249 - BRANDON CHATAGNIER

Chuck LaFLange (00:03.794)
Hello everybody, watchers, listeners, supporters of all kinds. Welcome to another episode of the Ashes to Awesome Podcast I'm your host Chuck LaFlandre checking in from crabby Thailand. Halfway around the world in Louisiana is Brandon Chatagnier How you doing today, Brandon?

Brandon Chatagnier (00:16.167)
Good man, how are you?

Chuck LaFLange (00:17.988)
I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. It's like really hot. It's, you know, four o 'clock in the morning and it's still really hot here. So it's always hot. Yeah, right. Yeah. I guess you guys are pretty much on the same, same type as we are. So, so Louisiana with, of course we had Nicole on just recently. it's a great story. Great story. You guys are, you guys are kind of unique in some of the things you're doing there. Her story was kind of crazy, right? But.

Brandon Chatagnier (00:24.423)
That's how it is in Louisiana, it stays hot here. Hot and humid year round.

Chuck LaFLange (00:46.258)
And I'm sure yours is as well. And we'll definitely talk a little bit about that. Why don't we start out, Brandon, with the first time you remember getting messed up. I've got a couple of follow -up questions to go from there.

Brandon Chatagnier (00:56.456)
well, you want me to tell you about that night or, the way it happened? well, I was around 24, 25 years old. The first time I ever used, never used drugs before that ever. I, I, yep. I grew up in a Christian home with good parents. I was raised right. I went to private school. pretty much everything, I had.

Chuck LaFLange (01:01.074)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you remember how old you were, all that stuff, right? Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:10.546)
Guys, the both of you are just this like crazy late bloomin', right?

Brandon Chatagnier (01:26.216)
I had every advantage in the world that anybody else out there has. I could have gone to college, could have done whatever I wanted to with my life. And I got involved with a girl at the time and I thought that that was what I was supposed to, who I was supposed to be with. And you know, it was kind of a rebellion thing. I got married seven years down the road and three kids later, she left me.

And that was, it was a few months after that, it was the first time I ever used drugs. And I had drank as a, you know, in my teens when you're not supposed to. But by the time I hit 21, those things were all over. I was married and my partying, I was very immature, but I wasn't partying. I was...

living a married life, but I was just running around with friends and, you know, just not keeping a job. And anyway, my first wife left me and two or three months later, I was living in the bars, staying drunk and depressed and down and out. And I went out one night with some friends of mine, my best friend at the time actually. And somebody had given me a pill, like a Roxy or something. And I took it.

And that in combination with the drinking, I was just really messed up, like bad. And I was belligerent and I was getting on everyone's nerves at this party, at this house party. And my friend, believe it or not, the Roxy wasn't the thing. Opiates never were my thing. My friend was like, man, you're messing up the party. They're gonna throw us out of here. Come to the bathroom, I'm gonna help you out. So I went with him to the bathroom.

Chuck LaFLange (02:58.226)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (03:09.65)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (03:16.808)
And he cut this line of something wide out on the counter and he said, man, just sniff snort that and you'll be straight. And I didn't know what it was. You know, I didn't know if it was cocaine or what. I'd never seen anything. And I had been a police officer and in my police work, I had actually worked some on a street interdiction team and in an arc on narcotics, but.

Back then the big things was crack, ecstasy, and marijuana was what we dealt with the most. And I had never really run across, I knew what cocaine was from the movies or whatever, but I didn't know what it was. And I said, okay, sure, man. I snorted it up and man, it was meth. And it was, I was instantly sober, like instantly sober. And I remember,

Chuck LaFLange (04:07.058)
And with a really sore face too, I'll bet, because nothing burns like a oof. I'll bet it did.

Brandon Chatagnier (04:09.353)
Yes, it burned all the way back to the back of my head. I thought my eyeball was falling out. But I was instantly sober and I'll never forget walking out of that bathroom from the first time getting high. I walked out the door of that bathroom back into the house and it almost seemed like it was in a different house. I remember everything in that house being brighter.

I remember every color being brighter, every person being more realistic, everything just seeming more beautiful. Like, it was almost like you put on some glasses that made you see a more perfect image of the world around you. That's how my first experience was. When I walked out of that bathroom, I thought to myself, man, this is the most amazing thing I've ever experienced in my life. And I don't know, I don't...

Chuck LaFLange (04:39.986)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (04:47.762)
Not kidding.

Chuck LaFLange (04:57.298)
No kidding, I -

Chuck LaFLange (05:06.226)
Wow.

Brandon Chatagnier (05:08.49)
I think honestly that I was probably hooked that first time. And the reason I say that is I don't know. I don't know what some people qualify as addiction or whether you're instantly an addict or whatever. But in my opinion, if you can't come down, if you don't want to feel

the normal sober again, then you're addicted. And that's pretty much the way it was. About 12 hours later, I found myself in a rocking chair rocking back and forth, crying my eyes out, not wanting to be alive, saying I need to get back to the way I was. And that was on the first time. Yeah, instantly, instantly. And so it just, it went from there. here, you know, buy me a little bit more and just.

Chuck LaFLange (05:39.122)
Fair enough, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Chuck LaFLange (05:52.114)
That's addiction, yeah, 100%, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I would agree.

Brandon Chatagnier (06:03.434)
It started off and became a daily thing at that point.

Chuck LaFLange (06:07.122)
So do you think with the benefit of hindsight, had you not been in that place in life where you were really down, disappointed, like depressed, that it would have had that same allure to you? And I mean, you can only guess. You can't prove a negative, but right.

Brandon Chatagnier (06:18.604)
I don't honestly, honestly, I don't know if I had not been in that place in my life, in that depressed state and, and I guess, seeking for something to fill that void. I don't know that I would have ever used drugs to find out whether or not it would have had that allure. I was never around. As a matter of fact, the guy who introduced it to me, he was my, he, his older brother.

Chuck LaFLange (06:40.818)
Fair enough. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (06:48.204)
was my best friend and had been killed in a car wreck. So he became kind of like a little brother to me because he was, you know, back then that's how it kind of was. But I didn't even know they used. It was that was something that they didn't tell anybody. I didn't know anybody that used drugs. I wasn't didn't run around with anybody that used drugs. And so I think I think a combination of me being in the state that I was in and

Chuck LaFLange (06:52.178)
Brandon Chatagnier (07:18.668)
coming across it at that exact time is what a perfect storm. The devil aligned everything perfect in my life at the time to introduce that demon.

Chuck LaFLange (07:22.514)
perfect storm kind of thing, right? That's what that is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (07:35.378)
kidding, no kidding. That's amazing, and it's such a late age. So at that point now, you're instantly like it's a daily, everyday thing, you're going right into it from there, right?

Brandon Chatagnier (07:49.805)
Yeah, at that time I had been divorced or I guess I separated. My divorce wouldn't file for a year, but I had been separated for four or five months and I had moved into a trailer behind my family's restaurant. They had a business, a restaurant at the time. We had a trailer behind it and I moved into there and I was working for the restaurant because...

