you Even in all that even in that lowest space. I never sold fentanyl

Chuck (22:31.757)
Oh yeah, flexing, flexing with your bags of death, right? You know, right, yeah.

Matt Keegan (22:46.762)
I would not sell fentanyl. Fentanyl killed my friend Robbie way back in 2014, and I would not fuck with it. I did not do fentanyl. I didn't like it. I hated it. It was a terrible buzz. I'm a traditionalist. I like regular opioids. I do not like fentanyl. There's just nothing fun to me being like, oh, am I literally about to die? Because that's what it felt like. I did it twice, and I felt like I was gonna die both times and had a panic attack, and it was awful.

Chuck (22:51.358)
Yep.

Chuck (22:57.17)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (23:11.262)
I never sold it, never pushed it, you know, and would chastise and not fuck with people who did. I hated people who pushed it because you're selling death, you know what I mean? Like if you sell a fake pill to somebody who's been clean for a while and it kills them, I got a problem with you. I got a big problem with you because I've lost a lot of friends that way. And I never stopped on that, you know what I mean? But again, there was like my mentality that, oh, I only sell good drugs. I only sell mind-expanding drugs like acid and ketamine and no, just regular pills that don't kill people.

Chuck (23:17.266)
Yep. Yeah.

Chuck (23:24.626)
Yeah. Right.

Matt Keegan (23:37.61)
It was a sick mentality that I had that still caused people a lot of harm. You know what I'm saying? But it's funny the things that we justify. So I'm in that phase where I believe that I'm only doing good things by expanding people's minds with ketamine and blah, fucking blah. I'm running around as a little festy kid and we end up running some stuff up to Michigan and we got popped by a SWAT team and the whole thing was a setup. They were setting my dude up.

Chuck (23:37.93)
it up.

Chuck (23:41.65)
Yeah, I got you.

Chuck (23:59.818)
Oof.

Matt Keegan (24:03.942)
I wasn't even like known to be anybody or anything because you know my dude was a heavy hitter and we got hit in Michigan got yanked out by the SWAT team runs up on us and We were looking at some time. We were looking at some time, but uh he actually tried taking the fall for everything and It was because he wanted me to get back out and keep running things You know what I mean because he and just how calm he was we were looking at two to twenty years man And I'm pretty sure this

Chuck (24:07.642)
Yeah.

Chuck (24:22.258)
Wow.

Matt Keegan (24:30.546)
I don't want to go into it. I'm pretty sure this guy was some type of high-level fed because he was not panicked You know what I mean? And he had gotten out of some other big trouble before and then he went on to get on some other Really big trouble again like he got caught dead to rights after being on parole for what we did in Michigan And he still walked so I don't know what was it like he was some sort of he was spooky man Just to say the least but we end up getting two to twenty and the way that works is if it's your I've never been in trouble before so it was my first my first charge ever and

Chuck (24:36.958)
Yep.

Chuck (24:46.397)
Ah, yeah.

Chuck (24:50.071)
Yeah.

Chuck (24:57.727)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (24:58.094)
The way that works is Michigan, if it's your first felony and your judge agrees to it and your minimum is two years, they'll give you something called boot camp. It's a 90-day program and it's really intensive, it's really hard, but you get to go home. So I ended up doing about two years total with everything. Everything lined up perfectly. We had a judge that had just come from family court. There's a nice 40-year-old woman instead of some 60-year-old man who was killing people. There's people going to do 10 years, five years.

Chuck (25:05.171)
Yep.

Chuck (25:27.474)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (25:28.098)
for what we had, you know, but the judge was super cool. She let us go through with the boot camp, two to 20, and we went and did our time. You still gotta go to prison. You still gotta go, and I'd never been to jail or prison before, and I'm in Michigan outside of Detroit. So it was a bit of a culture shock. It was a bit of a wake up call, you know. We had to go through absolutely terrifying. And mind you, I'd been on Benzos for 10 years, and I had been manipulating doctors, and I had been buying scripts, and I've been taking two to five milligrams a day.

Chuck (25:41.39)
Oh, ho ho. Yeah. How was that for you? How was it when you walk in?

Matt Keegan (25:57.834)
of either Xanax or Kalanipin or Volium, I did not go without Xanax because my panic attacks were bad, man. Like, I would have really severe panic attacks. Like, to the point where if I did Coke, I'd have a panic attack, I'd have to do Xanax. I was weird, you know? But like, I was one of the people that like, if I did Xanax, I would get up and like, clean my house. Like, it would give me energy. I would want to go out and like, go do something. You know what I mean? That was strange. Xanax really took well to me. Just because it quieted all that anxiety. I had anxiety my whole life, you know? So I get to prison.

Chuck (26:05.031)
Yeah.

Chuck (26:11.186)
Yep.

Chuck (26:19.664)
Okay, yep.

Chuck (26:25.598)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (26:27.266)
Even though I have two prescriptions for benzos. They don't give you they don't give you a Xanax and jail They give you Depakote and they put you in a paper suit in an observation room in a dungeon in the basement And they watch you for three days and make sure you don't die from a seizure and then you're off Xanax So that's what happened man So I had to go through this whole experience while coming off of Xanax for the first time in ten years you know and I mean Talk about panic attacks and fear and but you can't show it and you can't go tell them can't go tell the guard Oh, I'm having a panic attack

Chuck (26:31.113)
No, right?

Chuck (26:46.303)
Wow.

Chuck (26:57.188)
No, no, you cannot. No.

Matt Keegan (26:57.45)
They don't give a fuck. They do not care. You go tell them that. They're going to have medical come get you. And medical is not a... you don't want to go to medical when you're in the joint. You know, so that's how it started out for me, man. That's how I came on my journey of facing anxiety and beating it. I share a lot of this with people now because a lot of people... I was having panic attacks before anxiety and panic attacks and Xanax became trendy. You know, my first panic attack was in 2006.

Chuck (27:04.67)
Yeah.

Chuck (27:14.282)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (27:24.242)
I would go sit outside of a hospital thinking I was gonna die, you know what I mean? I had all these weird little things that I had to do with what I had going on, you know what I mean? I always had to make sure that like I had to have a Xanax. If I was gonna, if I didn't have a Xanax, I'd have a panic attack just because I couldn't get to one, you know? It's because my mind would be like, what if I have a panic attack and I don't have a Xanax, you know? So...

Chuck (27:42.27)
Yeah, yeah, right, so it turns into a snake eating its tail kind of thing, right? Yep, yep.

Matt Keegan (27:45.646)
Always, and that's how my mind was all the time. So I had to sit with this stuff, man, and I did. I sat with it, and I got this piece of paper that taught you breathing techniques, diaphragm breathing techniques. So when the panic attack would come, and I would be convinced I was gonna die, I'd go lay on my bunk, breathe into my stomach, breathe into my chest, breathe out slowly, and then I would just do circles of that. And lo and behold, dude, that would calm me down more than a pill would, you know what I mean?

