Drug Lords & Dead Ends | Shaun Attwood

Helping other people, it puts the brakes on your ego, and it’s good for your soul. And that was the beginning of me turning that clock.   

I just learned that owning my story was the most powerful thing I could do and loving myself in that process.  

I can’t change my past, but all I can do is continue to go into schools and go into prisons like you said as well. When you go into prisons and it really resonates with them, you just come out and you’re driving home and it just feels great.  

Shaun, welcome to the show, brother.  

Thank you for having me on my man. I can’t believe we’ve got so many parallels in our Arizona.  

 

I mean, I’m here in Texas, you’re in the UK, not welcomed back in the United States, but I’m glad technology’s put us together.  

 

Yes, indeed, a bandful eye from America, yeah.  

 

You know, let’s get right to that. In 1997, for me, I got involved in the methamphetamine drug trading. I was introduced to the Hell’s Angels and the Outlaws. At the time, those were biker gangs who were controlling the meth trade, either making it themselves or getting it from the Mexican cartel directly. And, you know, I found just like that, I was now caught between two of the most dangerous organizations in the world, the bikers and the Hell’s Angels and the cartels.  And I’ve seen your story on Sons of Ecstasy. I know the scale of the operation that you built, you built one of the largest ecstasy drug trafficking operations in the world at that time. But we both ended up in the same place, right deep in the game around extreme danger and on the run. And I’m wondering, you know, for you, what was the moment that you realized that you were not playing small anymore?  

 

Well, I was taking the club drug cocktails for so long that it was scrambling my decision making processes. So I started with an experiment through the guy who introduced me to RJ, which was acid Joey by and he hooked up, I think it’s like 500 or 1000 pills out of LA. I’m still working as a stockbroker. This was about 97. And we sold those in one weekend. So I made a decision then as to whether to quit having this office job that’s been this, you know, six o’clock in the morning on the phones all day, or do I want to make money from the party scene.  So that was about 97. And the SWAT team came May 16 2002. So I had about a five year run. And in my mind, it never registered that it’s suddenly gone big. In my mind, I was just getting up and going with the flow every day and living in the moment. And the drugs that scrambled my decision making processes. I didn’t see how big it got all the dangers I was putting myself in, or the harm I was causing society.  

 

You know, for me, things moved really fast. You know, I started as a small time student dealer I was using, I figured out I could sell some to friends and, you know, that would cover my own use. And then from there, it just got so big that I was no longer selling on campus, I was moving product. And I shaved my head, I bought a motorcycle, I dropped out of college, but also I was feeling the pressure, the paranoia from it.  And I had to answer to the bikers. I knew that it was in a very dangerous situation at some point. And I’m wondering, help me peel back your operation, right? Because at some point you were moving over a hundred thousand pills a week, millions of dollars. What did your like day-to-day operation look like at that time?  

 

So at the peak of it was around 1999-2000, as you saw in Sons of Ecstasy when the Gravanos moved in. And an average day for me, you know, I had a million-dollar house on the side of a mountain in Sinvacus on the north mountains of Tucson. Beautiful, most beautiful place I’ve ever lived, a gated, guarded community. Me and my wife would wake up just jumping the swimming pool naked, and have a swim, go and have some Indian food at the Sherry Punjab, I think it was called, something like that.  Then if there was any problems, my right-hand guy, Cody Bates, God rest him, he’s dead now, he would come to the house because we didn’t speak on the phones. So basically, Cody Bates had an apartment that only he knew about where all the money was stashed, and he had all the product. And he just did the rounds, and I just stayed in his house. And if everything went smoothly, if it was fine, if there was problems, then he would come up to the house and say such and such had happened. And we’d discuss how to resolve that. And you know, I had wild men with me, who’s also dead, my best friend from childhood, who was a huge guy, a maniac. And we didn’t have to have wild men beat people up, he would just move in with people who owed us money. If he moved in with you, then within days, your furniture would be getting carried out by Mexicans. There’d be some pimp or some crack dealers in the kitchen, cooking up crack rocks. He’d have striptease girls over, gang bangers, homeless people, 24 seven, nonstop party. It was well, really, he opened the door to me, to the world of all of these gangster people because he made friends with the bikers, he was invited to the clubhouse.  The Aryan Brotherhood offered him the patch. Because of all the work he put in in prison, he told him to fuck off because his grandfather had fought the Nazis, and he wasn’t a Nazi. You know, he was in with the Chicano gangs in Arizona. We had a relationship through a guy called G dog, with me, who were probably the most dangerous people I knew. And then when we put wild men and wild woman in Mexico to pave the way for the operation to come through Mexico, the local said the Mexicans will kill them if they misbehave down there. And when I went down there, the cartel guys are running wild man around in military Jeeps, calling him l o soda bur because of his fighting style. So I was the studious business studies graduate stop broker gone wild. But wild man who was my best friend from childhood, he had red dots in his head when he was a teenager, telling him to hurt people. And he grew really big and strong. He would pick school teachers up and put them in rubbish bins. And the teachers were so scared of him. They had him outside raking leaves with the curtaker. So when we were kids, we’re like, what are we going to do when we grow up? I said, I was going to go to America, make a million the stock market fly you over and get you a job as a wrestler. This is how idealistic I was. And he said he was going to go to prison because he’s got these red dots in his head, telling him to hurt people.  