That was always my fallback place. I never could keep a job. I was just too immature. I was one of those kind of people who was like, you know, if the boss said anything funny, I was looking for, I was one of those kind of people who was constantly looking for a reason to quit. And if you're always looking for a reason to quit, you're going to find one. There was not a thing about me that was looking for a reason to make it or continue or to push through. I was always looking for a reason to quit in just about everything that I had going on in my life. So.

Chuck LaFLange (08:31.474)
yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (08:41.106)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (08:47.597)
That was my fall back job. I knew I always could go work with my parents and I was working for them and it just became a daily thing. I remember I would, I would get, I mean, back then when I first started, it was such, it was small amounts, but I would get like a quarter of a gram and that would last me, you know, 36 hours just smoking it on foil back then, you know, and, and, yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (09:15.026)
Yeah, I remember those days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (09:17.1)
smoking it on foil and then I'd do some and I'd go up there and I'd work. And when I'd start to, you know, live a little bit more, I'd run back to my trailer and a couple of hits on the foil and go back to work. And that became my routine. I would work until I got off. And when I got off of work, I'd go back to my trailer and I'd sit back there by myself, like literally by myself. Cause I didn't know anybody at the time that did meth, other than my friend that had introduced it to me to it, you know?

Chuck LaFLange (09:46.482)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (09:46.606)
And, but he worked for his dad as well. And he, he, and he was, he was probably, I would say he wasn't a fully functioning addict, but he was a whole lot more functioning than I was. He worked for his dad every day out in the sun and, and he never missed work and stuff, but, but he stayed high all night every night. Well, but that, that became what my life would be. I would work until I got off of work at 10 or 11 o 'clock and I'd go back and sit in my.

sitting in my trailer by myself and I would smoke meth all night long on the foil. And then occasionally, maybe once a week or so, I'd go out and hang out with them. And I would stay up for three, four, five days at a time. And then I'd crash out and sleep all day. And then the cycle would start over again.

Chuck LaFLange (10:36.626)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (10:40.562)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it well. I do know it well. So that's crazy. So how long does that continue for you? Like, how long do you manage to be functioning? Right? You know?

Brandon Chatagnier (10:43.277)
Ha ha.

Brandon Chatagnier (10:49.103)
that went well I I functioned I functioned okay I would say probably for

Well, I'm gonna put it like this. I would probably have always remained what someone would consider a functioning addict. What I considered functioning was my ability to maintain my quality of life. And I was able to do that

Chuck LaFLange (11:25.522)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (11:30.351)
for the most of the time that I was in addiction outside of the aspect of my family and just general society working against me. You know, a lot of the reasons why as addicts we become non -functioning is because of the roadblocks that are putting our way, put in our way because, you know, by family or friends or loved ones or whatever.

Chuck LaFLange (11:47.634)
Okay.

Brandon Chatagnier (12:00.464)
They find out you're using. When they find out you're using, well, you're fired or you can't come around or whatever. And those are roadblocks that if they weren't there, you would probably remain functioning. So I function, I guess you would say financially decent for a while, but it didn't take long until my family and people around me all knew what was going on. And I was pretty well ostracized from.

Chuck LaFLange (12:00.562)
stigma and yeah, yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (12:27.026)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (12:30.799)
from the circles, but my drug addiction, you know, in your addiction, you think of it as, man, the luckiest guy in the world, but it was actually the worst thing that could possibly have happened. But my addiction, from the day that I used drugs for the very first time,

It might have been two to two and a half months before another perfect storm happened in my life. Within two or two and a half months, I knew probably 50, 60, 70 other people that were using meth, that were using meth on a daily basis. I had stumbled into...

Chuck LaFLange (13:04.498)
Okay.

Brandon Chatagnier (13:22.065)
just about every circle in our area at some point in time, you know, sitting around with this group or that group, whatever. And at about that same time, I find myself sitting across the desk from the person who was the largest meth dealer in the area back then. And he was like, hey, you know, so and so told me about you and said, you know, a lot of people and that you might can move some of this stuff. So within the...

Chuck LaFLange (13:41.586)
Wow.

Brandon Chatagnier (13:50.993)
Within two and a half months of the first time I ever used, I was selling. I was dealing dope and I was, I mean, back then that was in the early nineties and going over there and getting fronted an ounce a day, that was a lot, you know, back then. And so every morning, every morning, it was six o 'clock in the morning, we had to be there and turn our money in. He'd give us a fresh ounce and we'd leave. And that happened just a couple of months in. So I went from...

Chuck LaFLange (14:04.242)
out. Yeah, that was a lot back then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (14:20.624)
of using addict to dealing instantly. And then that's how I spent the next, I had 13 years of addiction, but I had a four year break in between. But that's how I spent all of my addiction after that was dealing.

Chuck LaFLange (14:36.05)
Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (14:40.946)
I understand. For me, it was a fallback my entire, for 20 some years. You do fine, you get a job, you'd be fine for a while. Something to go wrong, why can't I always go back to this? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (14:46.)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (14:49.522)
I didn't, I didn't, that's all I did. I poured my life into it. I had nothing else in my, in my, in my mind, I didn't have anything else to live for. I lost my family. I had lost my wife. My, once my parents found out and I was kind of ostracized, that was it. I, I immersed myself into that life and, and I was, that's all I did. I didn't have no job. I didn't nothing. And that was to my detriment, which, you know,

Chuck LaFLange (15:01.106)
No kidding, eh?

Brandon Chatagnier (15:19.57)
Now I look back on it and say that it was how God kept me alive. But not having a job, but at the same time having two apartments and two cars and always having money, the cops know you're not doing, they know you're up to no good. And then the fact that I was an ex -police officer and they all knew me, that was, I was just on their radar from day one. So I spent.

Chuck LaFLange (15:35.986)
Exactly, right? Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (15:47.346)
Probably 10 years just playing the cat and mouse game. Back in 2005, I held the record in our parish, which is like a county, that the most arrests in one year. I had 21 arrests in one year and just in and out of jail. But that's basically how I spent.

Chuck LaFLange (16:07.378)
Wow.

Brandon Chatagnier (16:14.258)
my time from 2002 to end of 2006.

Chuck LaFLange (16:21.138)
Yeah, no kidding. That's crazy, man. That's crazy. So I'll let you keep telling you like, I do kind of want to circle back a next cop. So can we talk about that? What happened there? I mean, that's an interesting part of your story, right? So yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (16:34.641)
Yeah, well, it is, it is. And look, I don't remember even how, I don't remember exactly what it was that enticed me to want to go down the road of a police officer. But I...

I think it was because of an acquaintance that I had in the small town that I lived at the time. He, I was talking to him and maybe it was about where meeting a job or something. He told me that, that, that local police department was looking for a police officer and there, there were a smaller municipality where I started out. And, basically the way it worked to get a job as a police officer, you had to go before the city council and they voted. And if they voted for you, then you got the job.

