Don't Do Nothing

[00:00:00] Aaron: Alright guys. Today I have Darren Tesi tore a Boston born Italian American, who is the leader of Drug Educators Alliance, which has educated more than 25,000 educators on how to be the beacon of freedom to teach people the truth about drugs. He’s been doing it for more than 20 years, educating tens of millions of people about the dangers and craziness that drugs can bring to your life.

[00:00:25] Aaron: Guys, welcome Darren Te Tore. 

[00:00:26] Darren: Thank you everyone. Thank you. I’ll give you a minute. 

[00:00:30] Brad: Applause. The applause is going in the background. 

[00:00:33] Darren: I didn’t hear it. We, by the way, you’re still a crowd here, 

[00:00:36] Aaron: so, so like tens of millions of people have been reached with this message. Like, how, how do you, like, how does that occur?

[00:00:44] Aaron: Or like, how do you even know that that happened? Basically is my, is my my first question. Right? 

[00:00:48] Darren: It’s a really good question. It’s a lot of talking. 

[00:00:50] Aaron: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

[00:00:51] Darren: Is really what it is. And constantly and never stopping to communicate. It’s really what it comes down to. You know, I, I, I had. When I first realized that [00:01:00] I needed to do something about drugs on this planet, I decided I was going to go talk to kids.

[00:01:05] Darren: So I went to a school and I talked to the superintendent. These are the guys that run the school district. I said, Hey, I wanna talk to the kids about drugs. And he’s like, that’s great. Let me go get it approved by the board. So then I go to the Board of Education, it’s like six months later. 

[00:01:18] Aaron: Wow. 

[00:01:19] Darren: And I go to the Board of Education and then we talk to the board and like, well, you know, the, the Department of Education hasn’t really approved this, so we have to get them to approve it 

[00:01:28] Aaron: just to, to give us one talk at 

[00:01:30] Darren: once, just to talk to the kids.

[00:01:30] Darren: Right. Wow. Well, I wanted to educate the kids. I wanted to do a program, a drug education program. So then I go to the state Board of Education and I was like, Hey guys, I wanna do this in to this school and maybe the whole state. And they were like, well, you know, this is like another six months later. 

[00:01:44] Brad: Yeah.

[00:01:45] Darren: Like, well, if you get it approved by the Federal Department of Education, maybe we can talk to you. 

[00:01:49] Brad: Wow. 

[00:01:50] Darren: I’m like, what is happening here? Like, we have kids dying. 

[00:01:53] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:01:53] Darren: And I’m a year later, and you still haven’t let me say a word to these kids. Like they’re gone outta high school now and probably some of ’em are dead.[00:02:00] 

[00:02:00] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:02:00] Darren: right. So then I finally, a year later meet with the guy in charge of curriculum for the Department of Education for the United States. 

[00:02:06] Brad: Wow. 

[00:02:07] Darren: And I’m meeting with this guy and I’m talking about this program I got. And he’s like, this is awesome. I love it. He goes, but unfortunately we didn’t fund its creation, so we can’t approve it.

[00:02:15] Brad: What? 

[00:02:15] Darren: And I was like, okay, so this is, 

[00:02:17] Brad: wow. 

[00:02:18] Darren: This is a, can I swear? 

[00:02:21] Brad: Yes. 

[00:02:21] Darren: This is backward system. 

[00:02:23] Brad: We’ll believe it. 

[00:02:23] Darren: Right? Like, what is happening here? Like, how is this going to work? How are we gonna help these kids? So then, you know, I got into a couple schools, talked to a couple kids, and then I quickly realized like, well, if I wanna reach every kid 

[00:02:35] Brad: Yeah.

[00:02:37] Darren: I would have to do this about 90 hours a day for about a thousand years. 

[00:02:41] Brad: Yeah. Right. Yeah. 

[00:02:43] Darren: It’s not gonna work, right? Yeah. Yeah. So then I started backing up like, well, what if I teach the teacher? What if I find the people that talk to the kids about drugs and I make sure they know what to do and they know how to talk to kids?

[00:02:57] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:02:57] Darren: So I started doing that and I started looking at [00:03:00] who are these teachers? And I found health teachers. And at the time the health teachers were very regulated in their curriculum. They couldn’t change it. They had to follow the, the standard. And then I found this group called Driver Educators, and I was like, I remember driver ed in my driver ed class, they taught us about drugs and alcohol.

[00:03:19] Brad: Oh, wow. 

[00:03:20] Darren: And then I realized that all the different states had anywhere from two to nine hours of drug and alcohol education. 

[00:03:26] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:03:27] Darren: In their driver ed class. And if you looked at the standard curriculum that they were offered or told to do, it said talk about drugs and alcohol for this much time. 

[00:03:35] Aaron: Wow.

[00:03:36] Aaron: Interesting. 

[00:03:37] Darren: Wide open. So it’s this open book. Some of ’em were using different curriculums like AAA and other curriculums out there, but I said, this is it. So I, I called up this group called the Driving School Association of the Americas. It was a national, it is still is a national driver egg conference.

[00:03:52] Darren: I’m actually going there next week to their conference in California. 

[00:03:55] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:03:56] Darren: And I said, Hey, I’m Darren Tesori and I volunteer for this group called Drug Free World. And we have a [00:04:00] free drug education program. They’re like, wow, this sounds really cool. Do you wanna come speak at our conference? We just had a speaker drop out.

[00:04:07] Darren: And I was like, what? I’m like, yeah, when is it? Like next week in, in Austin, Texas. I’m like, okay. So there I am. I’m on my first flight to my first conference and now I’m on the stage of 400 driver ed leaders from around the country. 

[00:04:21] Brad: Wow. 

[00:04:21] Darren: Talking about drug free world. 

[00:04:23] Brad: Wow. 

[00:04:23] Darren: So that opened the door to every state and regional conference in the country.

[00:04:27] Darren: ’cause now I’m accredited by them to speak. 

[00:04:30] Brad: Wow. 

[00:04:31] Darren: Right. Theoretically. I mean, there’s no technical accreditation. Yeah. But if like, Hey, I spoke at this conference, you need, before I even say, do you need speakers? They’re like, can you come to mind? 

[00:04:39] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:04:39] Darren: Can you come to mind? And literally, when I’m on stage, I had like five people walk up to me.

[00:04:42] Darren: That was awesome. I have a conference. Can you come? I have a conference. Can you come? 

[00:04:46] Aaron: Mm-hmm. Wow. 

[00:04:46] Darren: And then it just started snowballing. And now and when? 

[00:04:49] Aaron: When was this? 

[00:04:50] Darren: This was in, um. So this is about 17 years ago. 

[00:04:54] Aaron: Okay. 

[00:04:54] Darren: Yeah. Whatever that is. Two. 

[00:04:56] Aaron: Wow. Two seven. 

[00:04:57] Darren: Yeah. Right around 2007, 2008. [00:05:00] So then I get on these stages and the next thing you know, I’m now the driver ed guy and I’m doing this drug education seminars for driver ed.

[00:05:08] Darren: You just to date, I think I’ve trained, um, I actually was looking at the number last night. It’s over 14,000 driver education teachers in the us. 

[00:05:14] Brad: Amazing. 

[00:05:15] Darren: Wow. And I’ve even so far, this is kind of funny. So I’m from Boston, I lived in Boston, then I moved to Florida and I got part of the Southeast Driver Association and I was actually elected their president.

[00:05:28] Darren: I served as their president elect for a year and then president for two years and then passed president for a year. So I was on their board for like five years. 

[00:05:36] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:05:37] Darren: Completely helped this group. When I got in there, there were cashflow negative, they had no money. Mm Oh wow. Did putting on these conferences and they were literally using the ticket money to pay the hotel.

[00:05:47] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:05:47] Darren: Right. It was like, this is wrong. Like you shouldn’t do that. You should have money. So I went and created a sponsor. What a 

[00:05:53] Aaron: concept. No, 

[00:05:54] Darren: I know, right? 

[00:05:54] Aaron: Right. Yeah, 

[00:05:55] Brad: exactly. 

[00:05:55] Darren: So I created a sponsorship program and I got groups that wanted to talk to this group of [00:06:00] people to sponsor the conference. 

[00:06:01] Brad: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:02] Darren: I’m like, look, you’re aaa. You need to gimme $5,000. 

[00:06:04] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:06:05] Darren: right. You wanna come, you need to be our number one sponsor. You’re the biggest driving place in the world. Yeah. Like you have billions of members, like you can gimme five grand. And they were like, okay. Like no, no nothing. 

[00:06:15] Yeah. 

[00:06:16] Darren: Yeah. I’m like, oh, well this is easy.

[00:06:17] Darren: So next thing you know, I had like 40 grand in the bank. I’m like, guys, we got money. They’re like, holy crap, we have money. What are we doing? I’m like, I’m like, we’re buying the hor d’oeuvres guys, is what we’re doing. We’re gonna have some good food, is what we’re doing. We’re gonna take care of our members.

[00:06:30] Darren: And it just became, now they have money, and this is like four years later. And last year I actually just got elected again as their president. They wanted me back. Oh, wow. Can you come back? Nice. 

[00:06:38] Aaron: This is a Southeastern Driver’s Education 

[00:06:41] Darren: Association. Okay. Yep. And then I’m also, I also helped create the Florida Driver Ed Association.

[00:06:46] Darren: Florida had no driver ed association, so I met a man who lives here in Tampa, his named Derek Stewart. Awesome guy. He works for Florida Online Learning, which is, um, basically a virtual online learning school for Florida, which I don’t know if you guys know this, but any kid in Florida can go take free middle high [00:07:00] school, elementary school online and get accredited.

[00:07:02] Darren: Yeah. 

[00:07:02] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:07:02] Darren: This is online learning program. 

[00:07:03] Aaron: Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. 

[00:07:05] Darren: Right. 

[00:07:05] Aaron: This is, you mean like full school? 

[00:07:07] Darren: Full school? Yeah. For Florida Online. Free for any Florida resident. 

[00:07:10] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:07:11] Darren: Uh uh. Okay. 

[00:07:12] Aaron: What’s it, what’s it called again? 

[00:07:13] Darren: Florida, online for Florida Virtual School. But 

[00:07:17] Aaron: is 

[00:07:17] Brad: this Florida? Is this by the government or is this by 

[00:07:18] Darren: or by the, uh, 

[00:07:19] Brad: by the, by the 

[00:07:20] Darren: state.

[00:07:20] Brad: State. 

[00:07:20] Darren: State Government. State funds it. 

[00:07:21] Brad: Okay. Florida’s probably the most progressive schooling, like school choice state that they’re, by progressive, I mean. Not less side progressive, I mean like forward, like actually free. Yes. Not freedom. There’s actual 

[00:07:31] Darren: freedom. Right. And you can go and you can take high school classes, you can get your degree.

[00:07:35] Darren: You can get your diploma. Diploma. Right. So you can get your high school diploma. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Online. 

[00:07:40] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:07:40] Darren: So Derek runs the, um, driver ed wing of that. Mm. He’s been in driver ed forever. So I got, I met Derek at the conference, said, Derek, we need to create a Florida con, uh, association and bring all these Florida guys together.

[00:07:51] Darren: So we did. And now we have the Florida Driver Red Association. So I’m on the board for that as well. 

[00:07:56] Aaron: Is that, and is that like a. What kind of entity is that? Is that [00:08:00] a, an LLCA nonprofit? 

[00:08:01] Darren: It’s a nonprofit. It’s a 5 0 1 C3. Basically what you do is you start it as a corporation, then you turn it into a nonprofit.

[00:08:07] Darren: Um, so it’s, it’s basically just a bunch of driver red guys that meet every month. And we coordinate strategy. We just got a law passed to make it mandatory for there to be driver education in Florida. 

[00:08:19] Brad: Oh, wow. 

[00:08:19] Darren: Because it was only the four hour online drug and alcohol course that you had to take, which if you look at that four hour online drug and alcohol course, it’s horrible.

[00:08:28] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:08:29] Darren: Um, and it’s not, the state didn’t make it, the state gave the guidelines for it, and then anyone can make it like, I can go make it. 

[00:08:35] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:08:36] Darren: I can make this course and then I can get it approved by the state. It’s a lot of work to do that. But you, 

[00:08:40] Aaron: is that like, you mean required like for high school for driving 

[00:08:42] Darren: or for what?

[00:08:43] Darren: Any new driver license, 

[00:08:44] Aaron: new 

[00:08:44] Darren: driver in Florida. 

[00:08:45] Aaron: Okay. 

[00:08:45] Darren: You have to do this four hour driver aid 

[00:08:47] Aaron: Okay. 

[00:08:47] Darren: Online course. And you, they give you a list of people you can buy it from. Mm-hmm. So, anyway, so I, I started. Looking into this, and that 

[00:08:53] Aaron: wasn’t required before. 

[00:08:54] Darren: That’s been required forever. 

[00:08:55] Aaron: Okay. Okay. 

[00:08:56] Darren: And now we’re, we’ve got it.