 

And that’s exactly what happened. He went off to prison. And I went off to America, made a million by my late 20s, flew him over. And things just got more insane from there.  

 

Were you going out every night like doing xDAT at the clubs with clients, customers and friends?  

 

Yeah. In the rave scene in Arizona, there was a number of competing little clicks. In the beginning, when I was still a stopbroker, I’d pull up at Chupa, which was in central Phoenix in this cracked out neighborhood, all these zombie people walking around and stuff. I’d pull up in a twin-turbo Mazda RX7 in Fast and Furious 1 with this Bose surround sound system, pumping this Commander Tom, German Techno, Sven Waff, German Techno. All the ravers would come out and start asking me questions. That’s how they nicknamed me, the Bank of England.  So they would come to me to invest in their party ideas. Because they were competing, they’d fall out from time to time. So they’d come to me and Wildman, and we’d hold court and resolve their beefs. And through this, we integrated them all into my criminal enterprise, which became, at the peak of it, there was about 200 locals working for the criminal enterprise. Now, clients, we didn’t typically party with, but we did party our asses off nonstop, me and my crew. We’d get the job done, go rave, throw rave, get the product sold, and then we’d just party for days and days on end after that.  

 

And for time, I think that you were getting product out in California, and then you figured out that you could go back to across the seas into Europe and find it even cheaper. And at that time, you were moving it through Mexico and across the border.  Because I know that at one point, I’m going now into Nogales and meeting the same, probably the cartel, same people, ironically, and bringing the meth through Mexico.  

 

Yeah, and looking back now at how dangerous that was, I can’t believe we were putting our heads in a line like that. So it was over a five year period, I was getting them locally first, they can only get like 50 to 100.  acid Joey again, he was finding out who they were getting them off, then we’ve traced it to California, I established about three suppliers out of California. And then we started to go through Holland, as we expanded, you know, in Holland, we could get 10s of 1000s at a time. And our route was at the peak of it, we would go from, we had property in Porto Penasco. And then we’d get someone over on Paris, from Mexico City, over to France, and then they get a train over to Holland. And this is before 9 11. So you could put 1000s of pills in your luggage, or in pillowcases in one situation. If you want to be more secure, you can put them in like screwed into computer towers. So that’s how we did it. And then they get the flights back to Tijuana Airport. No, Emma CEO Airport near Tijuana. And then from Emma CEO Airport, we bring them down to Rocky Point. And we had like vehicles, University of Arizona stickers, scuba diving tanks, all this tourist brick a brick, change the smugglers over. And then, you know, in these clean cut university looking vehicles, send them back over the Arizona border from there from Mexico.  

 

You know, so, so before this empire, let’s, let’s sort of peel back. Maybe we can even, for the listeners, even explain how you and I even started. So for me, I went to Arizona State University. It was a first year student. I got involved quickly in student life and in fraternity. And I even ran for my student president in my dorm room. And I really had like a lot of admiration for what I wanted to do. And I was a driven student. And then I met Rick, right? And Rick was a guy that everybody knew on campus. And he would come and help you build a loft in your room. So it doubles the space and you could put a couch below it and hang out. And and I and I hired him to come in and build a loft. And we started to build this, you know, friendship. And he had this reputation of just really knowing everybody. It was like, really, it just was enamored by his ability to to connect with people and be so so valued. And, you know, at a time for me, I had such a need for belonging that I connected with him.  And Rick, you know, quickly introduced me to this mom and pop for what we would describe as a supplier. And then the mom and pop supplier, I slowly was introduced to the bikers and part of those are the Arians that were getting it and controlling it. And once I shaved my head and I got a motorcycle and I was at the, you know, clubhouse, never offered a patch. But shortly after that, started to go through University of Arizona. Same things, bumper stickers and tags and student stickers. And then we go through Nogales and then I’d meet the cartel. And that’s when I mean, for me, then I’m now in a in a meth lab. And when I’m standing in one of these operations, a true meth amphetamine lab in Mexico, that’s where, you know, I knew that I was I was like really in deep.  So for, you know, how did you get started in it? Like, I know you were a stockbroker, came over the United States, right? Started started doing penny stocks. How did it just start with you?  