And he was on the city council. Yeah. So, so yeah, so myself and another guy went before the city council and, and he, the guy who had told me about it, that was on the council, he was the one that basically tipped the scale and I got the job and, and I spent just almost four years doing law enforcement, 2007 to 2000.

Chuck LaFLange (17:28.594)
Really? That's going back a ways.

Brandon Chatagnier (17:56.916)
I mean, 97 to 2001. and I did good. I went to police academy. I was a post certified officer. as a matter of fact, I won the award in the police academy for the highest score. and I worked at, in my law enforcement, I worked for four different departments, three of them all at the same time. I was working full time at one and moonlight and on the.

Chuck LaFLange (18:01.17)
Okay.

Brandon Chatagnier (18:27.028)
Street and Addiction team, Narcotics team for two other ones. And it was just, man, I got fired and it really wasn't because I had done anything wrong, but it was because what I had done was going to, they were gonna try to make an example. And I'll be honest with you, I'll be transparent. Your viewers will probably like this.

Chuck LaFLange (18:31.314)
No kidding.

Brandon Chatagnier (18:55.955)
But we had gone to a strip club and me and another officer off duty and we picked up these two strippers and we brought them back to his apartment and we proceeded to do all sorts of stuff with them. Nothing illegal, but the things you do with strippers. And I decided, I had this brilliant idea. Nobody's ever gonna believe this. We need to take some pictures.

Chuck LaFLange (19:13.106)
Yeah.

Hahaha!

Brandon Chatagnier (19:25.843)
And the only camera that I could find was the one in my police unit. It was my police camera. So I went outside and I got it and I came inside and we took all these pictures of us with these girls and these very compromising positions. And I forgot to take the film out of it. Back then you had film. I forgot. And in that, at that time, the way it was, was you, we didn't have take home units. You keep your patrol unit for your 12 hour shift and then you.

The next guy coming on would use it until you came back on. And however it happens, I forgot about it, but they took that film to get it developed and they brought it to Walmart where they got it developed at the time. And Walmart sees all these pictures coming across of two police officers, two strippers wearing the police officer's uniforms. And it was really bad. And so the, so the.

Chuck LaFLange (20:08.498)
no!

Chuck LaFLange (20:13.394)
no! No!

Brandon Chatagnier (20:20.244)
The chief of police shows up at my house and he knocked on the door and he's like, look, man, I'm just, I'm just here to tell you, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything illegal, but Walmart, they want a head. They're going to go to the press with this if you don't, if you don't, you know, so you got to resign or you get fired. So I.

Chuck LaFLange (20:31.726)
Yeah, but you've done something dumb.

Chuck LaFLange (20:41.074)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Brandon Chatagnier (20:43.056)
And that was that.

Chuck LaFLange (20:47.57)
It was the uniforms. It was them putting on the uniforms. I think that was probably the nail and the proverbial coffin there, right? You know, holy cow, you know, so wow. Okay, okay, okay. So I'm glad that we talked about that then. I'm glad that we talked about that. So, okay, so why don't you take us back into your story wherever you want to pick up and we'll kind of go from there. How's that sound? Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (20:53.46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (20:59.829)
Heheheheh

Brandon Chatagnier (21:06.997)
Well, my first, I call it my first round with addiction. That went from 2002 to 2006. And like I said, early on I started dealing and I sold a lot of meth, man, in this area. Everybody knew me and I felt like a rock star, but that's only because we're...

we're blinded by the fact that they love what's in our pocket. They don't love us, you know? But anyway, 2000, sometime in 2005, that time was spent just like probably anybody else who's using and dealing meth. I mean, I could probably tell a hundred stories and they're all gonna sound similar to somebody else's.

Chuck LaFLange (21:40.05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (22:01.141)
I had some really dark nights. I did a lot of stupid things. I was a thief, a liar, a womanizer. I mean, I did it all. And sometime during 2005, I spent some time, I spent a night, one night at a girl's house that they were having a party with some people over. And it was, I was there with my girlfriend and it was her friend and some bunch of other people. Well,

At the end of the night when it all came to a close, everybody had left except for my girlfriend and her friend. And I was sitting, I don't remember what was going on, I was sitting in the bedroom or something and they were in the living room talking and it got quiet and I was wondering what was going on. So I went in the living room and the two of them were sitting there and they had everything out on the coffee table trying to shoot up.

And at that point in time, I had never, I had never shot up before. They had never shot up before. We had only done it, you know, smoked it or snorting it or eating it, you know, whatever. But anyway, but I had spent a tremendous amount of time with somebody who did shoot up and I had watched it very closely so many times that I knew how to do it. And so being a smart aleck, I'd,

Chuck LaFLange (23:06.034)
you

Chuck LaFLange (23:23.09)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (23:27.864)
thought that I was going to show off and be like, man, let me show y 'all how to do that, you know? And so I made one up and man, I did it. And when I did that, that day it changed everything. I really couldn't get high any other way after that. I instantly became hooked on the needle. And whenever that happened, I tell people,

And it's in my book, but I tell people that at that particular moment in time, I was doing as good as I thought anybody out there who was living my life to be doing. I had two apartments. I had one that I was paying for that was clean and neat and whatnot. And that's where I was at when my kids came to stay and.

Chuck LaFLange (24:14.866)
Yep.

Brandon Chatagnier (24:18.743)
My Christian girlfriend came to see me at, which she had left me by that point, but still I had this apartment. Then I had another apartment that was like a trap house, you know? And I had two cars. I always had a pocket full of cash. I always had dope. I mean, it was, everything was going good. And I put that needle in my arm, man. And in less than eight months time, I lost everything, everything. I got evicted from my apartments.

Chuck LaFLange (24:44.658)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (24:48.441)
Both of my cars got seized or impounded. I lost, I didn't have anywhere to live. I was walking the streets. The only thing that I didn't lose was my drug connection. But...

But...

I lost.

all respect, even from the drug community. Like I became, I became worthless and, and that all came to a crashing end. One night I was walking the street and I had, all I had was dope and I had been out on the street for days. I had been up for days. I ain't had a shower or change of clothes in days. It was bad. I stunk and.

Chuck LaFLange (25:17.458)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (25:42.393)
But I had drugs, you know, so I went to a guy's house that I had been friends with for a long time, even from before my addiction. I knocked on his door and I was, and he was a user too, a bad user. And I went to his house specifically because I know if I give him some dough, he's going to let me get a shower, you know, and he didn't.

He opened the door and I was like, man, look, I got this here. Just let me get a shower and clean up, change clothes and I'll be out of here. And he's like, nah, bro, you can't come in, man. You smell too bad and you, you know, I just, I had become worthless. And when he closed that door and I walked away from there, that was it for me. That was the end. I said, man, that this is over with. I got to get help because I don't have nothing left. And...