[00:08:57] Darren: So you have to do driver education. [00:09:00] Um, so the kid actually has to go through some standard driver ed, because if you look not 

[00:09:05] Aaron: related to, not 

[00:09:05] Brad: related to, not related to drugs, 

[00:09:06] Aaron: alcohol, drugs. 

[00:09:07] Darren: No. It’s just 

[00:09:07] Aaron: like how to drive. 

[00:09:08] Darren: Well, there is a drug and alcohol portion of that. Okay. There’s four hours. Yeah. And I’m actually responsible for writing that curriculum.

[00:09:13] Darren: Okay, nice. So I’m writing that curriculum right now for state. Oh, 

[00:09:15] Brad: wow. 

[00:09:16] Darren: Right. So that’s, I’m helping them figure that out. I’m actually, 

[00:09:18] Brad: I have, I have a curriculum question. 

[00:09:19] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:19] Brad: So it seems like when you’re talking about when you got into this field mm-hmm. There was just kind of a, a, a dearth, like a, like an absence of 

[00:09:26] Darren: Yeah.

[00:09:27] Brad: A curriculum. 

[00:09:27] Darren: Mm-hmm. In some sense for the drug and alcohol piece. 

[00:09:31] Brad: Yes. Yes, exactly. No, I, yeah, I picked up on that. Is that based on what you’ve seen? Mm-hmm. ’cause you’ve been in it now for a long time. 

[00:09:37] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:37] Brad: Is that because of lack of like, it’s just not a profitable thing? There was nobody who came along with a solution?

[00:09:42] Brad: Or is that a function of people actually weren’t in full agreement that there should actually be. Alcohol, a drug and alcohol. Because here’s the thing, like if you disagree with someone, but you something, but you can’t openly disagree with it. 

[00:09:55] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:09:55] Brad: You have, you kind of have to ignore it. Sure. Like, that’s a form of not addressing [00:10:00] something is a form of like 

[00:10:00] Darren: Right.

[00:10:01] Brad: I don’t want to Something to happen there. 

[00:10:03] Darren: Sure. 

[00:10:03] Brad: What, what’s your, what’s your take on that from what you’ve seen? 

[00:10:05] Darren: My take on it is just improper education on drugs. Mm-hmm. These guys are driver ed teachers. They know a lot about driver education, how to drive a car, 

[00:10:12] Brad: improper education of the educators.

[00:10:14] Darren: That’s right. Like how to actually educate kids on drugs. Having re how, how do 

[00:10:17] Brad: you tell ’em 

[00:10:18] Darren: having resources and materials. Yeah. I tell them by giving them proper resources and materials and showing them one, why these kids, most of the time getting on drugs. 

[00:10:26] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:10:27] Darren: No purpose, no game, no goals. 

[00:10:29] Aaron: That’s 

[00:10:29] Darren: right.

[00:10:30] Darren: Right. Boredom. Yep. Right. I mean, that’s what I did. Yep. I was four, 13 years old. I was huge in sports. I was, I really loved basketball, baseball. Like I was big in it. 

[00:10:41] Brad: Dude, I’m kind of having a realization right here, Darren. I’m like, like when you just said 

[00:10:45] Darren: was like, this what? This is what I do. Just so you know.

[00:10:46] Darren: I was like, I feelings and others that they themselves can’t explain, 

[00:10:48] Brad: you know? So I, so I’m a younger guy. I’m 32, so, and Aaron’s also a younger guy. 

[00:10:53] Darren: 35. 

[00:10:53] Brad: 35. 

[00:10:53] Darren: Nice. 

[00:10:54] Brad: But so I Where, where’d you go to 

[00:10:56] Darren: school? I’m a younger guy. What do you mean? You think I’m 

[00:10:57] Brad: younger. You’re younger guy. It’s, no, no, I’m just, I’m just, 

[00:10:59] Darren: [00:11:00] how you old here?

[00:11:00] Brad: I’m teeing up my, I’m teeing up my realization. It was not that long ago that I was in a public high school. Uhhuh. 

[00:11:05] Darren: Did 

[00:11:05] Brad: you go to public high school? 

[00:11:06] Darren: I did, 

[00:11:07] Brad: yeah. 

[00:11:08] Darren: Coral Park? 

[00:11:09] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:11:09] Darren: Dham High Avian. I went to Avian Brothers High School in Westwood in Massachusetts, and I went to Ham High. 

[00:11:14] Brad: So the, thank you for that.

[00:11:16] Darren: You’re welcome. In case you shout 

[00:11:17] Brad: out. Er, thank you. The thing that I’m like having a realization on is, I was actually always told in high school that you do drugs because of peer pressure. That’s actually what everyone told me. But as you said that I was like, no, no, no. Like the little bit of drugs that I did.

[00:11:29] Brad: ’cause I, I experimented with some drugs in high school. 

[00:11:31] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:11:32] Brad: It was because of boredom and, and unutilized time and not having a clear game and purpose and Right. I stopped when I got accepted to West Point for college. Yeah, you, ’cause then I had a boom like, need to prep, 

[00:11:45] Darren: I can’t 

[00:11:45] Brad: do drugs. And 

[00:11:46] Darren: it was 

[00:11:46] Brad: like, yeah, exactly.

[00:11:47] Brad: That’s right. They’re 

[00:11:47] Darren: gonna drug test me. Maybe. Yeah. Like 

[00:11:48] Brad: of ab, absolute freaking, sorry. Play Fit Ricky. But yeah, for sure. Yeah. But you’re, dude, you’re totally right. 

[00:11:56] Darren: Right. 

[00:11:56] Brad: I 

[00:11:58] Darren: But then 

[00:11:58] Brad: there’s, 

[00:11:59] Aaron: [00:12:00] I’ll tell you. No, lemme just say, 

[00:12:02] Brad: yeah, 

[00:12:03] Aaron: I agree with that to a big degree because I actually off people don’t really offer you drugs that much.

[00:12:09] Aaron: Yes. It’s mostly 

[00:12:10] Brad: Yes. 

[00:12:11] Aaron: Everyone’s smoking around you. Yes. And then you’re supposed to be like, yo, can I get a hit? Right. Like, 

[00:12:15] Brad: that’s right. 

[00:12:16] Aaron: I actually have only been, that’s, I’ve only been offered, I think maybe this is what I do guys two or three times. Yeah. 

[00:12:20] Darren: Get people to realize things on 

[00:12:21] Aaron: their own. I only been offered like drugs actually as an adult.

[00:12:24] Aaron: It’s been a couple times. And as a, as like in high school 

[00:12:28] Brad: mm-hmm. 

[00:12:28] Aaron: I was maybe only offered two or three times. 

[00:12:30] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:12:32] Aaron: Right. Same. Same by the way people around you are doing. That was a a lot. Right? A lot. Right. So it’s more, it’s more like it’s there for you to grab and be like, oh, so it’s not really the peer pressure so much is, 

[00:12:40] Darren: I mean, you can call that, that’s, that You could call that peer pressure if you wanted technically.

[00:12:44] Darren: Sure, 

[00:12:44] Aaron: sure. 

[00:12:45] Brad: Fine. 

[00:12:45] Darren: But, but I like, 

[00:12:47] Brad: but it’s not the real why though. No, it’s not the real why. It’s like you wouldn’t, when you’re not bored, you’re not interested in you. I mean, you can be interested in other people, but you’re not like interested in a, like, envious way of what other people are doing around you.

[00:12:58] Brad: ’cause you’re freaking on [00:13:00] your, you have your purpose. Right. Your game, you’re playing. You’re playing your game. 

[00:13:03] Darren: Right. 

[00:13:03] Brad: Wow. 

[00:13:04] Darren: And that’s, you know, that’s, so one of the things that I go into with these teachers is like, look, help these kids find a purpose. 

[00:13:10] Brad: Mm. Yeah. 

[00:13:11] Darren: Right. You know, help them figure out what their goal is in life that they wanna achieve.

[00:13:15] Brad: Do you, do you find, sorry, sorry for interrupting. 

[00:13:18] Darren: No, go ahead. 

[00:13:18] Brad: Do, do you find that that’s a, a tall order for them to like. 

[00:13:22] Darren: Sure. I mean, but what, 

[00:13:24] Brad: because I think for some, for some people who are, who are driver ed educators, they may find it, or, you know, in, really in any education sphere, they may find it a little intimidating.

[00:13:33] Brad: That statement of help them find their purpose. 

[00:13:36] Darren: Well, it’s interesting because what I might not, their 

[00:13:38] Brad: own purpose, 

[00:13:38] Darren: right? But what I’ve seen with the driver ed community is driver ed teachers are not getting wealthy, being driver ed teachers. 

[00:13:44] Brad: Of course. 

[00:13:45] Darren: So they’re not doing it for that purpose. They’re literally doing it because they love and care about kids.

[00:13:50] Brad: Ah, 

[00:13:50] Darren: it’s a very passionate group. Right. 

[00:13:52] Brad: Oh, 

[00:13:52] Darren: they, they have a, they have really big hearts and they want to help these kids. 

[00:13:56] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:13:56] Darren: And a lot of them have seen kids that have come through their [00:14:00] program die from drugs and alcohol. 

[00:14:01] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:02] Darren: I would say most of them. I do this survey at most of my seminars. I say, who has had a kid die from drugs and alcohol?

[00:14:07] Darren: You’ll see 95% of the room raise their head. Oof. That’s a kid that they knew that came through them and that is now dead. 

[00:14:13] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:13] Darren: Right. Now, obviously they could maybe have done something about it, maybe not. Who knows? Right. You never know. 

[00:14:18] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:19] Darren: But I’m gonna help them to make it so that in the future they can potentially do something about it.

[00:14:23] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:23] Darren: Right. By one, educating these kids. Had I known what LSD would’ve done to me 

[00:14:28] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:28] Darren: I would never have done it. 

[00:14:30] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:30] Darren: Had I known what cocaine would do to me, 

[00:14:32] Brad: yeah. 

[00:14:33] Darren: I never would’ve done it. 

[00:14:34] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:34] Aaron: Is this you? You’re talking, you now? 

[00:14:35] Darren: Me personally. 

[00:14:36] Aaron: Okay. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:14:36] Darren: Right. Like had I known what these things would’ve done to my life?

[00:14:39] Brad: Yep. 

[00:14:41] Darren: I didn’t know, had I known what weed really was. 

[00:14:43] Brad: Yep. 

[00:14:43] Darren: And what its long term and short term effects were on me, I would’ve never done it. That’s right. And weed now is not weed in 1992. 

[00:14:50] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:14:51] Darren: Actually 90, 89, 90. Yeah. It’s not the same weed. 

[00:14:54] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:14:55] Darren: Right. It’s genetically engineered to be super, super potent.

[00:14:58] Brad: Oh wow. 

[00:14:59] Darren: Right. You [00:15:00] just, you will, if you just Google celebrity talking about doing weed, you’re gonna find a million episodes of people talking about how it caused ’em to have psychotic breaks. 

[00:15:08] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:08] Darren: How it caused them to go crazy. That’s right. Because the potency of weed now is in the 50 to 40 to 50%. THC, Tetra Hydro Canol, that’s the drug in marijuana that caused you to get high.

[00:15:18] Brad: What did it used to be like in, 

[00:15:20] Darren: when I was smoking meat, it was three to six. 

[00:15:22] Brad: Three to 6% up to 40 to 50%. 

[00:15:24] Darren: Well, now you can vape in Florida, you can buy. I don’t know if they have it in Florida, maybe in some of the places, but you can buy 80 to 90% pure THC. Wow. Some cases 99% THC, and you vape it. So the thing about it is, any drug can be turned into a liquid.

[00:15:40] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:15:41] Darren: So you take Oh yeah, 

[00:15:41] Aaron: yeah. 

[00:15:42] Darren: You take the drug, you turn into a liquid, you turn, you extract A THC, and now you’re, you’re hitting it. So now these guys, that’s the thing too, with a vape, I don’t have to go somewhere and light my joint. 

[00:15:53] Brad: Yeah. No, no smell. Right, 

[00:15:55] Darren: right. Don’t, with a pure TC. That’s right. You can have odorless vapes.

[00:15:58] Darren: I don’t, and this is the same thing with cigarettes [00:16:00] and, and nicotine. I don’t have to go, when I smoked cigarettes, which I did for 15 years, I quit when I was 30. When I realized this is half of my life and I have children, I’m gonna die. Like I need to stop. So I stopped smoking. 

[00:16:11] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:16:12] Darren: Which was hard. Really, really difficult.

[00:16:15] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:16:15] Darren: Anyway, the point is I would have to go somewhere and smoke. Now I can hit my vape all day long. That’s right. 

[00:16:22] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:16:23] Darren: So now I’m getting high or on something all day long. And then there’s the danger part of, I hand you a vape. 

[00:16:29] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:30] Darren: And you don’t know what’s in that vapes, what’s 

[00:16:32] Aaron: in 

[00:16:33] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:16:33] Darren: I have a friend of mine who’s the, um, in charge of driver education for the state of Louisiana.