 

So, the criminal enterprise started when Wildman got out of prison and I flew him over and I put him in a house near the George and Dragon British pub thinking he’d just get a beer with the expats and not getting any trouble. A number of incidents happened there culminating with my aunt calling me at the office saying that the place was headline news.  There was yellow tape around that someone had been shot dead and I need to get my ass up there. So, I went up there, I saw all the camera crews and the people I got, I sketched out, went back to work. I waited until later in the day, went back down then it was all quiet and Wildman was in the living room with a cop and I asked what had happened and what had happened was Wildman had previously rented the place out for crack to some local crack dealers who liked to move around the lot and they were buzzing because he could do a hundred dollar rocking one breath and he moved into their place over the road and they moved into his. Now on the night in question, a couple had come to buy crack but the crack dealers had moved out again, Wildman was home and he sent the female to go and get the crack and the male stayed with Wildman and the male had a gun and he said to him, I’m from England, I don’t know how guns work and the guy got the gun out and said it’s okay, the safety’s gone and he was displaying it and he pulled the trigger and just shot himself in the head and died on the step in front of Wildman and Wildman then moved to the west side with some people from the drug community and he’s with two females and a bouncer, the steroid head guy who looked like a Chippendale dancer claiming he was gangster disciples and no sooner I put the check down for the deposit on the rental, I got a call from the landlady the next day saying Wildman had been evicted and I said why and she said the roommate was seen running through the apartment complex in the middle of the night with plasterboard powder all over his face and Wildman had beat him up and put all these human head size holes in the walls so he was evicted, luckily he had done that so fast I was able to stop the check and then he moved into Rancho Marietta in Tempe where one of the people were behind on the rent payments, I fixed that and that is where we just met everybody, that’s where we met Acid Joey, I was coming there all the time, I think we may have met RJ there, the guys from the quadrangles and like I said Wildman, he would just invite all the homeless people in, Native American street walking, trans sex workers, strip tease girls, Russian mafia, Italian mafia, gang bangers, it was just non-stop and that’s how I met all the people that laid the groundwork for the criminal enterprise and we were still just getting them locally through Acid Joey, then it went from California, then it went to Holland and my SWAT team came May 16th 2002.  

 

It’s just so wild to me that you and I likely were in the same rooms maybe at the same time. And we’re dealing different drugs, which brought, I think, a different lifestyle between meth and X. But for me, I was never really at the top of my own food chain. I was not even close.  And so the one thing that I never had to deal with is the money. How did you move the money? And give us perspective of what kind of money are we talking about, a week, a month? How did you do it? How did you handle the money?  

 

So I have to do talks now to investment banks in London about money laundering, including the boss of HSBC flew out to do a talk with me on it because I couldn’t, I wasn’t allowed to go into China or Hong Kong. And they videoed it and sent it to all staff members in HSBC, because they got in trouble for laundering Mexican cartel money.  So anyway, it was, I built up a network of accounts in the banking and stock market and credit systems. I would fly people from the UK. And I did this over a period of years, where I would build up credit in their names, they would come and I would take them and get cars in their names, sign for houses in their names and apartments, and then fly them back to the UK. And through this network, and also investments in rave clothing music stores, such as swell in Scottsdale, and sounds fresh sounds factory in Tucson. You know, I had funnels to get cash into the banking system. And then once it was into the banking system, it just went through this complex spider’s web of banking and stock market accounts.  

 

That stock market experience, I guess, came in handy.  

 

Oh, absolutely. My business studies degree and my stock market knowledge, they were the foundation of me setting this up just like a corporation.  We had factions, heads of each faction, crime family dinner each month for all the heads of the factions. People think if you’re running a drug ring, you’ve got to be some big, bad, violent gangster type. Perhaps that was the case back in the 70s with Pablo Escobar, but there was a corporate type of person who entered the genre. I was one of those.  