I walked from his house about a mile up the road to where our Coliseum is here. And I went down and run there behind it and I sat down on a big pile of rocks where they were doing construction. And I called my mom and I said, mom, I need help. I said, I can't live like this anymore. I said, it's going to kill me. And she said, well, she said, I'm not coming over there, but I'll send somebody to help you. And she sent.

someone who's a friend of our family for a long time. He picked me up and he prayed with me and he said, look, I'm not even bringing you to your mom and dad's. I'm going to bring you out of town to a preacher friend that we knew, a mutual friend. He said, I've already called him. He's going to let you go down there and stay as long as you need to stay until you get sober. And that's what I did. He brought me down to South Louisiana and I moved into the preacher's spare bedroom.

I worked around his church, keeping the church clean and mowing the grass and stuff like that. And I just spent a few months down there getting sober or staying sober. I was sober by the time I left Alexandria, but I spent a few months down there and then I came back to Alexandria clean and sober and I just didn't go back. I didn't go back to the people, the life or nothing. I got me a job and man, it wasn't...

Brandon Chatagnier (27:56.857)
It wasn't long. I met another girl and that was another just catastrophe waiting to happen. I wasn't ready in any kind of way, but I met this girl. I asked her out on a date. She was like, yeah, let's go out. I picked her up that night. The first night we went out, I picked her up. We went to eat and we were supposed to go to eat and go to a club. And then we were going to get a hotel room.

Well, we went and ate and we went to the hotel room to check in first. And then we were gonna go to the club and wound up sleeping with her before we ever even went to the club and got her pregnant. The first night we were together, the first date we ever went on. And so I just, I had, I bit the bullet and I was like, you know, I'm gonna do the right thing and I'll marry you and whatever. And so.

Chuck LaFLange (28:38.418)
dear. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (28:54.393)
that started my second marriage and that.

Brandon Chatagnier (29:02.713)
That was, that introduced two more kids into my life and two more daughters, I have five daughters. That introduced two more daughters into my life and there was a period of time, maybe, maybe two years where everything was okay. Not even gonna say it was great.

Chuck LaFLange (29:12.658)
Holy...

Brandon Chatagnier (29:30.425)
It was just okay considering the circumstances, considering that I had come out of addiction. I had met a girl, got her pregnant, married her all of a sudden. It was going okay. I got a job in the oil field. I was working offshore. I was making good money. We had a place to live, had nice vehicles and stuff was going good. And that went on for a couple of years. And then the bottom.

fell out of the oil, you know, the oil industry and, and 30 ,000 people across the Gulf of Mexico got laid off and I was one of them. And I came, I, you know, I came back home and I could not find any work. I couldn't, well, I mean, I could find work, but not making $90 ,000 working six months a year. I mean, I was just, I had been making too much money and.

Chuck LaFLange (30:04.85)
Okay. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (30:13.682)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (30:29.181)
I came back here and none of those skills translated into anything local. I couldn't use the oil and gas skills on land anywhere and I couldn't make the right kind of money. So things started getting really tough financially. And at that, and sometime around that same period of time, the woman that I was with decided that she wanted to be.

seeing other people and she had an addiction problem as well, pills at the time. I wasn't using or anything. I had gotten hurt in the oil field and I was on pain management taking opiates, but even with the opiates that I was taking, the Lortabs, they were giving me 120 a month and even probably 75 % of those I was giving to my wife. I've never been an opiate person. I just...

Chuck LaFLange (31:22.93)
Yeah, me neither. Yeah, yeah, I am.

Brandon Chatagnier (31:23.9)
I mean, if I have to have them for pain, then I'll take them, but there's not nothing that anybody ever has to worry about me being addicted to. I just wasn't, I was a speed freak. And, but anyway, I stayed sober all that time. And, and, but between what I was going through with my wife and the fact that I got laid off offshore and I couldn't find money, I'm starting to lose things. They, they wanting to repo my truck. I didn't have my camper repoed. You know, just everything's going south and.

And I just, I can't blame anybody. I cannot blame anybody for my second round with addiction because that perfect, that new perfect storm that was creating and brewing in my life at the time led me to the living room one night with my second wife and sitting down and making the conscious decision.

Talking about it, discussing it, going over all the factors, basically giving her what I called at the time Meth 101. Telling her everything there was that you could possibly know about meth, how it works, how it makes you feel, how to sell it, who to sell it. Just everything you could possibly know about meth, I told her about and sat there in that living room in my own freaking ignorance and made the conscious decision, this is how I'm gonna get us out of a bind.

I know somebody I can go to right now and they'll front me some dope and I'll just hit it real hard and go find some of my old people and hustle and I'll get it and make some money. And she was like, okay, let's try it. Well, but I made up my mind then and there. I said, I'm only gonna deal it. I'm not gonna use any. I'm only gonna sell it and this is gonna be to make money. And I really did good sticking with that for, till like the next morning.

Chuck LaFLange (33:01.138)
Hustle hustle. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (33:23.135)
And then and then that changed but I did good for 12 hours. I'm no But Anyway, that just it started right back to I just fell right back in I mean I probably Probably 75 % of the people who I had been messing with before they were all still using so I just I just jumped back in there started selling all them and

Chuck LaFLange (33:23.474)
Hahahaha

Chuck LaFLange (33:29.938)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (33:34.066)
yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (33:47.922)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (33:51.166)
and took right back off. Well, adding that to a marriage that already wasn't, it was just.

It was, it was just a marriage. You know, I married her because she was pregnant and it never was anything where there was any kind of major being in love and it was never right. It was never good. It was just okay. And so we added that to it and that just, it started a downward spiral and, and it wasn't long till we were separated. She took off with one of the dudes I was messing with and it just that, that.

That whole thing crashed and and when that second marriage failed even though I was already using again and back in addiction and and dealing again when that second marriage failed it

It devastated me again, but not the same way as my first wife. My first wife was young love. And this second one was more of a devastation to me because I felt like a failure. Because I felt like I had failed at making something work. Because remember, I went into this saying, I'm gonna do the right thing and be a dad. And I'm gonna step up.

Well, now when this fell apart, I felt like a failure. I felt like I had failed and I got these two young kids. One of them is.

Brandon Chatagnier (35:31.135)
I don't remember, I don't remember their ages at the time, but I got these two young kids and I just felt like I had failed. And not only had I failed at keeping a marriage together and being a dad, but the way it fell apart by her leaving me for somebody else in the drug game. And when she leaves me, she goes to sell and dope with somebody else. And I felt like I failed as the man in the dope game too.

couldn't even keep my girl or you know and it just I just felt like a failure and so and so that kind of pushed me over the edge and I remember at that time like I said I was already using again and dealing again but when that happened I remember saying you know what screw it I'm going all in I'm going all in I'm gonna go as hard as I can as long as I can with as much dope as I can get as big as I can

Chuck LaFLange (36:01.33)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (36:09.969)
Mm -hmm.

Chuck LaFLange (36:21.234)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (36:28.255)
until it all comes crashing down. And that's what I did. I just dove into it. And I wound up around, I'll tell you one more story, because I don't like to glorify it, but I wound up with me and a buddy and the two girls that we were, I guess, sleeping with at the time, got a hotel room one night and we're sitting in the hotel room.