[00:16:37] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:38] Darren: His son went to, um, LSU, Louisiana State. Fricking huge college, right? 

[00:16:42] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:16:42] Darren: He goes to LSU. He is there. He is a couple weeks in, maybe like a week and a half in meets these kids. They’re hanging out, they’re driving around town. Kid hands him a vape, takes a hit. It’s a highly potent hallucinogen, right?

[00:16:54] Darren: And he has a psychotic episode. They laugh, they kick him outta the car. He walks around Baton [00:17:00] Rouge for three days, completely out of it. Parents thought he was kidnapped or died 

[00:17:03] Brad: for three days, 

[00:17:04] Darren: three 

[00:17:05] Brad: for one hit 

[00:17:05] Darren: days one hit from a vape, right? His parents thought he was dead. So they drive down there and they find him laying in a park like half naked, all dirty, unfed.

[00:17:15] Darren: No, just out of it. They’re like, what happened? And finally they pulled the string and find out that this is what happened. 

[00:17:21] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:17:21] Darren: Anyway, so. Yeah, there you go. So when I, geez. Wow. When, so 

[00:17:26] Aaron: did he, did, did, did your friend become an, uh, a teacher after that, or he 

[00:17:28] Darren: was already No, he, he was already a teacher and he already knew me and he called me and told me what happened and said, you need to tell this story.

[00:17:34] Darren: And I’m like, oh, I will tell that story. And here I am. 

[00:17:37] Aaron: Yep. There you 

[00:17:37] Darren: go. Got you bud. Yeah, bud Shaughnessy awesome guy. 

[00:17:39] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:17:40] Darren: Love these guys. They’re a great driver. Ed teachers, dude. Been helping the world forever. Wow. So to back to your purpose, back to your point, the drive red community has this big purpose to help and do good.

[00:17:49] Darren: Wow. So when I plugged into this, it 

[00:17:50] Brad: makes sense now that you say that. 

[00:17:51] Darren: Right? And when I plugged into this community, I’m like, Hey guys, here are these resources that you can use to educate kids on drugs. And they were like, well, this is amazing. This is something we can use. And [00:18:00] now it’s being used broadly.

[00:18:02] Brad: Wow. 

[00:18:03] Darren: And to answer your question earlier, like how do you know how much reach you have? It’s almost impossible to really know 

[00:18:08] Brad: mm-hmm. 

[00:18:08] Darren: The number of people that I reached. Mm-hmm. And I’ll give you a real life example. Last week I was at the New England Drive Red Conference in, in Massachusetts, literally a.

[00:18:19] Darren: Five minutes from where I lived when I was in Massachusetts. We had a house five minutes away. It was the weirdest thing. I’m like, why are we here? Right. 

[00:18:24] Brad: Oh, wow. 

[00:18:24] Darren: So anyway, so I go back and I’m, I’m at this conference and I did my seminar and, and then I’m walking back, I’m leaving, and this lady comes up and she goes, she goes, she goes, you don’t know me.

[00:18:35] Darren: She goes, but do you know, um, this sheriff? And she named the sheriff from years ago. And I go, yeah, I know him. He was the Worcester County Sheriff, which is a large county in Massachusetts. 

[00:18:45] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:18:46] Darren: And I go, I go, I know him. I go, I, I went to a fundraiser for him and I brought him a DVD, drug free world DVD, and said, here, show this to your kids.

[00:18:55] Darren: If you’re ever gonna do drug education, if you become the sheriff mm-hmm. Go. ’cause you as a [00:19:00] sheriff have a responsibility 

[00:19:01] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:19:02] Darren: For educating your community on what drugs are. Mm-hmm. That is part of your job. And I literally like laid into him. Right. And he was like, okay. Yeah, you’re right in the school.

[00:19:10] Darren: I’ll go watch this. She goes, well, he took that DVD and for the seven years that I worked with him, he showed it to every middle and high school student in the entire county. 

[00:19:20] Aaron: Wow. Wow. 

[00:19:22] Darren: He literally went and did assemblies at every middle and high school and showed them your DVD. I was like, what? She goes, yep.

[00:19:29] Darren: We showed it to over 400,000 kids in seven years. I’m like, 

[00:19:33] Aaron: wow. 

[00:19:34] Darren: You gotta be kidding me. Same thing happened with me. I was up in Vermont, actually. I was at the I, another group I work with a lot is law enforcement. So we work a lot with the, the school resource officers. Yeah. The National Association of School Resource Officers.

[00:19:48] Darren: These are cops that work in schools. Super great guys. 90% of them have a huge purpose to help kids. 

[00:19:53] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:19:54] Darren: The other 10% were thrown on post and wish they weren’t. 

[00:19:56] Brad: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

[00:19:57] Darren: Right. But most of them really care and want to do it. 

[00:19:59] Brad: [00:20:00] Yeah. 

[00:20:00] Darren: And the ones that don’t eventually get someone in that does. Yeah. Because, you know, working with kids isn’t for everybody.

[00:20:05] Darren: Yeah. It’s especially high schoolers. You’re in high school and they’re crazy. 

[00:20:08] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:20:08] Darren: Right now they’re like carrying guns and, and like stabbing each other. It’s different world, right? 

[00:20:12] Brad: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:20:13] Darren: Now when I, my school resource didn’t deal with me, maybe broke up a fight every now and then, or found a bag of weed on a kid and was like, Darren, what was that on?

[00:20:20] Darren: I don’t know why I had that sir. No. Those little somebody 

[00:20:22] Brad: else’s, 

[00:20:23] Darren: those little gram baggies are because I like to carry it around in small quantities. I wasn’t selling anyway, sorry. Off some munch back. I was selling weed back then. Yes. So anyway, so, but the law enforcement community is great. So I started working with them and then I started working with, um.

[00:20:38] Darren: With the police athletics league. 

[00:20:40] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:20:41] Darren: Which are cops that work in schools Yeah. As well. And they do sports activities. But my point was I was at the National Association of School Resource Officer conference. Cop walks up to me, um, whether it be, I think his last name is super cool cop, he was the school resource officer up in St.

[00:20:55] Darren: Alban’s, Vermont. So 2007 I go up to the no middle of nowhere, Vermont and I, and [00:21:00] they asked me to speak to the town hall about drugs. Dunno how it ended up happening, but I’m like, yeah, what the hell? Let’s go to Vermont. So go to Vermont. I’m talking to the town hall and the school resource officer. The mayor and the whole board and everyone I’m telling about drug education.

[00:21:11] Darren: Right. So then I leave. He goes, Darren, I want you to know I showed that DVD to every single high schooler for the past seven years. 

[00:21:20] Brad: Wow. 

[00:21:20] Darren: No, it was like 10 years. He’s like, it’s like 6,000 kids a year. And we show them that DVD still. I’m like, well, there you go. So 

[00:21:28] Aaron: wow. 

[00:21:29] Darren: You kind of know how many people 

[00:21:31] Aaron: here, 200,000 here, da, da da.

[00:21:32] Aaron: Boom, 

[00:21:32] Darren: boom. 

[00:21:33] Aaron: I mean, 

[00:21:33] Darren: right. 

[00:21:34] Aaron: And that’s one, that’s one day of work, you know, 

[00:21:36] Darren: one conversation. So I, I guess the point is, never stop talking about your purpose and mission in life. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And when you find your purpose and mission in life, run with it. 

[00:21:43] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:44] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:21:44] Darren: And the way that, you know, in my personal viewpoint, the way you know that it’s your purpose and mission in life Yeah.

[00:21:50] Darren: Is when you talk about it and you get super excited. 

[00:21:52] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:21:52] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:21:53] Darren: And you don’t care if you’re making money at it or not. 

[00:21:55] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:21:55] Darren: Right. Like, this was my biggest, biggest expense and probably still is [00:22:00] for a very, very long time. 

[00:22:01] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:01] Darren: Right. All these events I do every year, I do about 25 events a year. My wife and I fund it.

[00:22:06] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:22:06] Darren: Wow. We get some donations here and there. We did. Now we have our nonprofit. 

[00:22:09] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:10] Darren: And that’s why I started the nonprofit to just kind of take this to the next level. 

[00:22:14] Aaron: Yep. Yeah. 

[00:22:15] Darren: Right. To really have a group and an organization that can organize and properly make sure that all educators everywhere know how to educate kids on drugs.

[00:22:25] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:25] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:22:25] Darren: Right. So that it’s being done Right. ’cause there is a way of doing it. There’s a way to talk to a kid and get them to actually go, oh, I didn’t know that. And the drug free world materials are awesome for that too. But that teacher has to know how to present that. Mm-hmm. And has to know, what can I do?

[00:22:43] Darren: How can I do this? How do I do this? What do I say? 

[00:22:47] Aaron: So let’s say if you have like a, a five minutes. Mm-hmm. Let’s say, or three or however, like a short time. 

[00:22:52] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:22:52] Aaron: There’s a teacher somewhat somehow this video gets to a teacher who has a class. Mm-hmm. A class of 20, 30, whatever it is. 

[00:22:58] Brad: Let’s go 

[00:22:58] Aaron: crazy. Say 60 

[00:22:59] Brad: [00:23:00] seconds.

[00:23:01] Aaron: Two minutes, how 180 should they approach this topic? What should they do? How, how do they go? Okay. I’m a teacher. I have a class of 30, um, they’re 10th graders. 

[00:23:13] Darren: Okay. So you have 10th grade kids. 

[00:23:14] Aaron: Yep. 

[00:23:15] Darren: Right. First thing you want to do is you want to get in communication with these kids so that they’re actually know that you’re real.

[00:23:19] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:20] Darren: And you’re not just there to talk to them as a statistic. 

[00:23:22] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:23] Darren: Right. And either you have personal experiences about drugs or you don’t have personal experience about drugs. If you do, like in my case, I always bring up who I am and where I am and where I came from. Look, I did a lot of drugs when I was a kid.

[00:23:33] Darren: Mm-hmm. Smoked a lot of weed. 

[00:23:34] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:35] Darren: I was awesome in sports, basketball, baseball, the whole nine yards. Skateboard, a big skateboarder, actually skateboarded with Tony Hawk, right? Mm-hmm. So I was a big skater. And then I started smoking weed. 

[00:23:47] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:47] Darren: And nothing mattered anymore. 

[00:23:49] Aaron: Mm. 

[00:23:49] Darren: All I cared about was getting high.

[00:23:51] Darren: And every morning I would wake up and I would smoke weed and then, and at lunchtime at school, when I was in middle school, I would go into the psychiatrist’s office, [00:24:00] open his window and smoke a joint out the window. 

[00:24:01] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:02] Darren: After school, I would get high and my whole goal was, how do I get more weed? How do I get more weed?

[00:24:07] Darren: So I give my story, right? Mm. And then people started dying. Friends I know. Acquaintances I know. Drunk driving. Overdose. Dead. Dead, dead. Dead, dead. I’m now 13, 14 years old. Seven friends dead. And what really woke me up was when my best friend was driving. He, he bought a motorcycle. He was 15 years old, bought a motorcycle and the want ads.

[00:24:29] Darren: You guys remember the Want ads? Maybe not. It’s a book that had like, it was like a online directory, but it was a book. Yeah. 

[00:24:34] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:24:35] Darren: Bought a motorcycle. We went out and stole a license plate ’cause he couldn’t get one. Put it on his bike. He’s riding around, uh, about three weeks later he is coming home from school, doing a hundred miles an hour, crashes into a tree dead.

[00:24:47] Darren: Killed my friend Steve on the back. Right. And that woke me up like, I’m gonna die. Was he high? I don’t know if he was. You don’t 

[00:24:56] Aaron: know. Okay. 

[00:24:56] Darren: Okay. I do know he smoked a lot of weed. 

[00:24:59] Aaron: Okay. [00:25:00] 

[00:25:00] Darren: So whether he was high then in there, I don’t think his mom opted for toxicology. Sure, sure. Because she probably didn’t wanna know.

[00:25:07] Aaron: Right. 

[00:25:07] Darren: Anyway, but he was dead and that was kinda like the wake up call. So the point is you can communicate about your story to the kids mm-hmm. If you don’t use someone else’s story, but make it real. Yep. And then let these kids know, look, where do you want to be in five and 10 years from now? 

[00:25:23] Brad: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:24] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:25] Darren: And most of these kids don’t know where they wanna be next week. 

[00:25:28] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:25:28] Darren: And that was the one thing that literally woke me up. I was in 10th grade, I’m in my English teacher’s class, and this guy goes, Darren, where do you want to be in 10 years? I was like, wow, man, I don’t even know where I’m gonna be next month.

[00:25:46] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:46] Aaron: Like, 

[00:25:46] Darren: I have no idea. I’m, I’m actually kind of high right now. Right.

[00:25:53] Darren: I’m like, I dunno. And he goes, well, why are you here? And I go, well, I’m here because my parents [00:26:00] would kill me if I left school. He goes, that’s not a reason. You need to have a reason to be here. And I was like, well, that’s not, I’m day. Right. So I got up and I literally left and I quit high school. Wow. I walked out.