 

what kind of money we’re talking about.  

 

So for Sons of Ecstasy then, the lawyer had to go over and make a calculation of the street value of the drugs and the profits, the amount of money that we just blew through. And they estimated that the profits was at least $5 million and that the product that was sold over the years was in the tens of millions street value.  

 

Wow. For me, I remember, Sean, that the moment I was in that meth lab, watching this thing run with military precision, it was an operation. There were specific people doing specific jobs, the place was armed to the teeth, very quiet. Nobody talked unless they had to.  And it just it moved like a factory. I mean, they were literally not only manufacturing it, but it ran like any other company manufacturing things. And so I was wondering, like, what was going on? Did you ever go into Holland? And how was that operation set up? And if not, tell me when, for me, the major players were Hells Angels, Outlaws, Arians and Cartel. But I know for you, you ran into Sammy the Bull Gravano, John Gotti’s hit man who at least killed 19 people. And he shows up now in Arizona, to help his son, Gerard, right. And now they’re bringing their ecstasy over from New York City from their connections. Tell me about Sammy the Bull and Gerard.  

 

So like I said earlier, then all these little clicks were incorporated into our criminal enterprise.  And they were all local people.  So that started around 9697, where I was still stopped broken, I was invested in the deals.  And then so we had the local scene locked down.  And then the new type of ecstasy dealer that was stepping on our toes, the steroid head, jock cage fighter looking guys appeared around 1999.  You know, in the polyester leopard print shirts didn’t dress like ravers with a dull floundering hearse, you know, shaved at the sides and all that stuff.  We’re like, who the f for these guys.  So my wife at the time, was a woman I’d met through the scene.  She was doing lesbian internet porn when I met her.  She was a bright girl, she’s done a university degree.  And she had a she’s bisexual.  So she had a relationship with a female who was dating one of these new types of ecstasy dealers.  So through the females, I was approached for a sit down a bar called heart five in Tucson.  Because I don’t know who these guys are.  So I get one of my guys, one of the Rossetti brothers to come with me strapped.  And I’m saying to him, I don’t know who they are.  If they try and snatch me just open up on the motherfuckers don’t let them take me.  So I go in with my wife, he kind of like trails us in.  And we’ve had a load of GHB and other drugs and we’re off our faces.  And I’m greeted by two guys once the Spaniard and then this other guy like six and a half foot proper meathead.  And they take us into this VIP area.  And the meathead just yells at everyone to get out of the room, get off the sofa.  And then we sit down on the sofa.  And the deal was, the Spaniard wanted me to work with them.  He’s like English Sean, you’ve got a good reputation.  Why don’t you work with us?  And I said, I’ve got a good reputation because I get my pills from Holland.  We were using tests, testing kits from dance safe.  Back then you could get them and you know, it goes purple blue with 125 milligrams of MDMA and clay, which a good pill should be like these beige presses.  That those guys pills were colored pills.  So I was suspicious often so I said, I’m not going to be, you know, pushing any of these colored pills like what you guys have got.  And then the meathead just jumps off the sofa.  Who the hell do you think you are disrespecting our pills?  One call to Samina Bull.  And we can have you taken out to the desert.  And the Spaniard is like, calm down, calm down to this guy.  He’s apologizing to me.  He’s a bit of a hothead.  English Sean.  You know, don’t don’t don’t pay any attention.  And the conclusion was that we weren’t I wasn’t gonna get in bed with those guys.  And I said to them, look, there’s enough room in Arizona, enough demand for us to coexist.  It’s not each other we need to be worried about its defense.  Since you guys came into the clubs, bragging you’re the biggest ecstasy barons in the history of the world, and you’re out there on Front Street doing this.  

 

The cops are coming into the car parks in unmarked vehicles, recording license plates, you got these older dudes coming into the scene saying they’re from out of state they want to buy 1000 pills, you’ve lit the scene up. And you’re bringing the heat.  This is the problem. And you know, that was a accurate prediction because the feds took them out and they took my mates out in the New Mexico Mafia at the same time, as well. Why didn’t learn the lesson I was thinking, right, they’ve eliminated my competition. And I kept at it for a bit. Until I met a woman, it was, you know, we were in love and she was scared of my friends, scared of what I was doing. She taught me out of it.  And I also had a lawyer on retainer. And he had a contact at the the drugs agency. And he said, you know, they were hot for me. And when I watched Sons of Exe, I only found out for the first time, from what the policewoman said, that they put me on hold because Sammy the bullet popped up this big name in the mafia, they would have got me sooner. But they put me on hold. And once they got him all those resources are then targeted at me.  