Chuck LaFLange (36:32.978)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (36:56.351)
at probably two o 'clock in the morning, boom, boom, boom, boom, banging on the door. Man, scared us, jumped up, looked through the hole, and it was another fella that we knew. And so I opened up the door, and the other guy, he's like, hey man, hey, I need to borrow one of y 'all's car. And, or, it was my buddy's car, I had lost mine at the time, but he was like, yeah, he said, I need to borrow your car, man. I just seen somebody go across the highway and stash something off in the woods, I wanna go over there and see what it is.

So we were like, okay, so he takes the car, he leaves, we shut the door and everything. And man, eight or 10 minutes goes by, boom, boom, boom, a knock on the door. We run back over there and he comes in the hotel room and he's got a box and he's got something long wrapped up in a blanket. And he throws it on the bed and he rolls the blanket out and it's a brand new police issue, Benelli shotgun. And the box,

Chuck LaFLange (37:26.354)
Ha ha ha.

Chuck LaFLange (37:43.89)
Brandon Chatagnier (37:53.312)
is a cardboard box and he opens it up and inside of it's a fireproof safe. And we go out to the car and we get crowbars and we pry in and break open that safe and the safe has a kilo of meth in it, 2 .2 pounds of meth in it. Charged that long, I kid you not. Huge Mexican dope. And I said, man, when he, the Benelli didn't shock me. When he opened that box up, I said, dude, you just got us killed. Nobody is going to come up short a kilo of meth in this area.

and not be looking for somebody to kill. I said, so you can scratch leaving here with this. I said, I'm taking this and I took out about like that handful of it. I want to say I took out about 15 ounces, nearly a pound. And the guy who I was in the room with, he done the same thing and grabbed him a whole pile of it. And then the third fella, he took the rest and left.

Chuck LaFLange (38:29.074)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (38:48.864)
And I said, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're splitting up. We're not saying nobody's name. You go one, I'm going somewhere. Hide out. We're going to lay low. We're disappearing. And so I came back to town. I picked up a different girl. I went and got a hotel room. I had her get it in her name. It's out in a different town. And I go up in a hotel room. We locked ourselves in and barricaded the door, you know? And man, I don't think eight hours went by and my phone rang.

from one of the other guys and I answered it and he's on the phone freaking out man. He's like, dude, you gotta come help us, man. You gotta come help us. They got us zip tied. They got us in the bathtub. They're gonna kill us, man. And so I was like, I said, okay, man, where are y 'all at? And he told me what hotel and what room and just, I was all, even in my addiction, even at my worst.

Chuck LaFLange (39:29.074)
no...

Brandon Chatagnier (39:48.032)
I was always a person who was gonna try to do the right thing. I just, that's just how, especially with the people with the dope. And so I did, I took everything that I had, that I had taken out of that box and I packed it up. I drove over, I got somebody to bring me to that hotel room and I told them, drop me off in case this goes bad, y 'all leave. And they dropped me off and I walked up to that hotel room with it all on me and I knocked on that door, not knowing what I was fixing to walk into. And,

Chuck LaFLange (39:57.586)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (40:18.016)
The person that opened the door was somebody that I had sold dope with 10 years earlier when I was selling dope for that big dude way back then. And he opened the door and he goes, Brandon, what's the deal, bro? I didn't know you had anything to do with this. I said, I don't. I said, but here's what y 'all, here's what I took of what y 'all had. And so they brought me in the hotel room and they were cool with me. They said, man, we just admire the fact that you showed back up over here with our drugs, man.

Chuck LaFLange (40:42.514)
Oof.

Brandon Chatagnier (40:46.912)
And I said, hey bro, that's the kind of person I am. They don't belong to me. And so I said, there it is. And they said, well, here's the deal. These other two knuckleheads, they had found both of them and they were miles away from there. They had found both of them. And, but when they found them, they didn't have the dope. And they told me, they said, look, man, this, this dope was funded to us by cartel. We got that. We had to pay this amount of money in seven days or somebody's dying.

They said, we need this dope back. And I said, well, I said, if you'll take the little one that's in there that y 'all got, they had them zip tied in a bathtub with plastic on the floor. And I said, if you'll give me that little dude that's in there because he owns the car. So I'll have a driver. I'll go find your dope. And they said, all right. So they let him loose. They gave him, we went outside, jumped in a car and we took off and it probably wasn't five or six hours. I came back to that hotel room.

with every bit of that dope except for about two ounces of a kilo. And they were like, man, that's straight. And I said, not only is here's your drugs back, I said, but if you'll front that to me an ounce at a time, I'll sell all of it for you so you have your money and whatever. And I did that in about two days. I sold every bit of it until I got busted.

Chuck LaFLange (42:03.89)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (42:12.402)
shitty.

Brandon Chatagnier (42:16.515)
And that is, and I had, I can't show you, but I had, I sold all of it and I had 68 grams left. And I was sitting in somebody's house and the US Marshals Violent Offender Task Force showed up and they came and banged on the door and I went and answered the door and they said, you know, wait, no, I got my timing off.

Anyway, I got busted with 68 grams of dope and they wanted to charge me with...

possession, distribution, trafficking, manufacturing, and paraphernalia. And that was where everything came to a screeching halt. I said I got my timing mixed up because that was later on down the road. That wasn't from that dope. I sold all of that dope. As a matter of fact, I sold all of that and that was the perfect storm that I was telling you about. I sold all of that and when the guy went to re -up, he said, look, I...

Chuck LaFLange (43:05.234)
Holy.

Brandon Chatagnier (43:28.708)
I got him all his money in about five days. He had a couple of days to spare and he was like, look, I gotta go re -up, man. And he said, but if you'll hang tight when I come back, we can do this again. And I told him, I said, look, man, you seen how fast I moved that? I said, you and I are obviously at the same level. I'm not gonna do anything but get on your nerves.

With you have to provide for me and what you would normally get rid of I said So why don't you just introduce me to the people let that be how you pay me back? For getting rid of this and being you know Staying straight with you and so he introduced me to him and it was a that was a scary experience in itself I basically sold my soul to the devil that day when I sat down with him and they pointed out to me all the ways that they could make my life and my family pay if I didn't come back with their drugs and I

And but it, I didn't care, you know, I was sold out to it and, and, and that led to, it wasn't very long after that, that I got busted and, and it all, it all came just to a screeching halt. They, they wanted to charge me with possession, distribution, manufacturing, trafficking, and paraphernalia. And I sat in jail for 80 something days, begging.

Chuck LaFLange (44:21.17)
yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (44:24.85)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (44:49.447)
my family to help me because that was going to be a lot of time. But it was fortunately it was my first felony. It was going to be my first conviction. Well.

Chuck LaFLange (44:53.458)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (45:00.934)
I had a DA that, that, I guess he saw something in me and he said, I'll tell you what he said, if you'll go, if you'll go to a year long rehab and you complete it and you stay clean, then I'll table these charges and provided that you stay clean and you, and you complete it, we'll make them go away. And I said, you got it. And that's that, that started the path that I'm on today.