[00:26:12] Aaron: Wow. 

[00:26:12] Darren: And I realized that I needed to get away from everyone around me, this entire group that I was surrounding myself with. If I stayed there, I was dead. Maybe not physically dead, but I wasn’t gonna go anywhere. 

[00:26:26] Aaron: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:26:27] Darren: So I left and I got in my car, had a car, and I drove to New Hampshire and I got an apartment and I started teaching skiing in a local mountain.

[00:26:36] Brad: Wow. 

[00:26:38] Darren: I was two. Right. Congratulations. 

[00:26:39] Brad: Yeah. That’s a good 

[00:26:41] Darren: two and a half hours away. Me, it may not have happened all the same. 16-year-old. Sure, sure. 

[00:26:44] Brad: 16 years 

[00:26:45] Darren: old. 16 years old. Wow. I was the youngest ski instructor at Loon Mountain in New Hampshire. 

[00:26:48] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:26:49] Darren: I actually got the job out of like, there’s about 1100 people tried out and they hired 20 of us.

[00:26:54] Brad: Wow. 

[00:26:55] Darren: And I couldn’t believe I made it. I was like, wow. They’re like, well, you, you’re a good skier and you know how to talk to kids. I was like, great. [00:27:00] But I wasn’t high anymore. I stopped the weed, stopped the drinking. I haven’t smoked weed or drank alcohol since. Wow. I mean, maybe had a beer here and there, but I haven’t had alcohol in over 10 years.

[00:27:08] Darren: Right. 

[00:27:08] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:27:08] Darren: So I just kinda like, that’s it. I, I, and I started to figure out what do I want to do with my life? Mm-hmm. 

[00:27:13] Brad: What 

[00:27:14] Darren: is my purpose? What is my mission? Where do I want to go? ’cause this is not it. I don’t want to die. 

[00:27:20] Aaron: Wow. 

[00:27:21] Darren: Right. And then give them the tool, the knowledge of what the drugs are. What is marijuana?

[00:27:26] Darren: What is heroin? What is cocaine? What is fentanyl for crin allowed. Do you guys wanna know what fentanyl is? 

[00:27:33] Brad: I honestly have no idea. I have no earthly idea. Okay. So I literally don’t know. 

[00:27:36] Darren: So do you know what an opioid is? 

[00:27:37] Brad: Yep. 

[00:27:38] Darren: Okay. It comes from a poppy seed. Comes poppy seed, right? Yeah, that’s right. Well, poppy plants seed.

[00:27:41] Darren: That’s the poppy plant. 

[00:27:42] Brad: Okay, got it. 

[00:27:43] Darren: Right. You take some, do some chemical compounds and you create, well, what same the 

[00:27:46] Aaron: heroin’s made out of. 

[00:27:47] Darren: That’s right. Same stuff the heroin’s made. Fentanyl is the synthetic version of an opioid. It creates the same effect in your body, this euphoric feeling in your body that causes you to kind of separate from your pain receptors.

[00:27:58] Darren: Mm. So you don’t feel pain and you feel [00:28:00] euphoric and it’s this amazing feeling of like, wow, this is awesome. Right? Mm-hmm. But then you crash and the thing that people don’t know about drugs is you get high and then you crash and you want that again. So you go do the drug again, but you never quite get back to that same level.

[00:28:17] Darren: It’s called chasing the high. 

[00:28:18] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:19] Darren: You’re trying to get to this high again, crash, and you keep going lower and lower and lower and lower. Two. With opioids, you’re at a point where you cannot function without them. You get physically ill. Flu, like sick unless you’re high. Yep. So what fentanyl’s doing is it’s a synthetic opioid, like heroin.

[00:28:38] Darren: It’s a hundred times more po potent than heroin. And what it does is it literally sucks all the oxygen outta your body and cause you to s to uh, suffocate. 

[00:28:46] Brad: What? 

[00:28:47] Darren: Yeah. So you, that’s why a little teeny like. Five milligrams. 

[00:28:51] Brad: Oh, so it’s like a poison basically. 

[00:28:52] Darren: It’s a poison 

[00:28:52] Brad: because there are poisons that operate the same way where it takes all the oxygen out of your blood and then boom, you’re, you suffocate without, 

[00:28:58] Darren: that’s 

[00:28:58] Brad: right where you can breathe, but you suffocate.

[00:28:59] Darren: [00:29:00] That’s right. Like you ever hear Narcan, Narcan? Have you heard of this? Yes. This is Narcan is the anti Fentanyl. They hit you with Narcan, it pumps you oxygen back into your blood and you come back to life. Wow. It revives the dead. Literally it revives the dead. I’ve seen and heard stories of dead people that were brought back to life minutes after dying from fentanyl.

[00:29:16] Darren: Overdoses. Now they have a, a nasal spray. They shoot up your nas up your nose, and it goes right into the bloodstream. 

[00:29:22] Brad: Wow. 

[00:29:23] Darren: But anyway, so fentanyl is super, super powerful. 

[00:29:24] Aaron: So is s is suffocating it suffocates you on purpose? Like is is the effect? Is the effect like when you don’t have oxygen, you feel certain way like, 

[00:29:32] Darren: well, well what it is, is low, low dosages will cause a euphoric feeling of high.

[00:29:37] Darren: Too much will cause the suffocation and death. 

[00:29:39] Aaron: Okay. Okay. 

[00:29:40] Darren: And also lower dosages than that will cause pain where I can literally cut your chest open and pull out your heart. Pain like me. That’s what this stuff is made for. It’s like an anti, you call it? Oh, 

[00:29:51] Brad: it causes pain, uh, like nullification. 

[00:29:53] Darren: There’s no pain.

[00:29:53] Darren: No pain. Yeah. Not amnesia, but like, um, sorry. 

[00:29:56] Aaron: Sorry. 

[00:29:56] Brad: Anesthesia. 

[00:29:57] Darren: Anesthesia. That’s it. Right? Yeah. So like they’ll use it to [00:30:00] control that pain if your anesthesia’s coming in and out, right? Yeah, yeah. Like you’re unconscious. 

[00:30:05] Brad: It’s medically used. 

[00:30:05] Aaron: Hold on. 

[00:30:06] Darren: It’s medically used. 

[00:30:07] Aaron: Yeah. I, I have, uh, friends who have recently given birth.

[00:30:11] Aaron: Mm-hmm. And they’re putting fentanyl inside of the IV for the mothers. 

[00:30:14] Brad: Yeah. Yeah. My wife is one of them. 

[00:30:15] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:30:15] Brad: And we, we said no to that. 

[00:30:16] Darren: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:30:17] Brad: yeah. We, we opted for a diff for a different, 

[00:30:19] Aaron: because, because it’s in anesthesia, right? Yeah. Fentanyl. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s everywhere. It’s fentanyl is, it’s uh, it’s taken over.

[00:30:24] Darren: That’s right. Well, what happens is it’s really, really cheap and two milligrams can kill a 200 pound body. Right? So you think of like. 

[00:30:31] Brad: I’m more than 200 

[00:30:32] Aaron: pounds, two milligrams is like, I’ll take two milligram. I mean, that’s, that’s like a, that’s like, 

[00:30:37] Brad: sorry. Just sounded like a challenge. 

[00:30:38] Darren: Yeah, I’ll do it man.

[00:30:39] Darren: I’ll take you on 

[00:30:39] Aaron: two milligrams. Two milligrams is extremely small. Like you could almost couldn’t even feel something that you are holding two milligram. 

[00:30:44] Darren: It’s very, very small. Like the tip of a pencil is small. 

[00:30:46] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:30:46] Darren: So what happens is, this is what’s happened with the fentanyl trade in America, right. Big cartels making heroin and cocaine and other drugs in, in the south of America, mainly Mexico.

[00:30:59] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:59] Darren: [00:31:00] Um, trading it up in the us having operations and literally distribution centers where people are selling their drugs. And then China realizes that they can make fentanyl and mass quantities for really cheap. 

[00:31:09] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:31:10] Darren: They partner up with these three main cartels and they ship them the large amounts of fentanyl and then they mix it into the heroin and the other drugs because it’s very addicting.

[00:31:19] Darren: Right? Mm-hmm. And then. For the last four years, the borders were wide open, so all the cartels just came walking across the borders and set up shops. And if you go to the DEA website, you’ll see a DE, a chart of a map, a map of the us like a, a dark light scale of how many cartel members are operating in those states.

[00:31:38] Darren: 10 years ago it was little dots. Four years ago it was the whole country was full of cartels. So, 

[00:31:44] Aaron: but they know where they are. What then, then 

[00:31:46] Darren: they weren’t doing shit. The, the, the border control ice was not operational. It meant 

[00:31:50] Aaron: zero enforcement. 

[00:31:50] Darren: They weren’t doing anything about 

[00:31:51] Aaron: it. No, but I mean, like, so you know, like this is a drug dealer dealing right there.

[00:31:55] Aaron: You can’t 

[00:31:56] Darren: them. Right. Well, the D the DEA is not huge. They’re not [00:32:00] thousands and tens of thousands of people. They were doing the best they could. Okay. Right. And now ICE and DEA are being like, okay, let’s go get ’em all out. 

[00:32:07] Aaron: Yep. 

[00:32:08] Darren: Let’s get rid of ’em. And, and you see the fentanyl. But we started seeing, um, American deaths from fentanyl, overdoses peaked at a hundred thousand in 2024 mm Right.

[00:32:18] Darren: A hundred thousand. Yep. Americans die. 

[00:32:20] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:21] Darren: Like that’s more than Vietnam. 

[00:32:23] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:23] Darren: That’s like. Nine 11 was 4,000 people. 

[00:32:27] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:28] Darren: Right. And, and this is just going under the radar. So we’ve had over half a million people die in the last administration from drug overdoses. 

[00:32:34] Brad: Mm. 

[00:32:35] Darren: Right. It’s like, I’m sorry. Yeah.

[00:32:37] Darren: Yeah. 500 th over 500,000 people. Mm-hmm. So these numbers are just staggering. Like China as a nation is a communist nation. 

[00:32:46] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:47] Darren: And has openly does not like America. Right. So they have literally, this is how they’ve infiltrated. Yeah. And you can even look at the DEA website and they’ll say, China remains the primary source of fentanyl in this world.

[00:32:58] Aaron: That’s why there’s a fentanyl tariff. [00:33:00] 

[00:33:00] Darren: Right. 

[00:33:00] Aaron: Actually, there’s a tariff. There’s a 20% of all goods out of China. Well, 

[00:33:03] Darren: now, and Mexico, 

[00:33:03] Aaron: I think. 

[00:33:04] Darren: Well now what happened was they clamped down on it and they then China started making parts of the fentanyl and shipping it to other countries to make all of the fentanyl.

[00:33:12] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:33:12] Darren: And then they started shipping it into America. 

[00:33:14] Aaron: And how, and how like. How are you aware of this? Like how do you come across this information? 

[00:33:20] Darren: I know a lot of people and I meet a lot of people that do what I do. Mm-hmm. Or study what’s going on, like DEA and things like that. 

[00:33:26] Aaron: Okay. 

[00:33:26] Darren: So they kind of keep me in the loop and I know what’s happening and that’s kind of how I ’cause part of my seminars when I deliver trainings to teachers is it tell them what’s happening with drugs?

[00:33:35] Brad: Mm. 

[00:33:35] Darren: What’s the current drugs that are on the market? What are the kids seeing? Yeah. What’s a 

[00:33:37] Brad: look 

[00:33:38] Darren: for that? Are they doing right? How are they doing it? Like, you can get a joint now and there’ll be fentanyl in it and you won’t even know. Right. Okay. And, and you could die. 

[00:33:46] Brad: Incredible. Yeah. 

[00:33:46] Whoa, 

[00:33:46] Brad: crazy. So I have a question.

[00:33:49] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:33:50] Brad: Previous to, uh, the start of going into, Hey, I wanna talk to kids about drugs. 

[00:33:58] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:33:59] Brad: Where did [00:34:00] that come from? 

[00:34:01] Darren: Me? 

[00:34:02] Brad: Yeah. Like what, what, what in your personal journey led to that drug free world? So on and so forth. 

[00:34:09] Darren: You know, it’s interesting ’cause I, I, I moved up to New Hampshire, started teaching skiing, stopped all drugs, dis literally disconnected from all of those people.

[00:34:16] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:34:17] Darren: Um, prior to that. Right. Right around that move. I was sitting at home one night getting high and a friend of mine called me and said, Hey Darren, what are you doing? I’m coming over. We’re gonna go into Boston. I’m like, oh, cool. We’re gonna go get late or we’re gonna get some weed, or whatever. Right.

[00:34:36] Darren: Just being a kid, I’m like, you know, 14, 15, I was 15 years old, let’s go, comes by my house, picks me up. And he brought me to the Church of Scientology, Boston. 

[00:34:46] Brad: Wow. 