Chuck (28:14.322)
Wow. Yeah.

Matt Keegan (28:14.826)
Which is, yeah, which is crazy. And I tell those people all the time, call me when you're having a panic attack and let's do these breathing techniques together. I will help you breathe, you can breathe your way through a panic attack. You don't need the medicine. Medicine's addictive, and then guess what the witch roll is? Panic attacks from the medicine. You know what I'm saying? Weird how that works, funny how that works. So ended up fighting, going through my anxiety, got through it, ended up being in a prison death metal band.

Chuck (28:27.207)
Yeah.

Chuck (28:32.438)
So here we go, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (28:42.462)
I got messed with a whole lot, but I'm a death metal drummer, right? So I ended up joining this white supremacist death metal band. And don't get it twisted, bro. I'm not a white supremacist, but like when you go into prison, whites go with whites, you know, you're segregated. I don't make the rules, bro. I just that's where I was at. And those were the rules of the land. You know what I'm saying? But they were Odinists. They weren't like hardcore. They just believed in Odin and the hammer and stuff like that. And I didn't have to do any work or anything like that. I just thought it was.

Chuck (28:45.861)
Yep.

Chuck (28:56.039)
Yep.

Chuck (29:00.018)
Got to survive, right? Yeah. Yep.

Chuck (29:08.979)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (29:11.558)
I thought it was interesting. It was a really stupid way to live, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, whatever dude, they were whatever. They took care of me They made sure I didn't get jumped and because I got fucked with because I was brand new and I did not have any gang Affiliations so when you come in and you're brand new and you don't have any gang affiliations and you're white and Michigan A you're the minority and B you got problems. You know what I mean? I'd never been before I don't know nothing I was brand new so and I'm going through Benzer withdrawal, so I'm terrified, you know the whole time

Chuck (29:16.462)
Yeah, yeah. Gotta survive, right? Yeah, right.

Chuck (29:29.002)
Yep.

Chuck (29:32.443)
Yeah. Yep.

Chuck (29:36.38)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (29:39.146)
Wish I could tell you that I was brave, but I was not. I was terrified, but I went through it, got in the band, did really well with them, and ended up getting pulled out for boot camp. Boot camp finally came, man. I couldn't get out of there fast enough, dude. I'll tell you, after seeing that, what the result was for dealing and running around and being a cowboy, I didn't wanna do it no more. You know what I mean? Because then you're just gonna go out there and you're gonna be with your race and you're gonna play king of the picnic tables. You know what I mean?

Chuck (29:44.253)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (30:08.866)
That's what's gonna happen. You're gonna go out to the prison yard and you're gonna guard a picnic table and you're gonna yell at anybody who comes close because that's literally the only power that you got and uh, I-I-I-I didn't want that, you know? I didn't want that. That scared the shit out of me. And I was like, I'll never do this again. I never want to do this again. That was back in 2016. I have not gotten trouble since, you know? That really scared me absolutely straight. You know, it's almost been ten years since that's happened, you know? Eight, seven years. So I get out. Mind you though,

Chuck (30:08.876)
Yeah.

Chuck (30:29.184)
Oh wow, wow.

Matt Keegan (30:38.346)
I'm not gonna play illegally anymore. And plus, fentanyl is really starting to take over everything now. That's when the fake pills come out. Because it used to be, I could spot a fake pill. As a pill pioneer, I could look at a fake pill from a mile away, you know what I mean? I could tell. I could literally just bite into it like a piece of gold and be like, oh, that's fake. But, and then it got really convincing, you know what I mean? Then it became like I couldn't tell the difference, you know, and that scared me.

Chuck (30:49.637)
Yeah, yeah.

Chuck (30:55.247)
Yeah.

Yeah. We had the shady eighties here was a kind of, was our first big, big dose of that. There was supposed to be perks, but they were, they were green 80. I don't, I don't, I'm never a pill guy, but I remember the shady eighties coming and that was our first big dose of fentanyl coming. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Yep.

Matt Keegan (31:11.886)
Shady 80s, we call them the dirty 30s over here. That's funny, that's so funny dude. But, well not funny, but you know. But anyways, so fucking, I just decided, oh well, I got a job at a factory, I got good insurance, I was like, I'm gonna go just get everything prescribed to me man. So I did some research on some doctors, I found some loose ones. This guy had some cases from, I did my due diligence and I ended up finding out.

Chuck (31:34.164)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (31:38.318)
before I know it I go see this doctor I'm prescribed six different things I'm back on Adderall I'm on not this at all I'm on a Vicodin from my back I'm taking Ambien to sleep at night I'm taking uh what's those ones they're called Johnny's they're a nerve pill man I can't believe I can't think of a name but it's they're very easily abused now they're huge in the recovery community because they you can't really ah

Chuck (31:57.778)
I wouldn't know, yeah.

Matt Keegan (32:07.678)
Anyways, so I'm taking a whole bunch of stuff from the doctor and then I ended up discovering kratom. And kratom is a godsend for some people because it gets them out of the jaws of big pharma. But for somebody like me who's abused opiates the whole time, neratin, the drug was called neratin, it was called neratin, gabapentin. Crazy, crazy abuse for you. I was taking like 2500 milligrams a day, I was prescribed. I talked this doctor into giving me, it was out of control.

Chuck (32:13.13)
Okay.

Chuck (32:23.726)
Okay, okay, never heard of it. Oh, Gab, oh, okay, Gab, yes, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (32:34.71)
But get on Kratom too, so I add Kratom to the mix of those like six different prescriptions I'm taking and abusing. And then with the Kratom, of course, I just go balls to the wall and start abusing the shit out of it. And then before I know it, I have to take the Kratom like every three or four hours or I go into opioid withdrawal. Like nasty opioid withdrawal. Mind you, I'm taking giant spoonfuls of it and abusing the crap out of it, you know what I mean? But that's what I do. I'm an addict, you know what I mean? Like I don't have that switch. I don't have that off switch that says,

Chuck (32:40.681)
Jesus

Chuck (32:50.705)
Okay.