 

Was here ever a moral tug for you during this?  

 

The moral tug came when I sobered up in Sheriff Joe Piles jail, and a cloud lifted out of my head that I didn’t know was there. And that cloud had been there for over 10 years of drug use.  And when that cloud lifted out of my head, and I was finally sober and realized I was properly sober, I didn’t know I wasn’t out of my mind even when I was sober because I was partying so hard. And I looked back on my life. The first thing I thought was how on earth are you still alive? And then I saw the fellas in the jail, two thirds of Hep C from sharing dirty needles, which was slowly killing them by eating their livers up. About 90% of the guys were injecting heroin. And some of them were dying, and all they cared about was getting the drugs in. It was slow suicide. And it made me realize I was on that road of drug use. It’s a very long road, and this is how it ends up. And I felt ashamed of putting people on that road. And that’s why one of my things now is I go in schools, scare the living daylights out of the school kids with all the stories from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail, the dead rats in the food, the cockroaches, crows at night, the gang violence, the guards murdering people. And I do that as the consequences of drugs in the hope they won’t get involved in drugs and gangs.  

 

Likewise, I’ve got involved in a scared straight program, I’ve gone into the prisons in New Jersey and share those stories. And, and they have young high schoolers come in, you know, and experience what, what jail could look like. And, you know, for me, there was a time where I was, I was always looking over my shoulder, I became really paranoid, because I, I thought now that I was being followed, I knew too much. And I had realized that I really surrounded myself at that point where with people who wouldn’t hesitate to make me disappear, I mean, in a in a blink of an eye.  And the moment really hit me for me where I went to I was standing outside this rundown down house, right outside the outskirts of Phoenix. And there was some drug trading going on, and the room was really tense, right? You have this group of skinheads, another group of the bikers, and a few guys are repackaging the meth now to take it from from the other group. And really, no one spoke unless they had to, they patted everybody down for guns and pushed pushed your waist pants down a little bit, making sure there’s no, you know, wires and things of that nature surveillance. And, and I already had left my gun outside this, you know, house before I had gone in. And when I was much younger, I had a star of David, a Jewish tattoo put on my hip. And I, my heart was pounding. And I remembered this moment where, if these guys see this tattoo, I’m fucking done. Like it’s over. And all I thought about is like, holy mackerel. If things get sketchy. And I, that was a really scary moment for me.  I remember the feeling of being there. And I was just wondering, for you, you know, when, when the game got serious, when you realize your life was on the line.  

 

So there was some scary moments from very early on, which I ignored. So when I was still a stockbroker in Rancho Marietta, now we’ve got established a few different apartments in the various purposes. And one of them who was dealing for me, a guy called Fish called me at the office and said, can you bring wild man and Seth over? Seth’s another big guy who’s dead now as well. Most of my friends from back then are dead.  So I went to look for them and one of the head of the crack dealers in central Phoenix, he had them collecting debts, so I couldn’t find them. So I then drove over to Fish’s and when I got to Fish’s, him and his girlfriend answered the door and his girlfriend was crying and I’m thinking, oh, someone’s done something bad to her and they want wild man to beat him up or something. And I heard this noise coming from another room. I’m like, what’s that? And they were too scared to say anything. So they said, you better go look. So I walked into this room and there was this older Mexican-American guy with this stately silver sweat bag, her, who had met through a house party at wild man’s friend of G dogs, it was his brothers were like, and this guy had a bunch of Mexicans in front of him and on the floor was a guy hogtied with a rockabilly quiff and he was ganked. And when the guy with the silver hair gave the command, the Mexicans, they had cattle prods and they would electrocute this guy and piss was squirt out of his dick and he rocked like a rocking horse and his eyes were almost bulging out of his head. Now, I’ve never seen anything this heavy before in my life. So I’m shitting it. And I’m looking at the silver head guy and he’s smiling at me like this. Welcome to the family smile. So I’m thinking if the, if he thinks I’m afraid this is, I’m going to be a liability, I better put on, you know, a bit of false bravery here. So I’m just smiling back at him saying, looks like you guys have got the situation under control. You know, when I find wild man, I’ll let him know if you need me to send him over or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And then I got the hell out of there and all the way back to the office. That guy’s face was haunting me. You know, I thought it looked like he was heading to be unalived, but what I found out was, well, when I was leaving the property, I said to fish, what’s happened here and fish said, well, that guy on the floors, one of my clients. And as you know, I’m selling product for you and I’m selling product for them. And that guy waited for me to leave and robbed, tried to rob the product. He tried to rob your product. He tried to rob their product. I called you, I called them and they got here first. So that’s what happened. And then why learned later on about a week later on was they held him for ransom. They told his roommate, um, 10 grand, or he’s getting taken out to the desert and the 10 grand was paid and the guy was released, but I didn’t pay any heed, you know, I’m thinking now I’m living like a character in pulp fiction or something, 