[00:34:47] Darren: And he goes, I bought this book, Dianetics on tv. I started reading. It changed my life. My whole viewpoint on everything has changed and I want you to look at this.

[00:34:56] Darren: I was like, I. Yeah, dude, I’m not religious. I’m not going into a church. [00:35:00] He goes, he goes, just check it out. So I went in there and I did this thing called a personality test, which literally is your viewpoint of view. Yeah. It’s how you feel about you. So I did this test and it, it shows you how you feel about yourself and I did not feel good about myself.

[00:35:13] Darren: I, my stability, my just, I was all over the place. I couldn’t concentrate. Like it was really bad. And the lady’s like, look, this is your test results. If you wanna do something about it, you can do this dynamics course and it’s gonna teach you about your mind and how your mind works. And it’s, and then she said this, she goes, it’s gonna show you how the losses in your past are affecting you in the present time and how to stop those losses in your past from affecting you now so you can be you here now instead of being controlled by all those losses.

[00:35:39] Darren: I was like, well those losses are probably having a huge effect on me. ’cause some of my friends are dead. Like, particularly my best friend Derek. Like we were really tight. He’s dead like that messed my head up a little bit. 

[00:35:50] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:35:50] Darren: I was like, okay, you know what, I’m gonna try this. So I tried the course, and then I went in, there’s a thing called auditing where you go and you look at the things in the past that are affecting you, [00:36:00] and you basically just look at the unconscious part of them.

[00:36:04] Darren: And by doing that, you can see how they’re unconsciously affecting you in present time. 

[00:36:08] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:36:09] Darren: And by just looking at it, it stops it from being able to unconsciously control you. 

[00:36:13] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:36:14] Darren: Right. Like a, a great example is a, a friend of mine who was allergic to this flower, right? Well, she was being born, believe it or not, and the doctor was saying to the mother, quick, quick, get her out.

[00:36:24] Darren: She can’t breathe. And this flower was sitting there. So the unconscious part of the mind doesn’t think in reason, it thinks in similarity. So everything is the same as everything else. So the smell of the flower was the same of, you can’t breathe. So her whole life, whenever she smelled this flower, she couldn’t breathe.

[00:36:40] Darren: So in Dianetics, she just went back and looked at that moment and saw what the doctor said and saw the flour there, and then. Oh my God. And boop, it went away. Mm-hmm. Now the unconscious mind is not the, everything is the same as everything else went away. 

[00:36:56] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:36:56] Darren: And she was like, ah. And now she went and literally went to the store and bought a flowers.

[00:36:59] Darren: Was [00:37:00] like, oh my God, I can sue the floor. I can read. 

[00:37:04] Aaron: And 

[00:37:04] Darren: I was like, that’s pretty amazing. So that’s kind of what happened. I went in session and I did a DTIC session. My first day there, actually second day, the first day I came in, I was high. And she told me, you can’t be high. She goes, you can’t smoke weed and do dynamics.

[00:37:19] Darren: And then they made me wait a couple days for the drugs to come outta my body. And then I came back and I went in session. 

[00:37:23] I 

[00:37:23] Brad: think we’ve heard this story, similar story all times from other people. You’d be shocked how many people go and they’re like, uh, I’m high right now. And they’re like, we’ll, come back once you’re not high.

[00:37:32] Darren: Right? 

[00:37:32] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:37:33] Darren: Because we can’t, you, you’re just not there. Right? 

[00:37:35] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:37:36] Darren: So anyway, so I did the session and I, and I actually went in and handled the loss of Derek. 

[00:37:41] Brad: Wow. 

[00:37:42] Darren: And then found out what was before that, that it was triggering. And then boom, all that charge that I had on that went away. And I just started kind of clearly seeing my future as not being dead and realize, wow, you know what?

[00:37:56] Darren: I might not die. I might [00:38:00] actually be able to live and do something in this lifetime. And that’s when the whole like, let’s go. I’m out. I left my, I left. 

[00:38:08] Aaron: So how that conversation that, that it was a teacher that talked to you and said, Hey, where are you gonna be in five years, 10 years? A, a teacher? 

[00:38:13] Darren: That was a high school teacher.

[00:38:15] Darren: My English teacher, I don’t even know his name. 

[00:38:16] Aaron: Oh my gosh. 

[00:38:17] Darren: I barely made it into that class. Like I think I went there four or five times. It was really early in my 10th grade. 

[00:38:22] Aaron: Wow. 

[00:38:22] Darren: Okay. So you’re in I barely made it. So I went to a private high school called Ian Brothers High School. Okay. That was my trying to get out of the drug scene earlier.

[00:38:30] Darren: I was trying to disconnect. So I got my grandfather to send me, this school is like a $12,000 a year school when I’m in his private school. Well, they’re all smoking coke and 

[00:38:37] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:38:38] Darren: they’re doing harder drugs. 

[00:38:39] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:40] Darren: And I was like, this is not helping. And I was still smoking weed, so I like, barely made it through my ninth grade.

[00:38:45] Darren: And then I, I was like, I’m not gonna go waste my grandfather’s money anymore ’cause I’m just gonna keep smoking weed. So I’ll go to, I’ll go back to public school. So I went back to Dedham High where all my friends were and everybody I knew was there and it was like. This is, this is not good. Yeah. [00:39:00] This is not good.

[00:39:00] Darren: This is not good at all. And that’s 

[00:39:01] Aaron: where, that’s where the teacher was there from the, from the high school. 

[00:39:03] Darren: Yeah. From the 

[00:39:04] Aaron: public high school. 

[00:39:04] Darren: And he’s like, you, you need to, you need to find your mission. Like what do you want to do? 

[00:39:08] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:39:09] Darren: Right. And I don’t think I found that for a while. 

[00:39:11] Aaron: Right. 

[00:39:12] Darren: Yeah. It took me a while to, to come up to that, like, 

[00:39:15] Aaron: so, but how long, okay, so you went, you went in, you did this dietetics thing?

[00:39:19] Darren: It was right around, I went into Dianes in August. Yeah. And then I went to school in September. 

[00:39:25] Aaron: Okay. 

[00:39:26] Darren: And now I’m like trying to figure out, ’cause I now know like, I gotta get outta here. These drugs are gonna kill me. Yeah. I’m not doing drugs anymore. 

[00:39:35] Aaron: And you didn’t get fully out the weed, I mean, you were still smoking, so you did the thing, you wouldn’t smoke while you were auditing, then you got back onto it.

[00:39:40] Darren: Right? Right. Exactly. And then that conversation. I was like, no, this, he’s right. Like I need to do something. 

[00:39:47] Brad: Wow. 

[00:39:48] Darren: I need to find my purpose in life. So I don’t know, whoever you are, Mr. English’s teacher, I should actually go look and find out who he’s, because there’s a, he was probably like, you kinda owe this guy a little, little bit was 

[00:39:57] Aaron: quit 

[00:39:57] Brad: at 

[00:39:59] Darren: at least an [00:40:00] acknowledgement.

[00:40:00] Darren: Yeah. You know, I’m, I’m gonna go to Deni High, look at my transcripts and see who this dude was and I’m gonna give him a call and be like, Hey buddy, just so you know, here you can find out who I am. Watch this podcast. There you go. Yeah. Right. Because you know, I, it’s funny because my middle school teacher, my middle school principal, she was the vice principal at the time, Ms.

[00:40:18] Darren: Monta out, she was always pulling me out of class ’cause I would fight with the teachers. 

[00:40:25] Aaron: Mm. Wow. The 

[00:40:25] Darren: teacher would tell me something and I’d be like, I don’t like what you’re talking about. You can’t treat them like that. I was kind of like, it was interesting because I look back, I was kind of like the bully protector.

[00:40:34] Brad: Mm. 

[00:40:35] Darren: If someone was bullying somebody, I would beat them up. 

[00:40:37] Brad: Mm. 

[00:40:39] Darren: You beat up the bully. The beat up the bully. I used to fight all the time. Like I fought a lot because I was mad and I was high and people were dying and I just didn’t give a shit anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember I’m in the auditorium, I’m sitting in the auditorium and it’s like 600 kids in the class.

[00:40:51] Darren: This kid behind me’s messing with this kid next to him and I’m like, I’m like, dude, you need to knock it off. Like you need to leave him alone. He’s like, well, what the hell are you gonna [00:41:00] do about it? And he started yelling at me and I jumped up over the seat and I put my feet, my knees on his shoulders and I just started beating him and, and I’m like, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, right?

[00:41:10] Darren: So they grabbed me off and pulled me on and suspended me for a week. And that was like, I was suspended you for a week. But that principal, that vice principal, knew that there was something going on with this person that was more than drugs. So she pulled me and was pulling me outta classes and like, trying to help me in life.

[00:41:28] Darren: And I found her and I’m now friends with her and like, we’re friends, we’ve met and hung out. And she’s like, I’m like, just want you to know, like you helped, you helped me figure this out. Like, 

[00:41:37] Brad: yeah. 

[00:41:37] Darren: That you were right. That bull crap you saw going on wasn’t me. Right. Anyway, 

[00:41:43] Aaron: amazing. 

[00:41:43] Darren: So I’m gonna find this guy.

[00:41:45] Darren: Um, just let him know I’m alive and I’m doing, I’m doing okay. Yeah. Anyway. That’s 

[00:41:49] Aaron: beautiful. Let’s, 

[00:41:50] Darren: so yeah. So then years later, you know, after doing all the drug education, traveling around the country, talking to teachers and lots and lots of teachers, lots of seminars, lots of conferences, I do a lot of conferences.

[00:41:59] Darren: Um, I [00:42:00] decided I need to start a nonprofit. I need to fund this properly. But not only that, I need to replicate what I’m doing massively. 

[00:42:07] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:08] Darren: There’s a lot of kids in this country. Yeah. And there’s a lot of false information about what drugs and alcohol do you mm-hmm. And the media and. Social media especially is just glorifying how okay it is to get high.

[00:42:20] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:21] Darren: And how okay it is to be doing these drugs and these kids don’t have a chance. They’re not given the opportunity to see both sides of the story. Right. It’s kinda like, you know, you look at our political scene, it’s very, very separated and I think this, the major separation politically has a lot to do with social media.

[00:42:38] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:38] Darren: And the algorithm that social media is set up on. 

[00:42:41] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:42:41] Darren: If I go to Instagram, try this, go to Instagram and just start watching surfing videos. I don’t care if you like surfing, just start watching surfing videos and watch the whole video. Right. Mm-hmm. You then go look at your feed and you’re gonna see all surfing videos.

[00:42:55] Brad: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[00:42:56] Darren: It’s gonna feed you what it thinks you’re gonna like. Mm-hmm. Because it wants you to [00:43:00] stay. 

[00:43:00] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:43:01] Darren: So if I start watching, um, how amazing Joe Biden is videos, I’m gonna just see how amazing Joe Biden videos or how bad the Republicans are videos Yeah. Or how bad the Democrats are videos.

[00:43:11] Darren: Yeah. You’re just gonna keep getting that and then you just keep getting inundated. And then you get this great divide where you have these people over here and these people over here who are like, eh, I hate you. Right. And it’s just some of ’em are saying it than others, obviously, on both sides. Mm-hmm.

[00:43:27] Darren: Right? So anyway, I, these kids are seeing this glorification of drugs and alcohol. Especially like you look at my generation, we love to drink. Look at the fricking micro breweries and different types of beers. Yeah, totally. It’s like, dude, like come on man. Like, and then the kids see this I’ll not to wrong with alcohol and then we legalize marijuana.

[00:43:49] Darren: It can’t be that bad. It’s legal. 

[00:43:51] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:43:51] Darren: Right. And now their, their parents are getting high, so what’s wrong with weed? And then they’re getting high. Right. And then it’s a slippery slope. And I don’t [00:44:00] care what your viewpoint is on Well, marijuana’s not a gateway. It’s not gonna lead to other drugs. Yes, it is.

[00:44:05] Aaron: What’s so far 

[00:44:06] Darren: Yeah. 

[00:44:07] Aaron: That’s the biggest BS statement that I just have to say. I think people, they hear that once and they’re say they’re gonna stick to it because it makes it okay for them to smoke. 

[00:44:15] Darren: Right? That’s right. 

[00:44:15] Aaron: But the statistics, I mean, I, I, I read a study, I think it was a 2003 study, and they said that, uh, something like.

[00:44:22] Aaron: 78% of all drug users started with marijuana. 

[00:44:27] Darren: Yeah. 

[00:44:27] Aaron: Some, something like that. Like do what is the stat where, like where’s the debunk, the myth? Like, 

[00:44:32] Darren: so 

[00:44:32] Aaron: what, 

[00:44:33] Darren: here’s a graph. You tell 

[00:44:33] Aaron: me. 

[00:44:34] Darren: Right? Here’s a graph we’re gonna put up here. I’m gonna send you the graph. Yeah. You guys see this graph here? It shows you in green and blue, um, how much heavy drugs people do and how much, um, marijuana people do.