Chuck LaFLange (45:19.186)
Wow.

Chuck LaFLange (45:23.802)
Wow.

Chuck LaFLange (45:30.706)
Okay, okay, well let's talk about that path, right? So 70 years ago you get clean, 12 step in it, I assume if you're in a rehab usually that's what it's about.

Brandon Chatagnier (45:31.334)
seven years ago.

Brandon Chatagnier (45:39.942)
Well, I know, no, this was a, this was a Baptist faith based rehab up in North Louisiana. And it was, it was a really, really, really harsh experience. The, the, it was in an old school that had been closed down for many years. And this guy had taken it and turned it into, he called it a freedom mission.

Chuck LaFLange (45:46.194)
Okay.

Brandon Chatagnier (46:07.432)
and there was about 80 of us in there. He had converted the classroom into dorm rooms and we were piled in it. They didn't have bunk beds, but at the same time they had a twin bed with an egg carton or milk carton and another twin bed and a milk crate and another twin bed and a milk crate. I mean, if you rolled over at night and you held your arm out, you were gonna lay it on somebody else. I mean, it was no air conditioning, no heat.

Chuck LaFLange (46:23.218)
Yeah. Milk crate. Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (46:33.842)
Ha ha ha.

Brandon Chatagnier (46:36.487)
No hot water. It was so harsh. And the guy who ran it had to be one of the meanest old pricks that I think I ever come across in my life. Every time he spoke to you, he talked down to you. We had to work every day. We didn't get paid. I mean, it was just, it was a miserable experience. But...

Chuck LaFLange (46:41.746)
No kidding.

Brandon Chatagnier (47:03.495)
When I went into that place, I went into that place with my mind made up that come what may, I'm going to get whatever God has for me out of this experience. And I'm going to try to take every single thing that happens to me while I'm here, I'm going to try to find or figure out what it is about my life that this treatment is going to help me with. And so having that attitude,

made it all made it different, you know, it made it all different. Every time I got talked down to, I applied that to my life. And later on in life, after I was gone, gone from there, I look back on those times when I'm dealing with people in life today, someone talks down at me, I think to myself, hey, I'm strong and I can handle that because of what I went through back then, because I put in the work and I had to add the right attitude. So,

Chuck LaFLange (47:56.722)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (48:01.449)
Because of that experience, it was a very, very, very humbling experience. And because of that, it taught me over a year's time just how much I could do without, just how much I could live without, just how bad it could possibly be. So that whenever I got out to the free world, I wasn't constantly being let down.

You know, one of the biggest problems that the mainstream recovery industry has today is that they create this idea of recovery of our sobriety, that it is going to give you this better life and everything's going to be better and everything's going to be humpy -dory and people are going to help you and everybody's going to love you because you're sober. And boy, have you got a rude awakening if you go into it believing that. And we wonder why there's so much...

Chuck LaFLange (48:28.626)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (48:52.558)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (48:56.969)
There's so much relapse and it's because people go into it thinking that. They go into it with a chip on their shoulder. And I don't take away from the fact that overcoming addiction or at least putting the drugs down might have been the hardest thing you ever did in your life. But one of the things that I teach my guys all the time, and I hope I'm not getting off track with you, but one of the things that I teach my guys all the time is,

Chuck LaFLange (49:14.738)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (49:20.786)
No, no, no, no, continue. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (49:26.441)
Lord, I just got myself off track. Completely lost my frame of thought. but thinking everything's gonna be perfect, you know, and thinking everything's gonna be hunky dory, and I realized that while laying the drugs down may be the hardest thing that you've ever overcome in your life, it does not make you special.

Chuck LaFLange (49:31.826)
Ha ha ha ha ha!

I do that to myself all the time. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (49:52.018)
No. No. No.

Brandon Chatagnier (49:53.001)
It makes you no more special than any 10 year old kid out there, because they wake up sober every morning too. All it does is make you normal. And you're not even quite normal yet, because you ain't got a job yet, you still ain't got a place to live, you still don't have anything back that you lost in your addiction, all you are is sober. You're no better, you're no more special than any homeless sober person. I mean, you know what I'm saying?

Chuck LaFLange (50:00.946)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (50:20.146)
Yeah, absolutely I do. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (50:22.027)
I don't want to take anything away from the fact that you've overcome this hard challenge of giving up drugs, but at the same time, you're not special. And if you'll get that out of your mind and quit thinking that everybody owes you something or that everybody's got to treat you special or that, you know, we've created this idea. I don't know, we're pumping out really soft people in recovery. And I'm disappointed with that, you know?

I don't, I don't, I have to be very careful with how I say this. I am, I believe in the 12 steps. No argument. I believe in them 100%. I believe, and let me tell you real quick why I believe in them. I never one time cracked open the big book and read the 12 steps, ever. Never read them, never worked with a sponsor. I never did any of that stuff.

But I went through that year -long rehab, I learned how to cope, I learned the things that I needed to do in life to get myself back on track and to recover my life. And when I came back home, I spent my first year applying those things that I had learned to my life. And I spent my first year truly seeking God, truly committed to being sober, and truly committed to recovering everything I had lost in my addiction. And...

About a year after being home, my wife and I met Nicole after all of this. We met several months after I got home, but a year into, would have been two years into my sobriety, but a year after I got home from rehab, I'm sitting in a meeting one night. I was going to AA meetings. I'm sitting in a meeting one night and I opened the big book for the first time. Cause I was just going to the meetings to go, just cause I didn't have nothing else to do.

But I opened the big book for the first time and I read those 12 steps. Two years into my sobriety, I read them for the first time. And when I read them, it was like a light turned on and I said, man, I have done every single one of these things on these 12 steps, naturally, on my own, without even knowing it, simply because I was truly committed to recovery. I was truly committed to doing what God wanted me to do in my life.

Chuck LaFLange (52:37.81)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (52:50.187)
and I was truly committed to staying sober. You can't do those three things without working those steps. Because God is gonna lead you to make amends. God's gonna lead you to apologize. He's gonna lead you to do an inventory of your life. When you're truly submitted to God, He's gonna lead you down that same road. So I believe 100 % in the 12 steps. But at the same time, as far as I'm concerned, you can throw the rest of the big book away.

Chuck LaFLange (52:55.73)
Fair enough. Yep.

Brandon Chatagnier (53:18.923)
Just give me the 12 steps. Because I feel like while I was in rehab, I had a couple of moments, and we're about to run out of time, man, but I'll tell you about them real quick. One of the moments while I was in rehab early on, I had gone to God personally.