 

and it’s like, I found it weirdly exciting because the violence hadn’t been directed at me and the violence was, was never directed at me until when you watch Sons of Ecstasy, uh, Schooly. Now I always thought I had this protective shield. So I’m, I’m here, right? I’ve got all these heads of factions and they’ve got people working underneath them. So if any of the heads of factions, if anything seriously bad happens to them, I’m next, they, my protective shield, and for a few years, nothing bad was happening.  It was all, we were making money and it was all sweetness and light and glitz and glamour and insane parties, but then when Skinner got tricked into going to the nightclub in Scottsdale, Schooly, and I call him Skinner in my book, Party Time, the whole thing’s a trilogy, Party Time, Hard Time, Prison Time. When Schooly got tricked into going to the club in Scottsdale and they took him into the men’s room, they said they were going to buy pills and they took his pills and they took his money and he’s gone and knocked his teeth out. That was when I realized it was getting heavy, and I moved then to Synvacus, the gated guarded community, in North Tucson, because you couldn’t even get up that hill into that road without talking to that guard and he would call the house and let you in. So I felt to a degree that I was safer by moving there.  But there were other situations, scary situations. I mean, every time I went over to the house of G-Dog’s brother, first time I went over there, they had a rocket propelled grenade launcher on the TV, straight out of a Rambo movie. I did a double take looking at that. I’m like, whoa. And they had a little screen showing all the comings and goings on the road. And when I took G-Dog over there a couple of years later, the whole neighborhood was blacked out. And those guys were getting taken out in handcuffs by the feds. And it was headline news that I didn’t even know they were till that night. And then all the mugshots on the news. They said these are the heads of the Arizona New Mexican Mafia, the most violent, dangerous criminal enterprise. They tried to assassinate the head of the Department of Correction around that time. They were assassinating witnesses, trying to assassinate cops, judges, everything. It was, they were really heavy back then. And but people knew we were in bed with them after that arrest. And it kind of like worked in my favor because people were more afraid. They wanted to pay their bills on time.  

 

I hit my breaking point when there was no more pretending. And to your point, the New Mexican Mafia had now started to move in and wanted to deal themselves. And so I was worried that they were going to be cutting out the bikers and trying to now take over the trafficking directly. And I saw some of that start to go on, and I was hearing the conversations. And I didn’t think that I could just fade into the background.  Like, I was caught in between this. And I thought that if I wasn’t here, what year was that? What’s that? What year was that? This is now 1999. And so towards the end of 1999, December of 1999, and I started to decide that if I didn’t make a move, something was going to happen. And so I drove myself down to the University of Arizona in Tucson, where my cousin was. And I remember I went to a movie, I was packing a gun. And then from the movie, I slipped out of a back exit. And he drove me to the airport, where I was going to fly from Tucson to West Palm Beach, Florida. Right before that, I gave him the keys to my Jeep, which had a bunch of other weapons in it. And then when I flew to West Palm Beach, Florida, I checked into rehab, and I was 22 years old at the time.  And I know for you, from the Sons of Ecstasy, that Gerard Gervano talks about the story that, I mean, there was seconds, I think, that they missed you at a club. And he’s carrying a shovel in his trunk, looking to bury you in the desert. Like, for you, when did you know it was over?  