Chuck (32:58.505)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. I know it. Yeah, yeah, me neither, I gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Double down, triple down, quadruple down, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (33:04.71)
Yeah, I'll just enjoy this every once in a while. No big deal. Like it's like oh It's like it feels good. Let's feel good all the time Yeah, huge problem. Yes. Yep Endlessly forever till it's gone and then the more and figure it out So, you know, but the thing with kratom is you can buy it by the kilo For a relatively cheap hundred two hundred bucks and you don't have to run out and this was before kratom got as big as it Is now here in the states. I'd have to go to CVS and send these really shady

money transfers over to some guy in Indonesia, some doctor I ended up getting plugged in with, and he would send me these really shady looking packages, but it was powder and it made, you know, it got me off a little bit like an opioid, but not really, it just kind of gave me energy, made me feel good, but man, the downsides, the addiction is nasty. So, I'm on all these things, ended up saying, I can't do this anymore, I know a guy who like has like a social media presence, like what I have now, and he was kind of like the inspiration of what gave me, like pooped.

inspired me to do what I'm doing now. I watched him do it from my hometown. His name was Richie. Super solid dude and I just really liked what he did man and he helped people and that's what he got to do and it was awesome and he ended up helping me. He sent me to Florida and that's when I came in contact with like my first Florida recovery and finally decided to collapse and do the 12 steps because

Chuck (34:03.814)
Okay. Yup.

Chuck (34:14.49)
Okay, yeah.

Matt Keegan (34:23.782)
I was so miserable and just so desperate and again that moment came back of like how did I fucking end up here again? No I'm not doing like hard drugs, I'm not smoking crack, I'm not doing Fetna, I'm not out there doing meth but like I'm doing all these other things that are robbing me of a good life, a happy life, you know what I mean? And that's just what it does, that's how it does, that's just what substances do to me, I can't successfully use a single substance.

Chuck (34:24.095)
Yeah.

Chuck (34:41.69)
Yeah, man. Yeah, yeah.

Chuck (34:49.011)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (34:49.046)
So I go to Florida, I go to rehab, have the worst detox in my life. I didn't sleep for like a week, man. It was insane. I'll never forget it. And you would think that would be enough, you know? Like, oh, going through that terrible detox. You would think that, right? You would think, all right, lesson learned, right? But go through the 12 steps, have a great time, man. I start writing rap songs. Now, I'd listen to NF and Eminem and like, you know, like ICP, but like nothing.

Chuck (35:01.824)
Some people might think that.

Chuck (35:12.439)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (35:17.774)
I never really got into rap like that, you know what I mean? I was always listening to rock and death metal and you know what I mean? Stuff like that. But I was really into NF, really into M&M. And my girlfriend at the time, my fiance, ex-fiance was like, you know, she's like, I think you should write music, you should do some rap songs. Because I used to like rap, like freestyle when I was high at parties. I started doing that randomly, but I was the annoying guy that would just come up to you and start freestyling. You know what I mean? Like that was...

Chuck (35:38.993)
Okay, yep.

Chuck (35:43.702)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Matt Keegan (35:46.014)
be really tweaked off Adderall or something and just wouldn't shut the fuck up like I was that dude. But I was pretty, I was kind of wordy with it and I would impress people, people would listen, you know what I mean? People would listen, like people thought it, you know, sometimes, other times people would be like, alright Matt, spend three hours at six o'clock in the morning, shut the fuck up. And, you know, so I start writing. And I never could write unless I was higher on drugs. But I'm sober.

Chuck (35:58.868)
Yeah.

Chuck (36:02.678)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Chuck (36:12.904)
Okay, yep.

Matt Keegan (36:13.618)
And then I ended up writing my first hip hop song. And I showed it to people in rehab. And just the reaction I got was, it was like, they were like, wow, they're like, that's actually really fucking good. And I ended up, it was called, it was called, can't find, well, it's on my YouTube of me just rapping it in like a theater. It's not very good, you know? All the earlier songs on my YouTube were not very good. It's just me rapping over like a beat, like somebody playing off the speaker. But it was called Demons Inside. And

Chuck (36:25.37)
Yeah, yeah. What song was that? Is that something we can find now?

Chuck (36:33.603)
Okay.

Chuck (36:40.958)
Yep. Okay, yeah.

Matt Keegan (36:43.17)
It was like my first foray into it. Then I ended up writing this other song called One Day, a song to my daughter, and I sent it in to America's Got Talent. They ended up reaching out to me and had me come in to do an audition. So, you know, I'm working recovery, I'm doing the steps, I'm in Florida, I get this really fancy snazzy job as a waiter at this really nice restaurant and I would call it the Wine Room. It was awesome, great experience. Atlantic Avenue, right downtown in Delray. I mean, just seeing this whole other life I've never experienced. I've never been out of Ohio, you know what I mean?

Chuck (36:54.015)
Okay.

Chuck (37:12.687)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (37:13.218)
So I go and try out. They asked me to share a fun fact. The tryouts go super good, bro. Like I do the first one, they send us all out of the room, they call me back in by myself. And they're like, all right, you're advancing onto the next one. So I go on to another one and they're like, all right, do everything you just did, but do it again, you're on camera now. And then you do, you get through this one, the next one, you're gonna see the judges. I'm like, all right, sweet. And they're like, dude, the guy told me flat out, you got what it takes to be on the show. You are a shoe and you're gonna be able to do this, go ahead.

Chuck (37:24.21)
Oof. Ooh. Yeah.

Chuck (37:33.566)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (37:40.406)
So I do the thing, knock the audition out the park again, and they say, all right, I'd like for you to share a fun fact about yourself. And my fun fact I chose to share was I used to be a drug dealer, and I just went to my mom and visited my mother in prison, who was also a drug dealer, and I performed these songs for her. Needless to say, I did not make it to the next audition, and I did not get a call back, and that was it. But I thought...

Chuck (38:04.042)
There's the stigma, right? You know? Yep.

Matt Keegan (38:06.558)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, on their family-friendly program, they probably didn't want a drug dealer who was going to see his mother. I thought it was inspiring, like, you know, like I just went... Yeah, like my mom's... my mom in prison were watching my videos on YouTube. Like, they were all... they were having classes on my lyrics, because I would like, rap the song and put the lyrics up. They would have... they would print the lyrics off and have classes on the lyrics about, you know, what mothers have done, you know, just... just the experience, the perspective of a son and his mother and addiction, you know what I mean?

Chuck (38:14.126)
As it should be, yeah, right, and yeah.

Chuck (38:24.948)
Okay.

Chuck (38:35.19)
Of course, of course, right? Yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (38:36.622)
So yeah, I got invited to my mom's prison to go do a lead and perform there. And, uh, you know, it was, it was like 400 women. I wrapped that song, you know? So it was crazy, dude. And, uh, so yeah, I'm like, all right, I'm all gassed up from that, but they didn't tell me no immediately. They said, we'll be in touch. So I'm thinking, yeah, so I'm going full born, write songs, practicing, going to every open mic I can go to. And, uh, I have no platform yet. You know, I just have a personal Facebook page and a YouTube that I post on, you know, and then 2020 happens and then, uh,

Chuck (38:45.27)
Kidding.