[00:44:46] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:44:47] Darren: And it’s gonna show you that when they don’t smoke and they don’t drink, they don’t do heavy drugs and they don’t do marijuana. Mm-hmm. Is basically what the study’s proven. 

[00:44:56] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:44:56] Darren: So if you start drinking or you start smoking cigarettes or nicotine [00:45:00] within vaping, it will lead to you doing marijuana and then heavier drugs.

[00:45:04] Aaron: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

[00:45:05] Darren: And the the thing with marijuana, when you’re smoking weed, other drugs are going to come around. 

[00:45:11] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:45:12] Darren: absolutely. You may not. And that’s the concept. Well, I’m not gonna go looking for heroin. 

[00:45:16] Brad: It’ll come looking for you. 

[00:45:17] Darren: It’ll come, it’ll find you. 

[00:45:18] Brad: No, it will, it will though, actually Will though.

[00:45:20] Darren: It’ll be there. You, if you smoke weed and you’re in the weed smoking world 

[00:45:25] Brad: mm-hmm. 

[00:45:26] Darren: Heroin will find you. 

[00:45:27] Brad: Yep. Let’s, 

[00:45:28] Darren: it’s up to you whether you do it or not. And sometimes you’ll do it and not know you’re doing it. 

[00:45:32] Aaron: That’s the 

[00:45:32] Brad: word. That’s crazy. That’s, yeah. That’s, 

[00:45:34] Darren: that’s what’s crazy. That’s 

[00:45:35] Brad: the fentanyl thing comes 

[00:45:35] Darren: in.

[00:45:35] Darren: That’s where the fentanyl comes in. Right. 

[00:45:37] Brad: So let, let’s talk for a second about the, the, the phrase open-minded. Can we talk about this for a second? Sure. The phrase open-minded. Sure. So, ’cause I, I had a huge confusion on this. Mm-hmm. So one, one thing that I’ve come to realize is that in looking back at when.

[00:45:51] Brad: I was using drugs, so I smoked weed, tried a couple other, other things like did like psychedelic mushrooms and, and it like that. But it was like once, once I [00:46:00] started something, it was like I, all of a sudden I became very open-minded, which is like a, a good thing. Mm-hmm. I’m saying that sarcastically with air quotes.

[00:46:07] Brad: Right. I became open-minded then to other drugs and I saw a lot of my friends follow that exact same route. Right. Like started smoking weed in high school and then all of a sudden I go visit them when we’re both in college three years later or like juniors in college and the dude’s got freaking DMT in his bedroom.

[00:46:23] Brad: He’s like, he’s got DMT, he’s doing what is A-D-T-D-M-T. Uh, it’s like a, it’s like a, it’s a very, 

[00:46:30] Aaron: you know what dmt, could you explain? 

[00:46:31] Brad: It’s a hard hallucinogenic No, DMTs. A very Oh, like ecstasy? No, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s not really like a club drug. It’s like it boom. You’re like, 

[00:46:41] Darren: I probably know it by a different name.

[00:46:43] Darren: Okay, 

[00:46:43] Aaron: okay. 

[00:46:43] Brad: Yeah. So anyways, he, it like comes in a wax. He’s like smoking that. And then we go out to, to, like, we just go out. I didn’t drink at the time, but we went out to bars and whatever. And he’s got a bag of cocaine with him. He’s doing coke out at the bars. Like every, every hour he is gotta go into the bathroom and do coke.

[00:46:57] Brad: I’m like, geez, what happened to this guy? [00:47:00] It was like just smoking. So you started smoking weed with the 

[00:47:02] Aaron: guy? 

[00:47:03] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:47:03] Aaron: Yeah. 

[00:47:04] Brad: It was just smoking weed in high school. It, it’s just like, just Wow. Just a joint. Right. And then now all of a sudden he’s like a hardcore drug user, right. Every day. And also weed every day as well.

[00:47:14] Brad: And that’s 

[00:47:14] Darren: your open-minded. 

[00:47:15] Brad: Yeah. So all of a sudden I’ve observed people become, like, they start with weed and then that makes them very open-minded, which we’ve all been told it’s a good thing. Be open-minded, 

[00:47:25] Darren: try things 

[00:47:25] Aaron: out. 

[00:47:26] Brad: Just, just give it a try. Okay. You never know what could happen. Right. It’s like, yeah.

[00:47:29] Darren: Well now you have the ketamine stores around. I, if you’ve seen these, ketamine is like a hallucinogen. It is a hallucinogen. Yeah. You can go into these different clinics and they’ll sit you down and they’ll dose you with ketamine and you can have a safe trip. 

[00:47:42] Aaron: Yeah. I, I, I know about that. Uh, I know, know someone, uh, who I know who at the clinic, like a medical doctor, 

[00:47:50] Darren: it’s 

[00:47:50] Aaron: giving out.

[00:47:50] Darren: Ketamine 

[00:47:51] Aaron: says, yeah, here you go. This is, this is for you. And a medical doctor will prescribe it as like a thing to do, to deal with whatever, whatever issues. Yeah. Like not a, not a [00:48:00] place to even have a trip. It’s like this is a medically whatever thing that you should take to whatever make you feel better.

[00:48:04] Darren: Right. 

[00:48:05] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:48:05] Aaron: In a medical clinic. 

[00:48:06] Brad: Crazy. 

[00:48:06] Darren: Well, one thing I’ve noticed, just. From my training and studies as a subject. Yeah. Is that when a person does something they shouldn’t do? 

[00:48:13] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:48:13] Darren: They’re going to continue to do things along that line to make it okay for having done it. 

[00:48:17] Brad: That’s right. 

[00:48:18] Darren: They’re justifying what they’ve done.

[00:48:20] Darren: Right. 

[00:48:21] Brad: The harder drugs make the weed. Okay. 

[00:48:24] Darren: That’s right. 

[00:48:24] Brad: Because it’s like, 

[00:48:25] Darren: well, I already did the weed’s. We weed, it’s only weed and now it’s only a little bit of heroin, eh? It’s, and now you do a little bit of heroin, eh? It’s only a little bit of crack. I’ll give you an example, a real life example. I’ve just found out a FA few months ago that my brother was hooked on heroin for the last year and he was calling me up and this kid was doing great.

[00:48:43] Darren: At one point he had over a hundred, 250 apartment buildings. Like he was rocking it. And then, yeah, he was a multimillionaire. Very well to do, and then his wife left him and he just crashed and burned. Lost all the apartments and was living in his truck. I didn’t know he was living in his truck and he was calling me [00:49:00] for money and like, Hey Darren, can I borrow some money?

[00:49:01] Darren: My alternator’s broken. I had no idea. So I found out that he’s on heroin. 

[00:49:06] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:49:07] Darren: I’m like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, anyway, so I finally like got him to come to his senses. Mm-hmm. But what also helped him was he got into a car accident. 

[00:49:17] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:49:17] Darren: So when rear ended him, and he was almost paralyzed and he was in the hospital and they wouldn’t let him have drugs.

[00:49:22] Darren: So he ended up getting clean. 

[00:49:23] Brad: Forced. Forced, forced. Yeah. 

[00:49:25] Darren: Forced. Well, 

[00:49:25] Brad: they’re not gonna be like 

[00:49:26] Darren: forced heroin, 

[00:49:26] Aaron: sir. 

[00:49:27] Darren: In your, 

[00:49:27] Aaron: in your hospital. 

[00:49:28] Darren: His friends are coming in. But given heroin 

[00:49:30] Brad: states, they will, some, 

[00:49:31] Darren: some states, some states they’ll keep you high, 

[00:49:32] Brad: they’ll keep you 

[00:49:33] high, 

[00:49:33] Darren: they’ll keep you high. They’re like, well, because what happens is you go through some major withdrawals.

[00:49:38] Darren: Yeah. And he was telling me, I’m like, Derek, like how did this happen? Like, I wanna know where did this happen as well. It started with just smoking a little weed. And then the next thing you know, like he goes, but I never in, I never injected a needle. I’m like, wow, good for you. Right. He goes, but you know, you just start smoking a little heroin and then next thing you know, you’re like, you [00:50:00] get this high and you have to have the high.

[00:50:02] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:50:03] Darren: You can’t live without that high. He goes, he goes, there was a point where it was about a two to $300 a day habit, and then I weaned it down to about a $50 a day habit where I could get $50 of heroin and l keep me high throughout the entire day and sustain me from getting sick. He could still function, he was still working, but he was not sick.

[00:50:22] Darren: Mm-hmm. And that’s what’s happening. That’s, 

[00:50:24] Aaron: wow. 

[00:50:25] Darren: You get stuck in this cycle and you’re just trying to survive. Mm-hmm. 

[00:50:28] Aaron: You’re 

[00:50:29] Darren: just trying to keep alive. And the shit that he saw going on around him, um, the prostitutions, the other drugs, the crime. 

[00:50:37] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:50:37] Darren: Like he would have to steal shit. Like he was telling me how they would literally, he would park his car out in front of a supermarket.

[00:50:43] Darren: His friend would go in and steal 20 or 30 stakes, and then they would drive ’em to the local restaurants, and the restaurants would buy them. 

[00:50:52] Brad: Oh wow. 

[00:50:53] Darren: And the restaurants knew that the scam was going on. Of course. That until they got their stakes and they knew the restaurant owners that would buy there and they’d give him 50% of whatever the [00:51:00] sticker was.

[00:51:01] Darren: So they’re grabbing the, the most expensive steaks they can. And their steaks like this is, 

[00:51:05] Brad: yeah. 

[00:51:05] Darren: He’s stealing steaks at a supermarket. 

[00:51:07] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:07] Darren: I’m like, Derek, you were driving a Maserati two years ago. 

[00:51:11] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:11] Darren: You had a 9,000 square foot bedroom like home with like a six car garage. You had over $3 million in cars and you’re stealing stakes.

[00:51:21] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:21] Darren: Like what the hell? 

[00:51:23] Brad: It was just a little bit of weed. 

[00:51:24] Darren: It was just a little bit of weed. 

[00:51:25] Brad: Mm-hmm. Because 

[00:51:26] Darren: his friends were all getting high. 

[00:51:28] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:51:28] Darren: And he was hanging out with them and they started smoking weed. 

[00:51:30] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:30] Darren: And then one of those joints was laced with heroin, or one of those joints was laced with fentanyl.

[00:51:35] Darren: And now he’s like, oh wow. He gets that fentanyl or heroin high. 

[00:51:38] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:38] Darren: And then he is like, oh, I need more of that. I need more of that. And next thing you know, that’s all you’re doing. You’re not doing anything else. 

[00:51:45] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:45] Darren: You’re living for the high. That’s what I was doing. I was, you know, I was in fifth, sixth grade, but to a smaller extent, I wanted to get high.

[00:51:53] Darren: I wasn’t heroin. I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t that bad. Luckily I pulled out. 

[00:51:58] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:51:59] Darren: I went [00:52:00] back to Dham and I ran into some of my old friends, ’cause I kind of got my brother and I got him into my mom’s house. 

[00:52:05] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:52:06] Darren: She’s now taking care of him and we went, we went shopping to get him some clothes and we ran into this kid we grew up with.

[00:52:12] Darren: He’d been in jail for, since I had left for over five years. 

[00:52:16] Brad: Wow. 

[00:52:16] Darren: He has, he killed somebody in a car accident. He was drunk driving and he killed a man. He was hooked on meth and heroin. Like, oh. Like this is, this is my, my, like, we were really close friends. 

[00:52:28] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:52:28] Darren: Right. I actually got him to smoke weed.

[00:52:31] Darren: Right. He came over my house. Oh, 

[00:52:33] Brad: wow. 

[00:52:33] Darren: Well, I didn’t get him. He came over my house and I’m getting high. 

[00:52:36] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:52:36] Aaron: right, right. But that’s, that’s how, 

[00:52:37] Darren: and he’s like, lemme try that. 

[00:52:39] Brad: Yep. 

[00:52:39] Darren: Right. There it is. Boom. Now here he is. 

[00:52:42] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:52:43] Darren: However many years, 30 years later, something like that. So it’s this. I don’t know if I answered your original question about 

[00:52:50] Aaron: was it 

[00:52:51] Darren: about the, the one, the one minute of how do you tell a kid, what would I tell a teacher first thing?[00:53:00] 

[00:53:01] Aaron: We’re past that one. 

[00:53:02] Darren: I was timing. That was only one minute. Right? That was 

[00:53:05] minute. 

[00:53:05] Darren: We 

[00:53:06] Aaron: were No, we were talking about what’s the, the debunk, the just the weed, the weed’s, not the gateway drug. Right? Mm-hmm. 

[00:53:11] Yeah. 

[00:53:11] Aaron: It’s that like the thing. So anyway, 

[00:53:13] Brad: the thing that made me wonder about that is I, so I, I love the X platform.

[00:53:17] Brad: Like I, I, I don’t go on it very often ’cause I, I just find myself scrolling ’cause I’m interested in stuff that’s happening. 

[00:53:22] Darren: It sucks you. Right. But 

[00:53:23] Brad: yeah, definitely for sure gets my attention. Also, I love reading. It’s not like a lot of video and I just like reading the short things. 