Chuck LaFLange (53:19.25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (53:32.882)
Please do. Yeah. Yeah, we can go over. That's fine. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (53:45.709)
on a personal went and found me a private place and I got on my knees and I prayed and I you know I told God that I was sorry for how I lived and I asked for forgiveness and I recommitted myself to live for Him and I was praying every day but I was so bound by guilt so bound by guilt that I could not focus on anything I had I couldn't read my Bible

without the memories and the thoughts from my addiction plaguing me. Just a memory of some girl or some night or some this and that. I just couldn't and I was begging God, God please, please take this away from me. Please take this away from me. And one day I feel like he spoke to me as, I mean I've never felt more sure about anything in my life. But he said, open, get a notebook and start writing.

and write every single thing you can remember from the first time you used drugs to today. Everything you can remember, don't care how long it takes, just get it out and start writing. And I did that. I took out a notebook and I started writing and I wrote for days. Man, I sat and wrote every story, every memory, everything that I went through. I wrote it all down on paper. And when I closed that notebook, I never had those memories again. God took them from me like that.

I never was distracted by the thoughts or the memories. It was gone. And that in itself was amazing for me. I put that notebook in my locker at that rehab, but I was still dealing with the guilt and the shame because I didn't tell you about this. I didn't tell you much about my younger childhood, but when I was 13 years old, I was part, like I said, I grew up in a Christian home, God, fear and parents who went to church three times a week. But,

Chuck LaFLange (55:10.098)
Wow.

Brandon Chatagnier (55:40.493)
At 13 years old, I was in a prayer meeting one morning early before daylight and I was praying and I felt a call of God on my life and I didn't know how to handle it at that time. A few days later, I had a woman that was used by God. She came to me and she said, I'm here to tell you that God has called you. And she confirmed that calling. And...

It scared me to death because back then as a kid, we just thought that if God, if you were called, that meant you had to be a preacher. You had to be a pastor. That's what I thought it meant. And that scared me to death because I was scared to talk in front of people. I couldn't talk in front of crowds. I mean, yeah. So I ran from it. I ran. Yeah. So I ran from it and I never revisited that again.

Chuck LaFLange (56:17.682)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (56:24.498)
It's kind of hard to imagine a version of you that doesn't like to talk.

Brandon Chatagnier (56:36.845)
until I was in rehab. And after God removed all that burden from me, I started feeling this tremendous guilt for running from God for all those years. And the guilt was just killing me. And I was praying and I was asking God every day, please God forgive me, please forgive me. You know, I felt so bad. And again, the second time, like he spoke to me again, and he said, I didn't call you at 13.

Chuck LaFLange (56:37.586)
Yep. Yep.

Brandon Chatagnier (57:06.799)
to do something when you were 13. I called you at 13 to do what you're about to do, but I've had to prepare you for it. And at that moment in time, I knew that God wanted me to leave that rehab and go do something for him to help others recover their lives from addiction. So that's what I've done for the last five and a half years now. But,

I was saying all that as far as what I think about AA. I'm not big on AA, but I do believe in the 12 steps. And the reason that I feel that way is because I feel like what I went through, God kept me through. And God kept his hand on my life all the way through my addiction. And he allowed me to live through it, experience it, and come out of it.

to serve a purpose for him. And I feel like what I'm doing now is a ministry that he's called me to. And while I believe that anybody out there that feels like they need to help addicts or work with addicts, and it is just something that they want to do because they love them or because that's what they want to do as a job or career, whatever it is in the secular industry, go for it.

Chuck LaFLange (58:14.738)
OK.

Brandon Chatagnier (58:33.968)
If you, the AA, the big book, whatever you gotta use, whatever kind of secular path you wanna take, that's fine. And I'm not gonna, I don't trash anybody for that. But if you feel like you were called by God to minister in the aspect of recovery, then leaving the word of God, in my opinion, is just wrong. I don't need anything other than the Bible.

And I can point you to the 12 steps in the Bible. I don't need another book. That book has sufficed for 2 ,000 years. I don't need another one. So that's the only reason why I stay away from the big book. I don't tell people not to read it. I don't tell people not to work steps. I don't bash people who do that. But here's the problem that I see with so many people. They, for them,

Chuck LaFLange (59:05.778)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (59:32.719)
that particular path becomes their religion. It becomes their indoctrinated into it. They will quote that book. They will memorize it. They learn everything out of it. And they sit there and they read it. Let me tell you, and the way I feel about it is, if you have that book and you have the word of God, and you surrender your life to the word of God the same way you are that book, I...

I promise you the results are going to be even greater.

Chuck LaFLange (01:00:04.53)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:00:05.839)
I believe that. That's just what I believe. The truth of the matter is, if you surrender and you submit everything about yourself to the things that are in the pages of the big book, absolutely, you're gonna stay sober, you're gonna do good, you're gonna stay on that path of recovery.

But you're doing it of your own power and of your own ability to follow what's in that. With the Word of God, if you surrender to it and you submit to it the same way, you're doing it with your power and with the power that comes from it. Because there's a power in those pages. There's a power in those words. And that's about two years ago.

Chuck LaFLange (01:00:53.97)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:00:59.249)
in our recovery program, I came up with a concept that I've been teaching my guys and I'd love to share it with you right now. And it is called, it's called removing the ifs. And whenever an addict, whenever an addict first decides I'm going to get sober, I want to get sober and I want to leave this life behind me, they are told and then also on their own.

Chuck LaFLange (01:01:07.282)
please do. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:01:11.154)
Okay.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:01:29.489)
They come up with a list that you could write down of all the ifs that they need to stay sober. If I go to 90 meetings in 90 days, if I always talk to a sponsor, if I always work the steps, if I go to church, if my kids accept me back in their life, if my parents accept me back, if I have a job, if I have, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, I'll stay sober. And I, myself personally, I had to go down a path.

where I went down that list and everything on that list is important, especially early on in recovery. Those things have to be done. But until I was able to remove each one of those ifs, my sobriety was owned by each one of those ifs. If my kids bailed on me, I would have went and got high. If I quit going to church, I would have went and got high. If I quit going to meetings, I would have went and got high.

Chuck LaFLange (01:02:06.098)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:02:17.17)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:02:25.811)
So I had to remove each one of those ifs until I got to the point where I said, I will stay sober, period. No ifs, no ifs. I'm gonna stay sober whether I go to meetings or not, whether I go to a church or not, whether I, that's whenever you own it. That's when you own your sobriety. Nobody, and listen, I've had so much pushback from that because the recovery industry don't want you to rely on yourself.

Chuck LaFLange (01:02:33.33)
Yeah, standalone statement, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:02:54.45)
They want you to rely on them, on keep coming back, on whatever. And I believe, like I said, that that stuff is important, but there is a point where you can be free. There is a point where you can walk away from recovery and never look back. Because the way I feel about this is, and I know people will argue about this, but the way I feel about it is like this.

Chuck LaFLange (01:03:09.458)
Yes.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:03:16.85)
As long as you are still working recovery or revisiting anything about your addiction, you're still in that addiction. You're just sober. But you're still living that addiction. You're still talking about it every day. You're still thinking about it every day. You're still dealing with that addiction. I firmly believe that there was a point in time where I walked away from recovery completely for myself.

Chuck LaFLange (01:03:28.146)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:03:45.618)
my recovery, completely walked away from it, closed that chapter in my life. Recovery was a step and I moved on. And from that day forward to today and through my future, if I ever pick up and start using again and become an addict again, it'll be a whole different addiction than my last one. It ain't because I'm still an addict right now. And it was just sitting there waiting to come back.