Chuck (38:52.98)
Yeah.

Chuck (39:03.611)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (39:05.938)
I ended up leaving Florida, coming back home, and on my way driving back home thinking that the world's ending, I'm like, I better go spend $400 on kratom extract on this head shop. Because I'm like, I'm looking up head shops in different states, driving home, looking for all the best kratom, you know, because I'm like, all right, screw it, I'm going to relapse. So that's what happened. I relapsed and then moved back into my grandma's, and then I ended up being able to be eligible for that $800 a week in unemployment that happened.

Chuck (39:14.782)
Yep.

Chuck (39:19.283)
Yeah.

Chuck (39:30.126)
Oh yeah, we had something similar up here too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a drug addict lottery that was, right? You know, all right. Yep.

Matt Keegan (39:32.886)
Oh boy, that was, yeah, so about 15 grand. I, yeah, 15 grand, yeah, hit the lottery and then instead of doing anything meaningful with it, I ran through it and I went through one of the worst runs ever. You know, I ended up going out to this place in the woods where you could just, it was like a music festival place and we just, just got for weeks, because every week there'd be another $800 check. That was like the most money I've ever seen in my life. You know what I mean? And yeah, pissed all of it away.

Chuck (39:46.538)
Yeah.

Chuck (39:53.128)
Yep.

Chuck (39:57.784)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (40:02.03)
and put out a couple songs in the middle of that, but I'm not produced or nothing like that. I'm not on Spotify. I just would rap a song, put it on YouTube, share it on my Facebook, get like a hundred likes, and think I was the shit. So, you know, so it wasn't even that good. I don't know. I don't even know how. God, man, is the only way I can talk about it. So I go to rehab for, again, here in Ohio, and I end up... this is where the story gets interesting. From here, as I plug in, I'm like, all right, I'm going back to the steps. I'm going to find the most hardcore.

Chuck (40:12.946)
Yeah, right.

Matt Keegan (40:31.878)
old-school AA bastard I can find. We're gonna go through the steps. So I find that guy and that guy, his name was Steve, man. He was such a big fucking part of helping me change. Now mind you, I still have a sponsor from the first time I went through the steps. I still talk to that sponsor. I still talk to both of them, still to this day. But from 2019, the first guy that took me through the steps is Matt. Huge instrumental in changing my life, 100%. And he changed it in this way, right? So I find it his other sponsor, Steve, and he's molding me in this other way.

Chuck (40:49.074)
Yeah.

Chuck (40:55.262)
Yeah. Yep.

Matt Keegan (41:00.718)
where he taught me how to be like a better father. He taught me, he helped me establish a real true relationship with God, you know, God of my understanding, which I call the God from the Bible. And, you know, we really, we took about a year to go through the steps. We ended up going through them twice because I didn't get it the first time. So we went back through it. I mean, we really meticulously went through the steps and I showed up to his house every single week. We did sponsor time every single week. Every time he asked me to do something, I did what he asked. I got a home group. I started making meetings. I started fellowshipping.

Chuck (41:01.107)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Keegan (41:30.282)
A lot of the guys had a problem with me in the fellowship because I shared my recovery on the internet so it took a long time for a lot of people to want to be a part of what I... You know what I mean? I kind of got... Yeah, I was rejected and outcasted for a little bit but they're all riding now, dude. They all believe in me now. Suddenly. Suddenly, right? Crazy. They all watch my videos and tell me great job now but back then they gave me a lot of shit for doing this.

Chuck (41:39.822)
Yeah, that's a yeah, I get you. Yeah. Right. I got you there. Yeah. Oh, I knew him when you know, right? Yeah.

Matt Keegan (41:58.178)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They gave me a bunch of shit, and I really, I felt like an outcast, man. I felt like I couldn't fit anywhere, and that's a theme that I've always had, is I just felt like I can't fit in anywhere. And I, you know, and I've moved all over trying to run from that. Oh, this city ain't right for me. I'm gonna go here. Oh, this place doesn't work. I'm gonna go there. That's why I found out it's me. I'm the cause of all this shit. I am the common denominator in all these issues. It's me. And, uh, so I went through that, that first, you know, time, you know, mind you,

Chuck (42:08.659)
Yep.

Chuck (42:16.754)
Yeah, the common denominator, right? Yeah, yeah, right. Yep.

Matt Keegan (42:27.962)
I have a daughter and all this. It's always hard for me to snake her into the story. You know, I kind of miss that part. Rewinding, had a daughter, wanted nothing to do with her, did everything I could to run away from that being a father. Pride, saying that the mother had it with somebody else. We took a DNA test, it was like 99.9. That kid was mine, you know, but I didn't want nothing to do with it. But after her first year, I ended up establishing child support and, you know, just trying my best to be there. But, you know, I was...

Chuck (42:40.555)
Hmm.

Chuck (42:46.79)
Yeah, without a doubt, right?

Matt Keegan (42:55.67)
I was a hopeful dad, but most of the time I would get my daughter just so I could post cute pictures on Facebook and pull girls. You know what I mean? I'll be honest with you. Then I ended up going to prison. It wasn't until after I got out of prison and then I relapsed, went to Florida, came back and then I went into detox again. Then I got the old school sponsor. That's when I started building a relationship with her. She's about five or six at this time. When I say I'm going to be there, I'm going to be there. I pick her up every time. I don't miss.

Chuck (43:01.822)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Chuck (43:18.068)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (43:23.766)
putting together birthday parties for, build a real relationship with her. It's taking a long time to cultivate that. And she lives with her grandma. So in this time, her mom ends up passing away from an overdose or something. Yeah, she loses her mom. She hadn't had contact with her in a few years. She hadn't seen her because her mom had gotten lost in addiction too. So she had a hard life. So I'm trying to do everything I can to be everything. I'm there for as much as possible. A lot of what I was doing in that time was

Chuck (43:27.986)
Yeah.

Chuck (43:36.764)
Uh...

Matt Keegan (43:52.75)
geared around like being the best at I can be and learning you know what I'm saying. So and then in the meantime I'm building the platform you know I'm putting the videos out that's when I put out my first TikTok and made my first TikTok and it went viral with like 150,000 views the very first one I put out and it was it was actually a video it huh.

Chuck (43:56.19)
Yeah, yeah, I do.

Chuck (44:09.058)
Wow, well, I still haven't cracked a thousand. I still haven't cracked a thousand on anything.

Matt Keegan (44:14.842)
Yeah, very first video it was like a it was a video of me like an active addiction to pictures and then like me with my daughter and then like a thing I did for her birthday I hired Elsa like a woman to play Elsa and then yeah I had this big birthday party at the Sober Club that I was working with. I helped start a Sober Club that I was a part of. So for me it was just being active in the community working with other people you know what I mean holding myself accountable calling a sponsor every day working on a relationship establishing a relationship with a higher power like these are the things that like.