[00:53:28] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[00:53:29] Brad: But I, so I get, I, I’m a pretty right wing guy, but, so I get fed a lot of those accounts.

[00:53:34] Brad: I’m in the echo chamber for sure. I get, I see everything from Elon. Mm-hmm. You know, of course. But I, I saw in one of these accounts that they, one of these, uh, like conservative account that I usually agree with. Almost everything they’re saying. They said something about, um, basically they are claiming that weed being a gateway drug is false.

[00:53:53] Brad: And I, like, I don’t actually usually comment, but I had to, I was like, Hey, this is wrong. I was like, there are statistics that debunk [00:54:00] this, that it is absolutely a gateway drug. And I had to have 10 comments from other people who all follow the account. I went and looked who are all in agreement with that.

[00:54:09] Brad: So the, my point in saying that is this is not a, a even a partisan thing. Mm-hmm. This like, this is a human race level. Like all of Amer, at least all of America. I don’t know how it’s in other, it’s probably the same in other countries. Sure. Or it’s some version of it. But this is like an all everyone issue.

[00:54:25] Brad: Like it a false 

[00:54:27] Darren: it’s 

[00:54:27] Brad: date. M 

[00:54:28] Darren: it is. And you have to kind of like pull the string on this. Where is this coming from? Who’s promoting? Oh 

[00:54:32] Brad: God. 

[00:54:33] Darren: The legalization of weed. Like why? Uh, I’ll give you an example. I was in, I was in Vermont. I 

[00:54:37] Aaron: know one, I know one group. 

[00:54:39] Darren: Go ahead. 

[00:54:40] Aaron: Oh, the SOLs Foundation. 

[00:54:41] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:54:41] Darren: Right. Open 

[00:54:42] Brad: Open Society.

[00:54:43] Brad: Open Society Foundation. 

[00:54:44] Darren: I think now, now start looking at it this way as well. Right? That’s I was, I was in, it’s a huge funding source. Yeah. I was in Vermont, and Vermont was trying to pass legalization a couple years ago. 

[00:54:55] Aaron: Mm-hmm. They lost. 

[00:54:55] Darren: Mm-hmm. They didn’t get it passed. But I’m talking to, I’m talking to the governor’s office people.

[00:54:59] Darren: I’m [00:55:00] talking to the highway safety people. I’m talking to the, um, the, the state police, and they’re all saying, where is all this money coming from? How is there hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing for legalization of marijuana? That’s 

[00:55:11] Brad: right. 

[00:55:12] Darren: Being dumped into Vermont. Mm-hmm. This tiny little nowhere state.

[00:55:15] Brad: That’s right. 

[00:55:15] Darren: That has not that many people. 

[00:55:17] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:55:17] Darren: Why so much attention on Vermont? Well, one of the main reasons it has 

[00:55:20] Brad: like three electoral college seats. 

[00:55:21] Darren: I, right. It’s like 

[00:55:22] Brad: tiny. Yeah. 

[00:55:23] Darren: But why, and well, one of the reasons is people view Vermont as this holistic, organic world of clarity and cleanliness.

[00:55:30] Darren: You’re right. And beauty. 

[00:55:30] Brad: You’re right. 

[00:55:31] Darren: And if we can get them, well, yeah. We scared, so. 

[00:55:34] Brad: Right, 

[00:55:34] Darren: right. Then we can get more people to adopt this, right? Mm-hmm. So that was part of it. But then you start pulling the string on like, where is this money coming from? Yes. Definitely getting the source foundation, but you’re also have to look at the tobacco industry.

[00:55:46] Darren: Tobacco industry has been huge in America since the forties. 

[00:55:49] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:55:49] Darren: Huge, huge. Like maybe mid thirties. And then it spiked in 1954 to, um, I think it was 54 that had like over 60% adoption of adults smoking cigarettes. [00:56:00] And then it started going down, down, down. And then it crashed. 

[00:56:03] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:04] Darren: Like in the nineties.

[00:56:05] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:56:05] Darren: People just like you’ll die. 

[00:56:07] Brad: Yep. 

[00:56:08] Darren: But just prior to that 

[00:56:10] Brad: mm-hmm. 

[00:56:11] Darren: There was a senate hearing of scientists telling us how safe cigarette smoking was. 

[00:56:18] Aaron: Hmm. 

[00:56:19] Darren: Promoting, and this is in like 95, 96. So you’re kind of gotta look at this. Like we know that you can take people that know that it’s not true and buy them and get them to communicate a certain viewpoint.

[00:56:31] Darren: Of 

[00:56:32] Brad: course. Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:32] Darren: Yeah. Yeah, of course. Mm-hmm. So you have to try to figure out, they’re trying to make it safe, make people think it’s not that bad, it’s all natural. So we can get adoption so we can get, ’cause once you have national marijuana legalization, now you have production. Look at all the tobacco farmers and all the land they own and all the production that they could do with marijuana.

[00:56:53] Darren: And then distribution. They’re getting their cigarettes into every single gas station. Walmart corner store. That’s true. 

[00:56:59] Brad: That’s 

[00:56:59] Darren: [00:57:00] true. Overnight. Oh, they have those routes like cigarettes 

[00:57:03] Brad: with weed, you mean though? 

[00:57:04] Darren: Yes. They have those routes all set up. Packaging. They’re like, boom. 

[00:57:09] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:57:09] Darren: turn that on. Just, you 

[00:57:11] Brad: just changed the filler.

[00:57:11] Darren: That’s all. It’s boom. Now you have weed everywhere and all these little mom and pop shops. Mm-hmm. All these people that think they’re gonna make millions of dollars 

[00:57:18] Brad: gone. 

[00:57:19] Darren: Gone. Yeah. That’s overnight. Yeah. Because you can buy it 

[00:57:20] Brad: at Wawa. Mm-hmm. 

[00:57:21] Darren: Gone. You go to Wawa. 

[00:57:22] Brad: Wow. 

[00:57:23] Darren: Right. They’re all, all gone. They’re all of them are dead.

[00:57:25] Darren: Right. And then Big Tobacco now owns the industry again. And like, thanks guys for your help with us legalizing and making all the money peace out. Right? 

[00:57:33] Mm-hmm. 

[00:57:33] Darren: And that’s what’s gonna happen. And hopefully not. I think, I think the world is becoming somewhat aware, like we, we won last year in Florida. 

[00:57:39] Brad: Yeah.

[00:57:40] Darren: They’re gonna fight again the next time there’s election and it’s gonna be even harder this time. 

[00:57:44] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:57:44] Darren: Right. And now you’re getting a lot of both people on both sides of the aisle trying to legalize. 

[00:57:48] Brad: Yep. 

[00:57:49] Darren: Even the president’s mentioned some stuff on it. Yeah. So it’s like, anyway, regardless of legalization, I think if we just take a step back and look at this, [00:58:00] if you know what weed is and what weed really does to you, it doesn’t matter if it’s legal, right?

[00:58:04] Darren: Alcohol’s legal. Yeah, 

[00:58:05] Brad: that’s right. 

[00:58:06] Darren: Alcohol’s a drug. Alcohol can kill you. Mm-hmm. I have friends that have died from alcohol. 

[00:58:10] Brad: Mm-hmm. Yep. 

[00:58:11] Darren: They didn’t drink so much alcohol that they dropped dead. No. They got in a car. 

[00:58:14] Brad: Yep. 

[00:58:15] Darren: Right. I have a friend that wasn’t even drunk and he got run over by a drunk driver.

[00:58:19] Brad: Oh my God. 

[00:58:19] Darren: Mm-hmm. In front of 40 people. Like literally this drunk driver just hit him and dragged him and kept on going. I don’t think he knew he hit him. 

[00:58:27] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:58:27] Darren: The guy was so, I don’t think he knew that he ran this kid over. 

[00:58:30] Brad: Yeah, 

[00:58:30] Darren: right. It was late, dark, whatever. Right. So it’s like, it doesn’t matter, in my opinion, I’m not gonna.

[00:58:38] Darren: Focus my attention on the politics of this. 

[00:58:40] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:58:41] Darren: I’m gonna focus my attention on the proper education because that’s where we can actually make a difference. 

[00:58:45] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:58:45] Darren: If a kid is properly educated and knows what drugs really are and what really they really do to them, they can make self informed decisions.

[00:58:51] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:58:52] Darren: They can think they’re not stupid. Stop treating. That’s right. 12 and 13 year olds like they’re idiots. 

[00:58:59] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:58:59] Darren: They’re [00:59:00] fricking smart. They know what’s going on. Mm-hmm. They’re just being pushed in a direction ’cause they don’t have the other data. Mm-hmm. And they don’t have a game. 

[00:59:10] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:59:10] Darren: With 

[00:59:11] Brad: Yeah. And any, anyone who has enough data withheld from them will appear stupid.

[00:59:15] Brad: Right. For someone who has all the data. 

[00:59:16] Darren: Right. 

[00:59:17] Brad: You’d be like, how do you not know that? That’s the, that’s how do you not know 

[00:59:20] Darren: be we? And we’ve all question, we’ve talked to people on topics where we’re like, you really think that? That’s your viewpoint. 

[00:59:27] Yeah. 

[00:59:27] Darren: And you’re like, interesting. And you can go and yell at them and call them stupid, or you can just give them the proper data and say, Hey, look, here’s the science, here’s the research.

[00:59:36] Darren: Make up your own decision. 

[00:59:37] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[00:59:38] Darren: Or, Hey, look, here’s a video, like Drug Free World has a great video. It’s a documentary of drug addicts 

[00:59:43] Brad: mm-hmm. 

[00:59:43] Darren: You know, that have come out of rehab and tell you what the drug did to them. 

[00:59:46] Brad: Yeah. 

[00:59:47] Darren: These are real people with their stories. There’s enough of those around where a kid can go, Ooh, I didn’t know that.

[00:59:53] Darren: I didn’t know that. If I smoked weed, I could potentially be hitting heroin. Or taking 

[00:59:58] Aaron: and rubbing from your mom or [01:00:00] whatever. 

[01:00:00] Darren: Right. Yeah. Like stealing stakes. 

[01:00:03] Aaron: Yeah. Some stakes 

[01:00:04] Darren: to buy your heroin. 

[01:00:05] Aaron: So there’s 50, there’s a 

[01:00:06] Darren: 2-year-old man, 

[01:00:07] Aaron: there’s a, there’s a, an invented curriculum by this gentleman’s wife’s mother.

[01:00:13] Darren: Oh, wow. 

[01:00:14] Aaron: That I wanna share with you. Yeah. Yeah. This 

[01:00:15] Darren: is 

[01:00:15] Brad: great. Okay. This is great. 

[01:00:17] Aaron: Uh, it’s a trivia game. 

[01:00:18] Darren: Mm-hmm. 

[01:00:18] Aaron: Okay. And what you do is you take, um, a mugshot of a person. Who went into prison for meth or for something, and you show just a picture to a, a child or, or a, a teenager or whatever, and you say, how old is this person?

[01:00:35] Brad: You don’t let ’em see the age. 

[01:00:36] Darren: Wow. 

[01:00:36] Aaron: And they say, oh, wow, they look like 42, 16, 

[01:00:40] Brad: get outta 10, 

[01:00:41] Aaron: right? Like, 

[01:00:41] Brad: yeah. Or 

[01:00:42] Aaron: 24, like, like whatever it is, right? So like you, you do the mugshot and you say like, how old is this person? And you go, oh, they went in there for meth. They went in there for this and this is what, um, uh, Ashley’s mom did with her.

[01:00:54] Aaron: And then she didn’t take any drugs. Yeah. 

[01:00:55] Brad: I 

[01:00:55] Darren: want this. 

[01:00:56] Brad: My 

[01:00:56] Aaron: wife has never done. You just take like, I think we could and we can make an app or something. Like, let’s do it [01:01:00] mugshot find, right? Like, dude, you should make an app. Seriously. 

[01:01:02] Brad: Guess the age. 

[01:01:03] Aaron: Check this out. And they’re like, dude blows out in 20 minutes.

[01:01:05] Aaron: You know 

[01:01:05] Brad: what I mean? Yeah, 

[01:01:06] Aaron: dude. But like real mugshot. Real mugshot, real people. ’cause it’s public record. Dude. It’s public record. 

[01:01:10] Brad: Could be rebuilding the app over the 

[01:01:12] Aaron: weekend. 

[01:01:12] Brad: Let’s do it. It’s going live on Monday. 

[01:01:14] Aaron: Dude, I think this could be an amazing thing for this red, red, like, oh, absolutely. Take 10 minutes.

[01:01:17] Aaron: Okay, everybody, and then you take, 

[01:01:19] Brad: could you imagine non-drug? How, how does this work? Say they’d be like, oh. 23 or, or you know, like, like, eh, 37 20. Like 

[01:01:28] Darren: Yeah. Yeah, dude, I love it. 

[01:01:29] Brad: Insane. 