You know, that's just how I feel. That's how I have to live. I had to, I even talked to God, man, and some people think that this is a little bit edgy, but I told God, I said, God, with or without you, I'm staying sober. And the reason why I said that was because I read the book of Job. I know that there's a possible day in my future that I may not be able to find God. I may not feel God, and in that day, I'm still committed to staying sober. I made up my mind that I might rob banks, kill people,

Chuck LaFLange (01:04:16.146)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:04:28.146)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:04:38.002)
good stuff.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:04:41.362)
There ain't no telling what I'll do. I might curse God and die, but when I get to hell, I'll be sober. So that's me in a nutshell, man. I know we've gone over a little bit, but you got...

Chuck LaFLange (01:04:46.202)
Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:04:53.042)
That's okay. That's okay. Hey, listen, listen, I know you've got a book. Let's talk about that. What's what's what's the book called? What's where can people get it? And of course, we'll put it in the in the thing. But my crystal romance. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:04:57.49)
Mm -hmm.

I got it.

My crystal romance. Yep. That's, you see that's me on the front right there. I got the formula for meth tattooed on my back. I was really in it. But you can get it on Amazon.

Chuck LaFLange (01:05:13.202)
geez.

Chuck LaFLange (01:05:20.018)
Yep. Yep.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:05:22.706)
I, Nicole and I are both. Yeah. She has it on her snip feed and we're working on getting a website up and going, but you can get it right now on Amazon. and that it tells all the details of everything we just talked about up to the day that I basically up to a little bit after I got out of rehab, when we started our first program.

Chuck LaFLange (01:05:23.058)
Of course, we'll have that on the page too. So yeah, the link, yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:05:32.818)
Great, great, great.

Chuck LaFLange (01:05:42.45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great, great. And of course you also have your recovery house or your sober living, I guess it is, right? Right.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:05:52.306)
Yes, five years ago, I walked away from my job. I went to my boss and I said, look, I'm going to do what I think God wants me to do. And I, when I tell you that I could not have married a more perfect person for myself, for my life, for my recovery, for everything, Nicole has been my rock from day one.

Chuck LaFLange (01:06:18.482)
Yeah, I love that.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:06:19.666)
And when I went to her, I mean, she could, look, we were both ex -addicts. We were both trying to rebuild our lives. We were both starting out. She had, you know, she's told you the issues that she's had about her kids and different things. And just, there was so much going on in our lives at the time. The last thing I needed to do was quit a full -time job and decide that I'm going to go work with a bunch of junkies. But I went to her and I said, look, this is what I think God wants me to do. And I need to do it.

Chuck LaFLange (01:06:42.77)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:06:48.306)
And she's been behind me ever since, man. And we started our first program. I bought my first sober living house five years ago. And I grew that to, I was open in my fourth house when COVID hit. And I had 30 some odd men in our houses and COVID hit and it just, man.

Chuck LaFLange (01:06:51.186)
It's amazing.

Chuck LaFLange (01:07:08.626)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:07:17.746)
Addicts ran with it. They used that as an excuse to quit their jobs to relapse to whatever and it just everything kind of tanked So I said, you know what? I would rather I would rather go back down to having one house and really be able to focus on spending the time with these ten men Then to have all these guys that I can't spend time with so we did that I dialed it back to one home and

Chuck LaFLange (01:07:20.562)
Yeah, they did.

yeah.

Yep.

Chuck LaFLange (01:07:38.738)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:07:45.97)
And we did that. I also own a lawn and landscaping service that I use to support the guys in our program and give them an outlet to work. And that's what I do full time, work with attics and mow grass. Our new program is a is Revye Recovery Center. We have a Facebook page, but it is a we, we named it Revye as that's a redeemed and victorious.

Chuck LaFLange (01:07:59.73)
That's awesome, man. That's awesome.

Chuck LaFLange (01:08:12.402)
Mm -hmm.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:08:15.762)
Nicole's Nicole victorious and my first email address when I got out of rehab was be redeemed 75. So I've gone with the redemption path ever since I started and she's gone with the victorious. So we combined them to make Revive and that's our that's our new program and it's a it's a it is a program where we where we do our best to recover people's lives and recover people's lawns.

Chuck LaFLange (01:08:29.49)
Love it. I love it. Love it. Yeah.

Chuck LaFLange (01:08:45.49)
Grown. Love it. I love it. I love it. So listen, you know, we are we are over the hour mark now. So why don't we do what's my favorite part of the show? And that's the daily gratitude. So what you got for us that you're grateful for today, Brandon?

Brandon Chatagnier (01:08:50.226)
Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:09:03.314)
Yep. Man, I am grateful for, first of all, I'm grateful for my wife that has stuck with me and that has helped me and has motivated me every day to keep going. And I'm grateful that God has allowed me to understand and to see Him as He truly is, because my misconceptions of God as I was raised,

really were hindering me. And by me being at him to show himself to me as he is, I'm very grateful of that because it has allowed me to know and realize what I'm accountable for and what he's accountable for. And we would be really surprised to learn how much more of it is on us than is on him.

Chuck LaFLange (01:09:53.394)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:09:55.058)
You know, we want to blame the devil for so much and the truth of the matter is the devil ain't got nothing to do with a lot of it. You know, I see people all the time saying, God, please, God, please make me sober. God, please help me get sober or sometimes even, and I understand the idea behind it, but they'll say, thank God for one more day sober. Well, the truth of the matter is if God could ever make you sober, you'd have never been high in the first place. It ain't up to him. You got free will. Take accountability for it.

Chuck LaFLange (01:10:21.426)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:10:25.074)
And that's what he's allowed me to see is I'm responsible for that. And then give him praise and him worship for carrying me through another day. That's what I'm most grateful for, my wife and my God.

Chuck LaFLange (01:10:34.226)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. I love it.

Awesome. That's awesome. Myself, I'm grateful for another awesome conversation. You've got a vibe and energy about you. I love it, man. I love it. All hope and no dope, right? I'm also grateful to every single person who continues to like, comment, share, support, listen, talk about the show, the platform. We're growing really, really fast. Of course, hit that subscribe button down at the bottom. You know, do all those things. Because every time you do these things, get me a little bit closer to living my best life. My best life is to continue making unbelievable things, spreading the message.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:10:46.174)
Yeah.

Yep.

Chuck LaFLange (01:11:08.498)
The message is this, if you're in active addiction right now, today could be the day, today could be the day that you start that lifelong journey. Reach out to a friend, reach out to a family member, call them to detox, go to a meeting, pray, go to church, I don't care. Do whatever it is you've got to do to get that journey started, because it is so much better than the alternative. And if you have a loved one who's suffering an addiction right now, just taking 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.

Brandon Chatagnier (01:11:36.786)
You are loved.

Chuck LaFLange (01:11:38.386)
A little glimmer of hope just might be the thing that brings them back.

Boom, done.