Chuck (44:25.722)
Oh, OK. Yeah.

Chuck (44:32.604)
Okay, yeah.

Matt Keegan (44:45.106)
Supercharge my recovery like I those I have to do those things like if I just go sit by myself I'm gonna realize which is what I went to found right so the tick tock starts blowing up I start putting on I start putting these rap songs that I've been sitting on for a while on there Just me rapping in the car, and they start doing numbers man quarter million views quarter million views half a million views You know what I mean, and then I start playing with it and all of a sudden my stuff Rockets up to like 50,000 followers on tick tock and you know I think I'm

Chuck (44:47.058)
Yeah.

Chuck (45:00.574)
Yeah.

Chuck (45:05.894)
Yeah, man. Yeah, right.

Matt Keegan (45:13.834)
I'm thinking I'm it, you know? Oh yeah, great, this is finally happening, you know? I definitely had some ego over that, but that's where my sponsor came and helped check me, helped me build this thing to where like, the only thing I care about when I put out a video is as long as I inspire one person, anything else is a bonus. So I don't worry about views, likes, click. Like if a video flops, I do not care. Like it doesn't bother me. And the slightest, my only goal is to inspire one person, which we can't lose at that point. We're inspiring one person no matter what, right?

Chuck (45:15.475)
Yeah.

Chuck (45:27.678)
Yeah. Right.

Chuck (45:34.526)
Yeah, right.

Chuck (45:40.786)
Yeah, man. Yeah.

Matt Keegan (45:41.794)
So that helped me a lot, helped pull the ego out of it, helped pull my head out of it, and just kind of let God work through me. So I'm here, working in my hometown, living with my grandma, working this great relationship out with my daughter. I mean, making memories with her and just really feeling what it's like to be a dad. You know what I'm saying? And just having that pride when you look at your kid, like, man, I am so proud that I get to be a part of her life. You know, and just really feeling those feelings, having those intimate moments with her and gaining her trust.

Chuck (45:59.195)
Yeah, man. Yeah.

Matt Keegan (46:10.366)
seen what that looks like and I worked really hard for that you know so I get this big bright idea that uh this town ain't big enough for old Matt Keegan my 50,000 tick tock followers I gotta go move to a big city I gotta move to a big city and I'm gonna go do open mics there and they're gonna listen to my music and I'm gonna be famous

Chuck (46:19.19)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Chuck (46:33.83)
and how that end for you.

Matt Keegan (46:39.906)
helping people get into treatment, right? Because I've seen these recovery influencers do that, and I modeled myself off that. Richie Webb or Khaleechee. So I would let people know, hey, I can help you. So what that looks like 95% of the time is I'm helping you find this website that can find any place in your state or wherever you're at, right? And mainly people who have Medicaid or don't.

Chuck (46:46.056)
How would you help them get into treatment? What do you mean there?

Chuck (47:01.645)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (47:04.946)
I can teach you how to sign up for it. Get the Medicaid. If you got Medicaid, we're going to start calling some places that's in your area that can take you. I'm going to get you the numbers. I'm going to coach you through how you call, what you got to say, what you're coming off of, and what that looks like. You know what I'm saying? And then I'm working with a place out of Florida that if somebody has the right type of insurance and everything's good for them, they can go to this place in Florida. 95% of what I'm doing, I'm driving people to Medicaid places like here in Ohio. A lot of things like what I like to say is like, if you're willing.

Chuck (47:18.79)
Okay. Yep.

Matt Keegan (47:35.054)
I will move mountains for you. You know what I mean? Like I'll meet you wherever you're at, but you gotta be willing. I can't do it for you. You know what I mean?

Chuck (47:37.598)
Right? Right.

Yep, we quite often on the show, we've built our own community that way. And it's the same thing. If you're willing to do it, right, I'll find somebody. I'll find somebody wherever they are in the country, United States, and I've linked people up, but you gotta be willing to do it, man. You just, you know, cause it, yeah.

Matt Keegan (47:44.745)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (47:52.886)
Absolutely and then and then and then to just being a conduit plugging people into other people you know what I mean like Reach out to somebody anybody. I don't care who it is. Just go get help. You know what I'm saying So that's what it was looking like man, and that's what I was doing a lot of time I was like juggling a job, but then like there would be days I'd go drive halfway across the state pick somebody up take them to a Medicaid place that I know about I got relationships with places that will take you in with no insurance backdate the insurance and bring you out of house Sign you up for Medicare every Here in the states

Chuck (47:58.002)
I got you.

Chuck (48:01.446)
Yep, yep, yep.

Chuck (48:19.119)
Yeah man, yeah, right.

Matt Keegan (48:22.486)
Treatment is available for anybody who wants to do it. There are resources, you know what I'm saying? So that's what I was doing, and that's what I became known as. I became known as the guy that helped people in the treatment, the recovery guy, and that was my reputation, and it was solid. I worked a good program. I'm open, I'm honest, I share. I let you know the bad things that I go through, the struggles I go through. My sponsor taught me sure the good with the bad. I let you know, you know what I mean? And that's what I really wanted to develop is a real reputation of being that person. Walk in the talk, you know what I mean? Like I...

Chuck (48:27.059)
Yep.

Chuck (48:51.455)
I do. Yeah, man.

Matt Keegan (48:52.19)
As I see a lot of, there are a lot of people in this space who talk a lot, but they don't walk the talk. You know what I'm saying? And I just want to be the guy that walks what he talks, you know? So I was. And then I moved to Columbus, away from my recovery community, away from my sponsor, away from everybody. And I get alone and by myself. I'm serving at Texas Roadhouse and I'm making a good amount of money. And in Columbus, in this busy city, I'm moving with some friends. They're not in recovery, but they're not addicts either. They're just normal people. They can drink a couple of times a year. And

Chuck (49:06.486)
Mm-mm.

Uh oh.

Matt Keegan (49:21.526)
you know, not it turned into a thing. So I get into Columbus and there just happens to be all these tasty head shops all over the place, all these really sweet, intricate head shops with a bunch of really brand new kratom and all. And I would go in there and flirt with the idea here and there and just look around and just check out. And then I can't remember when it happened, but mind you, I'm still putting out TikToks. I'm still putting out songs. I get plugged in with a producer or I start like putting stuff out professionally.

Chuck (49:21.748)
Yeah.

Chuck (49:28.749)
Oh.

Chuck (49:37.055)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (49:47.174)
I have a video due like 1.6 million views. I'm closing in on 70, 80 thousand followers. Like it's really starting, the movement's starting to grow. I'm having people reach out to me every day. I'm talking people through stuff all the time, you know, and I break away from all that. Stop working my program. I make the platform, my god. I make the Texas Roadhouse money, my god. I make all that, I put all that priority and I stop working on myself spiritually, mentally.