[01:01:29] Darren: And we just keep adding mugshots. 

[01:01:30] Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You scrape, you just scrape mugshots and just throw in more mugshots. Dude.

[01:01:35] Darren: I’m in, 

[01:01:35] Aaron: dude, honestly. So 

[01:01:36] Darren: I wanna, I wanna get on the ground for, on this. We should, we 

[01:01:39] Brad: should, we should do, 

[01:01:39] Darren: I would like to brand this with my nonprofit. 

[01:01:42] Aaron: I think we, we can launch it. Let’s, how much that is, is if we can put something good together, we’ll just non-profit contribution, 

[01:01:47] Darren: put, there’s an I, uh, an AI app builder called Lovable, and you could literally just say, build this app.

[01:01:53] Darren: Here’s my photos. 

[01:01:54] Brad: Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:01:54] Darren: And then we’d have to do some coding stuff on the backend and publish it. But 

[01:01:57] Brad: gr can write it. 

[01:01:58] Aaron: But that, I think that would be so good [01:02:00] for, for students, dude. Like in class. Okay, guys, here you go. I 

[01:02:02] Darren: think it’s genius. 

[01:02:03] Aaron: Boom. Okay, good. So 

[01:02:04] Darren: thank you. 

[01:02:04] Brad: By the way, this, by the way. Is how Facebook was launched.

[01:02:08] Brad: That’s true. If you remember 

[01:02:09] Darren: Wow. 

[01:02:09] Brad: Comparing photos of people. 

[01:02:11] Darren: This is good. 

[01:02:11] Brad: Just anyway, 

[01:02:12] Darren: so we have to cover with the monetization. 

[01:02:14] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:02:14] Darren: Maybe little ads. 

[01:02:15] Brad: We’ll have to, we’ll have to, we can turn, we can, 

[01:02:17] Darren: we sell ads, sell the pharmaceutical 

[01:02:19] Brad: sell. We turn a non-profit into a for-profit. 

[01:02:21] Darren: That’s right. Just kidding.

[01:02:22] Darren: We can sell ads to the pharmaceutical industry. I’m kidding. Oh, geez. Okay. 

[01:02:28] Brad: That’s fine. That’s a good one. 

[01:02:30] Aaron: Okay, so, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna end off pretty soon, but I wanna say, I wanna put one thing right? Like, why do you think, right. So, so how, how you, how long have you been a Scientologist?

[01:02:45] Darren: 93. 

[01:02:46] Aaron: 93. So, so 30. 30 some years. Okay. It’s a long time. 

[01:02:50] Darren: Okay. Wow. 

[01:02:51] Aaron: Um, yeah. Congratulations. 

[01:02:53] Darren: My year. 

[01:02:54] Aaron: Yeah. Why do you think the church supports geography world? [01:03:00] All this education educator, it’s like. There’s a lot of funding. In fact, I, I fund some of it. Brad’s fund some of it. Yeah. You fund some of it. I fund some of it we Scientologists and, and the church backs up this so much.

[01:03:12] Aaron: Mm-hmm. Like, why do you think that is? 

[01:03:15] Darren: Well, what’s the purpose of the church? Right. To create a better society. 

[01:03:18] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[01:03:18] Darren: To create a sane world. 

[01:03:19] Aaron: Yep. 

[01:03:20] Darren: And what are the different areas of this world that are having a hard time? One of ’em is drugs. 

[01:03:24] Mm-hmm. 

[01:03:25] Aaron: Oh 

[01:03:25] Darren: yeah. Human rights. There’s a couple other things going on there.

[01:03:28] Darren: So I think that they’re supporting this because they want to actually create a better world in all areas of life. Not just make Scientologists. Mm-hmm. It’s not, it’s not about making Scientologists. Mm-hmm. It’s about making a sane and better world. 

[01:03:44] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[01:03:44] Darren: That we can all live in harmony and not kill each other.

[01:03:46] Brad: That’s right. 

[01:03:47] Darren: And not die from drugs. Right. That’s why I think the church works with many other churches. Not to convert them all to Scientology, but to help the community and make sure we’re all aligned to make a better world. 

[01:03:58] Aaron: Mm-hmm. 

[01:03:59] Darren: Right. [01:04:00] So that’s how I found out about the Drug Free World Program.

[01:04:02] Darren: They came to my church and they said, Hey, here’s this program. Now we’re looking for volunteers. And I was like, oh, that could be fun. I have a lot of history with drugs. I could probably read some people. And that’s when I started going and talking to kids. And that whole story began. 

[01:04:16] Brad: Wow. 

[01:04:16] Darren: And then here I am, you know what?

[01:04:18] Darren: 20, I think it was, I think Drug for World started 18 years ago. 

[01:04:21] Aaron: Mm. 

[01:04:22] Darren: So I’ve been literally, what, since the first Drug educator Kit got shipped out, I was like, this is what I’m gonna start talking about. 

[01:04:28] Brad: Wow. 

[01:04:29] Darren: Prior to that, I was doing a thing called Drug Free Marshalls, where we would go and get kids to swear to be drug free, and we’d give ’em a little drug free Marshall Pan.

[01:04:36] Darren: It’s a little like a sheriff pan that said Drug Free Marshall. That’s 

[01:04:39] Brad: so crazy because the spokesperson for Drug Free world now is named Marshall. 

[01:04:42] Darren: Marshall. Fuck. 

[01:04:44] Brad: Weird, weird irony. 

[01:04:45] Darren: Yeah. Great guy. Super, super cool guy. And 

[01:04:48] Brad: yeah, 

[01:04:49] Darren: the, the amount of impact we’ve had in the NFL and now the NBA, we just did a whole drug free world event with the NBA.

[01:04:54] Darren: Oh, awesome. So we’re now expanding into that too. And the reason we do that is because we [01:05:00] found that the, the most influential people on a young kid’s life are the parents, professional athletes 

[01:05:06] Brad: and professional athletes. That’s right. That’s right. 

[01:05:06] Darren: They look up to ’em. And I’ve talked to a lot of these professional athletes and got them to realize that.

[01:05:11] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:05:11] Darren: Hmm. Like, you know, I’ll go and I’ll do an event and I’m just gonna be a pro athlete there, and I’m gonna look up their Instagram and their Facebook and be like, this guy’s smoking weed on Instagram. Like, 

[01:05:20] Brad: yeah. 

[01:05:20] Darren: I’m like, you have any idea who’s watching your Instagram? 

[01:05:24] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:05:25] Darren: It’s not me. 

[01:05:26] Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:05:27] Darren: It’s all these little kids. It’s not my wife. Yeah, that’s right. Not, it’s not, it’s kids. Yeah. They’re the ones looking at you and you’re getting high. 

[01:05:36] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[01:05:37] Darren: And I tell him about the survey, and this one guy really impacted me, went and deleted them all from his Instagram. 

[01:05:41] Brad: Wow. 

[01:05:42] Darren: And then he posted this whole video on being drug free.

[01:05:44] Darren: And I’m like, wow, dude. Like, yes. 

[01:05:46] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:05:46] Darren: That’s what we need. Like that message. I don’t care if he’s a Scientologist. 

[01:05:50] Brad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. 

[01:05:51] Darren: Right. I care that the kids watching him go, wow, I shouldn’t get high. 

[01:05:54] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:05:54] Darren: Right. Not just like, oh, it’s cool, this guy’s getting high. What’s wrong with weed? Nothing wrong [01:06:00] with weed.

[01:06:00] Brad: It’s a professional career. 

[01:06:02] Darren: Right? No, he’s actually, he did okay. Yeah. You know, but still, it’s, you’d be surprised. No, 

[01:06:06] I’m 

[01:06:06] Brad: saying to the people who are 

[01:06:07] Darren: Oh, who are doing that. I mean, yeah, you do. What happened with me, you just crash and burn. You don’t care anymore. Like, I barely skated through ninth grade.

[01:06:14] Darren: Like I could have aced that. 

[01:06:16] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:06:16] Darren: But I was high every day. 

[01:06:17] Aaron: Yeah. Yeah. And, and some people, like I, I just listened to a podcasts actually yesterday. About a guy, uh, dock something. He’s a top. He won the 1986 World Series and the guy was actively like on heavy, heavy drugs while he won. 

[01:06:30] Darren: So he played for the Mets?

[01:06:31] Aaron: Uh, yes. 

[01:06:32] Darren: Yeah. ’cause he beat the Red Sox bill. Bill Buckner in first base. 

[01:06:36] Aaron: Yeah. So 

[01:06:36] Darren: the ball went, threw his legs and 

[01:06:38] Aaron: Dwight Dock something. This guy. 

[01:06:40] Darren: So 1986 World Series is a very sore spot for all Red Sox fans. Don’t worry about Aaron’s comments on this. 

[01:06:47] Aaron: Which, he’s a pitch, he’s a pitcher. Okay. No, but listen, check this out.

[01:06:50] Aaron: That guy, if you listen to the Soros on a podcast, um, uh, uh, Jimmy Jimmy’s podcast, if you check it out, the podcast, he’s the guy’s talking about it. But he won the World Series [01:07:00] and immediately afterwards he went to go to the drug dealer, because that’s what he always did after the game. 

[01:07:04] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:07:05] Aaron: He got high.

[01:07:06] Aaron: He literally like OD’ed. 

[01:07:08] Brad: Wow. 

[01:07:08] Aaron: And missed the whole parade. 

[01:07:10] Brad: Wow. 

[01:07:11] Aaron: And he said it like he did not show up to the championship parade ’cause he was so high and he was on the street, he’s like on with a bunch of dealers in like a crack house. And he missed it. And he said, wow. At that point his life started to change.

[01:07:22] Aaron: So it may or may not mess up your professional, a athletic career. So that’s another thing, like I told like, Hey, you took weed. You know, if you smoke weed, you won’t win. You might win. Dude, this guy won the World Series, right? While he was high the day before the day of. Right. But his entire, he was like, that was the worst time ever because he, it was supposed to be with his family.

[01:07:38] Aaron: They blah missing the guy, the pitcher. 

[01:07:41] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:07:41] Darren: Yeah. 

[01:07:42] Aaron: Missing from the game. And he said like, there, that’s like, that was the wake up call. Like, oh my gosh, I missed the most important moment of my like, and then he started turning and he’s been sober now for six years and this. Your life is ruined whether or not you win at the sport.

[01:07:55] Aaron: Right. So it, it, it, it could and likely will mess up your athletic career or your professional [01:08:00] career, but it might not. 

[01:08:00] Darren: Right. 

[01:08:01] Aaron: But it will mess up your, your life, regardless. 

[01:08:04] Darren: Long term. It’s gotta 

[01:08:04] Aaron: mess 

[01:08:04] Darren: up your profession. Right. You don’t hear a lot of stories of people that were like, man, yeah. You know, I was a lonely sales rep, started doing heroin, next thing you know, I’m running the damn company.

[01:08:12] Darren: Right. Right. I’m a millionaire in my Ferrari. You know, you, you don’t hear a lot of that. You know, you know. 

[01:08:16] Aaron: Yeah. You probably never hear probably, but this guy I never heard that you hear is like, yeah. He gets to the top now he’s rich, he gets high and it, it’s, it’s not enough to stop him from winning. Yeah.

[01:08:27] Aaron: But yeah, it’s not like he didn’t get there while he, like he wasn’t high on his ComeUp. Right, right. He started getting high. That’s right. When he was already at the top. Exactly. 

[01:08:34] Brad: It’s Mike Tyson, same thing. 

[01:08:35] Darren: And you’d probably go back and look and someone was smoking weed in the room. 

[01:08:38] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:08:39] Darren: Or someone was doing a line 

[01:08:40] Brad: for sure.

[01:08:41] Brad: Mm-hmm. 

[01:08:41] Darren: For sure. Mm-hmm. You know? 

[01:08:42] Brad: Yeah. 

[01:08:42] Aaron: So, 

[01:08:42] Darren: yeah. 

[01:08:43] Aaron: Awesome. 

[01:08:44] Brad: Great. You got a last question for. 

[01:08:45] Aaron: Yeah, 

[01:08:46] Brad: you do? 

[01:08:47] Aaron: Oh yeah. 

[01:08:47] Brad: You want me to ask it? 

[01:08:48] Aaron: Yeah, you ask. 

[01:08:48] Brad: Okay, great. It’s what 

[01:08:50] Aaron: I know. I know. Go ahead, go ahead, go, go 

[01:08:51] Brad: ahead. Okay, great. Just making sure I, yeah, yeah, because you usually ask it. Okay. What is Scientology in your own words?

[01:08:59] Darren: [01:09:00] Fundamental answers. Literally basic, fundamental truths about life and livingness, 

[01:09:06] Brad: beautiful, 

[01:09:07] Darren: simple things you can learn and use in your life right now to help you be you. 

[01:09:13] Brad: Amazing. Darren, thank you for being here today, and with that, we’re a wrap. 

[01:09:18] Darren: Thanks guys. 

[01:09:19] Brad: Don’t do nothing. 

[01:09:20] I.