Physically, I stop all that, stop going to meetings, stop calling my sponsor. I got this, I can do this on my own. I'm Matt Keegan, I got a TikTok, it's got 70,000 followers, maybe you don't know who I am, type shit. And I paid for that presumption with a relapse. And I relapsed while having this platform. I relapsed while helping get people into treatment and then I started creating creative.

Chuck (50:21.112)
Yeah, yeah.

Chuck (50:24.99)
Yeah.

Chuck (50:30.154)
So how does that look? You know you're relapsing, yet you're still doing the things? What a horrible feeling that must be. What?

Matt Keegan (50:35.502)
Yep, absolutely The worst feeling you can fucking imagine man If you want to talk about feeling fake not being able to look myself in the mirror not being able to you know Not have not having a good opinion of myself because that's the thing is like I have a conscious You know what I'm saying in it ate me alive

Chuck (50:49.938)
Yeah, man. I've flirted with the idea quite a bit on some bad days. You know, and I could, you know, ah man, the thought of it just breaks my heart that you don't have to live like that. So I can only imagine, you know, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (51:03.486)
Yep. Yeah, and then I'm like thinking, and I'm going to these head shops, and I'm like, are they going to recognize me? Because every time I go somewhere, I pop up on somebody's for you page. And then of course, it does happen, I pop up on their for you page, and they end up asking me, and then I got to tell them like, yeah, I have a recovery platform. I'm relapsed. I'm being a piece of shit right now. I need to buy three OPMs extract shots, please. You know, so that's when I got into the extracts of Kratom, which are incredibly nasty. I mean, they are, I mean...

Chuck (51:15.616)
Yeah.

Chuck (51:23.27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

Matt Keegan (51:30.742)
They are highly, highly addictive, nasty withdraw. They just suck the life right out of you. And I was taking three of them a day and then I got into Tienepteen. Tienepteen's like an analog precursor to some sort of SSRI that acts like kratom, but it's not, but it's legal. I don't know what's going on. It's not, the thing is too, it's like this stuff doesn't like fuck you up. This stuff doesn't like make you drool on yourself. You can, I could take the stuff and go to work and that's what I did. I was working 60 hours a week at this roadhouse.

Chuck (51:46.092)
Yep.

Chuck (51:58.646)
Yeah. Yep.

Matt Keegan (51:58.67)
And that was my purpose. I was like, I'll take the Kratom and go to work. Take the Kratom and go to work. But then I'm also putting these videos out, also going live, talking about recovery, acting like I'm sober, having to put eye drops in my eyes because my eyes are still red and pinned out because that's what the Kratom makes you look like you're tore up, you know? So this comes to a head, you know? This comes to a point to where it's like, I am either gonna have to tell everybody what happened or I'm gonna kill myself.

Chuck (52:13.248)
Oh... Yeah...

Yep.

Chuck (52:26.155)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (52:26.882)
because I can't take this, you know, and I had a plan. I was like, I'll go, I'll get fattened off from somebody and I'll just go get like a 50 piece of it and I'll go drive out in the woods and snort the whole 50 piece and that'll kill me for sure. You know, and that's where I was at. That's how low I was at, you know.

Chuck (52:40.034)
You know what, this is your story, it's not mine, but you just made me think about the last year of active addiction for me, if I didn't have a gram of Fenty with me, I never felt right, and I never did it, but I wanted always to have it with me, just in case that was the day I finally got the guts to do it. What a twisted way of thinking, right? Yeah, yeah, and I would sell it because I needed a crack or whatever, and I would feel just awful until I had it with me again, because it was some weird, twisted, comforted feeling.

Matt Keegan (52:55.456)
Really?

Yeah, absolutely.

Chuck (53:09.374)
to have that with me. So you know what I mean? Right? Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. Thinking back to those days, it's yeah. Yeah. Right. It's right. So.

Matt Keegan (53:09.662)
Right. Wow. That's interesting. Wow. Okay. Oh yeah. Ugh. Fucking ugh. Right? To me, it's just a demon had possession of my mind. That's the way I look at it because it was like something else was speaking, thinking, and acting for me. It wasn't me. Why would I want to do this to myself? In reality, this is me now, you know? So, uh, it was either that or I was talking to my buddy. His name is Dustin. Shout out to Dustin, my boy. We had gotten sober before he had just relapsed too.

Chuck (53:27.77)
Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Chuck (53:36.466)
Ha ha

Matt Keegan (53:39.578)
and he had been sober for almost two years and he was in a halfway house and his sponsor had challenged him to do 90 days at this sober living place halfway. I would talk to him man and he didn't have two pennies to rub together but he was so fucking happy. I could hear how happy he was and here I am I'm making $1500 a week cash, got all the money I could think of, I'm making money through TikTok, I'm doing all this stuff, I'm putting that, I got brand deals, blah blah. I'm miserable dude. I am unhappy. I'm not happy at all.

Chuck (53:39.844)
Yep.

Chuck (53:43.338)
Okay.

Chuck (53:48.318)
Yeah.

Chuck (54:03.487)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (54:08.862)
I want to die and I got more I got ten times more than him and I realized no He's got ten times more than you motherfucker I want what he had and he ended up talking me to go and I was like, alright, I'm done with Columbus, you know, I Paid my last month of rent. I worked for about three weeks straight and I had a bunch of money saved up and then I went to I went to detox man And then I turned my turn my will over and then I put out a video

Chuck (54:09.158)
Yeah, right.

Chuck (54:16.03)
There it is. There it is, right? Yep.

Chuck (54:32.126)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (54:34.986)
told everybody what happened. I made a post on Facebook and then I wrote a song called I relapsed and then terrifying. I thought it was over. This was over. This was done. Me as a recovery influencer or what I had set out to do with a platform or what the fuck. Like that was dead. That's not going to be a thing anymore. I'm going to have to go find a different job, different means of like what it is that I wanted a different career path. Like this just ain't going to work. You know? So I said, all right, God, if that's what you want.

Chuck (54:39.256)
How tough was that to do?

Yeah.

Chuck (54:47.472)
Yeah.

Yeah. No kidding.

Chuck (54:58.633)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (55:01.162)
and that's what I have to do. All right, I'm gonna follow you and if we gotta dissolve the platform and I lose all this, fine, I trust you. I trust that whatever it is that you're gonna have for me will be 10 times better than what this was and this just wasn't meant to be. So I go to the detox, I go through it, do my thing, get out, and then...

Chuck (55:20.798)
So sorry to interrupt, Matt. In the detox, do you have access to internet? So like when I went to detox, there was no, you didn't have access to your phone or internet or anything, so.

Matt Keegan (55:29.298)
We had, yeah, you had access to YouTube in the DTOC. Yep.

Chuck (55:32.454)
Okay, okay. So you could still keep track or post or do whatever you felt you needed to do at that time? Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

Matt Keegan (55:37.366)
Yep, yep, yep. So I had made the post that I was going, and then I, you know, I'll be coming back online soon. You know what I mean? So then I went to detox, and then I went to, I ended up getting good, got through it, but it was hard. It was just coming off the kratom shots in the cyaneptine too. They were like, when they drug tested me, they were like, what are you even here for? I was like, I'm gonna go through some nasty, I had to beg them to do a suboxone taper, because like, you know.

Chuck (55:44.627)
Yeah.

Chuck (55:54.115)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (56:03.83)
And again, I'm not anti-suboxone at all, bro. Like I needed to have that paper or it would have stuck without Suboxone. I had to beg them for it because they didn't have a protocol for kratom or tie-in-neptine. They didn't know what the hell it was. And the witch-raws are nasty, dude. They're just as much as, I've been through just about every opiate witch-raw you can have and kratom is like up there in like the top like two worst for me. Yes, absolutely. I mean, you do three of the extract shots a day.

Chuck (56:09.464)
Yeah.

Chuck (56:14.815)
Yeah.

Chuck (56:24.678)
No kidding, eh? No kidding. Wow.

Matt Keegan (56:29.758)
It's gonna be nasty dude, it's gonna be real nasty. And it lingered for a while, so. Get plugged into the halfway house, and you get your phone back immediately, and I just started documenting everything, man. I just started posting, and just posting about what I was going through, what it was like, you know, how I felt. And then I, I had been posting on my Facebook, you know, artist page I made for like two and a half years. Just posting a recovery meme every day.

Chuck (56:31.603)
Yeah. Wow.

Chuck (56:43.376)
Yep.

Matt Keegan (56:55.702)
you know, sharing different things, facets about my life and stuff like that. And it never really did anything, man. I think I had like 1.7 thousand followers for two and a half years. And mainly it was all TikTok was where like my traffic came from. You know what I mean? I'd probably go viral on TikTok all the time. And then I ended up posting some a video of a song, Subtoxin, that I had put out back in 2021 and or 2022. And I just did a video of it that I did on TikTok, re-uploaded it to Facebook and it did like one point.

Chuck (57:04.527)
Okay.

Chuck (57:17.694)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Keegan (57:25.618)
something million views you know and then all of a sudden my Facebook fucking took off you know so then I started posting other videos on there and then they all went viral again and I kept happening and then I started making posts and then all of a sudden like I'm getting 500, 600, 700 reactions on a post on Facebook that I've been posting on for a year and I'm like what the hell is going on and then all of a sudden people start reaching out to me oh hey I've seen your song we want you to come perform at this recovery fest.

Chuck (57:27.09)
Wow, hey, speaking to somebody. Yeah.

Chuck (57:34.537)
Yep.

Chuck (57:42.146)
Yeah.

Matt Keegan (57:49.606)
oh hey i want you to come perform at the monument washington oh hey you know what i mean also all the stuff that trickling down and it's like i'm like what the hell happened how did that happen i did not expect what i thought it was over maybe so maybe so you know i just look at it as a blessing from god you know god apparently this is what i am meant to do you know what i'm saying and then what i walked out of this was that self-knowledge of like

Chuck (57:54.265)
Yeah.

Chuck (58:00.342)
Yeah, yeah. Something to do with your authenticity now, maybe. Right. You know, yeah.

Chuck (58:11.867)
Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Matt Keegan (58:18.934)
that no matter what I can't pick up and use anything because that was my mindset when I first picked up that cradem was just gonna be like once a month type deal here and there wasn't gonna be every day and it was it was I did get away with it for like a few months and then it became every day slowly it's a progression slow progression

Chuck (58:27.446)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chuck (58:34.058)
Yeah, right. I think I might, the first reel of years I ever saw, which I didn't realize until like yesterday, that it was, it just kind of popped into my memory, was you, some sort of rural background, whether like, or a big backyard, you were talking about how you can't just do something now and again, you only had maybe six months clean or something like that at the time, but you were speaking very clearly, I'm the guy that can't pick up substance and do it now and again, I'm the guy that, you will start to, do you remember the reel I'm talking about or?

Matt Keegan (59:00.414)
Absolutely, it was right there. I did it right there. I was actually getting ready to leave for work, and I shot it real quick.

Chuck (59:01.554)
Yeah. Oh. OK, yeah. That's the first of years I didn't realize it. And then I was like, hey, wait a minute. That was that? Oh, fuck yeah. That's right, eh? OK, yeah, right? So I remember really relating to that. So yeah, anyway. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (59:09.394)
Yeah. So. Awesome, man. It's great. So, yeah, man. And then that's the guy brings us to now. You know, I just performed in Washington right at the monument. I mean, an electric performance, dude, like I practice real hard to like I rehearse for an hour a day, you know, like an hour. I go through my songs over and over and over and I stand up and I rap to a wall or I'll rap into a mirror. I pretend I'm on stage.

Chuck (59:29.932)
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (59:37.642)
Like I really, really rehearsed the stuff hard and then when it came time to show up.

Chuck (59:40.538)
Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's easy for people to think that it's an easy gig, if this is all you're doing, but there's so much goes into, so much goes even into a one-minute reel that people don't realize how much gets you there, you know, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (59:45.535)
No, it's not, no.

Matt Keegan (59:50.898)
Yeah, yep, absolutely. Oh, for sure, this is a full-time gig, just this by itself. And I'm also working full-time at the Texas Roadhouse. And I do that to fund everything else that I'm doing because it costs money to record these songs, it costs money to put out merch, it costs money to... And then on top of that, I gotta live, I gotta take care of my daughter. I help people when they ask, you know what I mean? I need to be available and I got bills to pay myself and I put myself in some debt.

Chuck (01:00:07.678)
Damn straight. Yeah.

Matt Keegan (01:00:18.266)
some credit cards with that crate that I'm still digging myself out of and I'm actually almost there man. I mean, I've worked my ass off. You know, yeah, absolutely. When all them cards are paid off, I got them put up. Every time I pay one off, I put it in this little thing and I put it away and I leave it there and that's what I've done. So I'm getting there. Two more big ones left and I'm done. I'm done. So I'm really grateful for that. But yeah, now today, you know, I'm just figuring it out, you know, and then I ended up meeting up with Benjamin Lerner.

Chuck (01:00:22.134)
Yeah. That'll be a great day, eh? That'll be a great day right now. Yep.

Yeah. Nice, nice.

Chuck (01:00:45.95)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt Keegan (01:00:46.194)
There was some room on that Washington show that had just come open and I contacted him and I'm like, yo, you wanna do this with me, bro? And he's like, absolutely. So he drove eight hours down. We linked up. He actually went out to dinner with us Friday night and he met my mom, because I brought like a little posse with me and my mom, my two friends and my girlfriend at the time. He came out to dinner and man, we just all vibed. We had a beautiful dinner Friday night before the event.

Chuck (01:01:05.202)
Yeah.

Chuck (01:01:10.824)
Nice nice nice, right? Yeah

Matt Keegan (01:01:12.522)
Yeah, he was so cool in person, man. Like, you know, we were swapping info. We were like, well, how do you upload in this format? And you know, what do you add on this? You know what I mean? Like, just having all this jargon back and forth, you know? Oh, he's a class act for sure, man. Like, I vibed with him immediately. Like, I felt a serious kinship towards him and I see a great friendship in the future.

Chuck (01:01:18.518)
Yeah.

He sees the class act, he really is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chuck (01:01:32.999)
I could see the parallels between you. I've reached out to many, many people through social media to come on the show as we've grown and we've got quite the growth happening right now. But Ben was kind of the first guy that just, bam, responded right away. Yeah, I'm in. And yourself, you were the same way. Yeah, I'm in. Whatever. And for me, that's like, yeah, finally. Right? So, you know.

Matt Keegan (01:01:47.934)
Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Who cares? Let's go. Yeah, absolutely. It's just cool that somebody, somebody's like, Hey, I want you to come on my production show and talk about, you know, your story. That's, that's, that's great. Like, man, like you think my story is cool enough to come down to your show that you like invest in and you want to do and you want me to be a part of that? Absolutely. I'm humbled. That's great. You know, as long as I'm able to do, I'll do these all the time.

Chuck (01:02:05.736)
Right, right.

Chuck (01:02:12.881)
Yeah, yeah, right, so.

Matt Keegan (01:02:17.598)
anytime, you know?

Chuck (01:02:18.61)
Yeah, well, I sure do appreciate it, man. I really do. I really do, right? So if you had to pick a lesson, if you had to pick one statement to say to the masses, what would it be?

Matt Keegan (01:02:28.434)
Absolutely, yeah, this is my favorite one dude. If I can do this, you can do this. That's it. There's nothing special about me. It's just consistency and hard work. And that's the only thing that separates because I'm telling you, I have had the door shut in my face a lot over these five, six years I've been doing this and I just kept showing up, you know? And that's where I'm at today.

Chuck (01:02:33.334)
There you go. Yeah. Keep it simple, eh?

Chuck (01:02:48.946)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Can I ask what are you at now for Clean Time? Is that something you share? Good for you, man. Good for you, right?

Matt Keegan (01:02:55.258)
The 28th will be six months. Seems a little under, you know, seems a lot of people are like, oh I feel like you should have more. Well I'd have three years, I'd have three years if I didn't get a bright idea.

Chuck (01:03:03.514)
Yeah, right, so myself, I don't necessarily share my clean time, not because I don't share it, but because I don't keep track the same way, right? I know my date because it coincides with my father's death, so on the 21st it'll only be a year for me myself, right? But the thing with counting clean time is like, okay, so I relapse. Does that mean I lose all that time beforehand?

Right? And so that's kind of where I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna start living for today. And today's the day, and that's it, right? I'm not gonna worry about what's behind me, right? But, you know, so, but yeah, it's still early myself too. Right? Less than a year, you know, right? So.

Matt Keegan (01:03:28.182)
Yeah, yeah, right. Sure.

Matt Keegan (01:03:34.922)
Yeah, but I still have those two years. I still carry the wisdom and the knowledge and the experience. I still have that, you know. I just can't say I've been silver for two straight years, you know. That's okay. That's okay. I'm all right with that today. No, not at all. No.

Chuck (01:03:39.538)
And that's it, you don't lose that time, right? Yeah, recovery's not a straight path, you know, right? Yeah, it's not a linear path, recovery's just not, right? You know, there's, you know, no, no. So, absolutely, absolutely. I really gotta thank you, man, which brings me to my favourite part of the show, and that's the daily gratitudes. So, edit, okay. What you got for some daily gratitudes, Matt?

Matt Keegan (01:04:03.51)
Daily Gratitudes. I just did a list today, man. One I always like to pick up on is just the relationship I have with God. I'm very grateful for that. I'm grateful for what God's done in my life. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity that I have to help other people and inspire people through music and through a platform. Like that's a dream come true. Like one day I'm going to get to do this full time. And that's something I've always dreamed about doing and that's wonderful. You know, the health of my family is healthy and happy. I have healthy relationships. I have a...

Chuck (01:04:25.307)
Yeah, man. Yeah.

Matt Keegan (01:04:33.394)
Excellent fellowship both my sponsors man. I got a car. I got a license bro. We can we can go down the nitty-gritty I got a I got air conditioning. I got electricity Man, I got a lot to be grateful for today, bro

Chuck (01:04:42.422)
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

things you don't take for granted anymore, right? You know, right? True story, true story. And for myself, of course, you know, I gotta be grateful to you for coming on, man. Like this is, you know, I really do appreciate you taking the time. We've got busy lives and, you know, I get it, I get it. Thank you. And for my final gratitude, it goes out to you, the listeners, the watchers, the supporters, all of you guys, whatever you're doing, please keep doing it. It's working, we keep growing day over day, month over month.

Matt Keegan (01:04:49.014)
That's right. That's right.

Matt Keegan (01:05:00.086)
I'm grateful that you had me on today, man. This was great.

Chuck (01:05:13.31)
If you see us on any one of the social platforms, I don't even list them off anymore, I'm on literally all of them. If you see the logo, do a like, comment, share, and we love those things, especially on Spotify, drop a comment, please, we do enjoy that. Anytime you do any one of these things, you are getting me a little bit closer to living my best life. My best life is to make a humble living spreading the message, the message is this. If you are in active addiction right now, today could be the day that you start that lifelong journey.

Reach out to a friend, reach out to a family member, call in to detox, go to a meeting, do whatever the hell it is you need to do to get that journey started, because it is so much better than the alternative. And if you are the loved one of somebody who's suffering addiction right now, just take the time to listen to our conversation. If you just take one more minute out of your day and text that person, let them know they're loved. Use the words.

Matt Keegan (01:05:58.57)
I forgot. Oh no, I'm so sorry.

Chuck (01:06:01.906)
Just say you are loved.

Matt Keegan (01:06:03.742)
You are love.

Chuck (01:06:05.562)
That little glimmer of hope just might be the thing that brings them back. Ha ha ha!

Matt Keegan (01:06:09.047)
Yes, sir.