 

So I had no idea that had happened that night. I met Gerard after I was incarcerated. When he appeared in Tower’s jail, we were going to court one night, and the guards chained him to Wildman to see what would happen just as a prank. Wildman’s looking at me, and I’m like, we need to talk to him to find out what tricks the prosecutor’s been pulling on him because their case is running a couple of years ahead of hours. So we, you know, we had to spend all night in the holding cells with Gerard, and we were listening to him, and we got along fine.  And, you know, it was during the incarceration phase that Gerard told me about the crowbar night. So the crowbar gave our central phoenix would go to chill out. I had some people with me, and Wildman with me, Wildwoman, G-dog, Cody Bates. And we’re having a good night, and then it got a bit moody. And I was advised to leave. So we left, and apparently Gerard had a bounty out on me. I think it was like 10 grand, and a strip tease girl had called it in. And I only learned from Sons of Ecstasy that Mike Papa was like the devil on Gerard’s shoulder, saying, you know, fill your dad, if you whack Atwood, it’ll set a precedent. You’ll be filling your dad’s boots as a whacker of men. He’s at a competition. He’s disrespecting you. He’s refusing to meet you. I didn’t even know he wanted to meet me. So Mike Papa’s just feeding Gerard all his BS to try and get him to take me out. And they had Gerard psyched up that night, where they were going to come and snatch me from the crowbar. But it wouldn’t have been an easy snatch. G-dog was always strapped. Wildman wasn’t allowed to be strapped because he was so dangerous. He said he didn’t need a gun, even when he went collecting crack debts for the Colombians in central phoenix. People would pull guns on him, and he’d just go up to their face and say, what are you going to do with that? And just stir it with these crazy eyes. I don’t need guns. They backed down. They’re like, this guy’s a maniac. So it wouldn’t have been an easy snatch. All hell would have brought loose. It would have really escalated into a serious situation. But again, I was completely oblivious. I was high on ecstasy and the gibber juice from RJ. And I just swan out like it was just another night in my life.  

 

You know, for me, even though I went to rehab, it wasn’t just like, you know, turning a switch. I had to first understand how I became this person that I was never meant to be. I had nightmares, still had paranoia from it. I had some withdrawal, obviously, in the very beginning.  And it was as if I had to learn how to be human, and re put myself back into society that started in rehab from other conversations and being vulnerable and drawing new connections with with other people who have gone through something that I had gone through. And I know we talk about a lot of right now, the sensationalism of it and the wild and crazy stories. But you know, that transition was very difficult for me because it was also where I felt that moral tug that what I was doing wasn’t something that I was proud of. And I felt a lot of shame at first. I mean, overwhelming sense of shame. And I’m wondering, what was, what was that transition like for you? How did you know that? What was rebuilding being human again look like for you?  

 

So I think serving six years was the perfect amount of time for me, because it crushed the English Sean persona out of me. And if sick more than six years, I would have started to get a bit too institutionalized. First year, I was still pretty wild. And if they’d released me out, I probably would have gone back to it or attempted an escape to escape the country or something. My second year when I was facing a maximum 200 year sentence, I’ve done several TED talks. And one of them is what facing 200 years taught me about happiness. And I say that it was that moment getting pushed to the brink of suicidal insanity facing 200 years. They’ve stopped my girlfriend from visiting me. She was my lifeline. They charged me with a prescription pill found on the day of the raid. They’d never written prescription next week, which is a classics felony. Codefendants can’t visit codefendants. It’s all to break me down psychologically, criminalized her. There’s dead rats in the food, you know, I’ve lost 20, almost 30 pounds in weight on Sheriff Joe of Piles food. There’s cockroaches crawling over us at night times. My skin is just it’s almost 50 degrees in the summer. There’s a swamp coolant that’s not working. I’ve got all these bed sores and skin infections in this jail. I’m stinking like a wet dog. If I scratch myself because I’m so itchy clumps of soggy skin are just coming off under my nails. I’ve got a pink eye infection, my eyelids down here, yellow pus coming out. And they tell me I’m facing 200 years and I’m like, I can’t do this anymore. I’m just gonna wait for a guard to do a security walk, slash my wrist and just bleed out with the cockroaches. But before I was gonna do it, I want to say goodbye to my family and friends. What I mean by that was last seven photos. I get the photos out of my mum, dad, sister, girlfriend. And honestly, thinking about what my mum’s going to be told, Judd, you know, your son’s just slashed his wrist in the foreign jail, he’s dead. I started crying. I couldn’t burn a thought of putting my mum through that. And I started to but after that, I started to think about the needs of other people. You know, I was a narcissist, head in this just partying my ass off, getting everyone high. That’s all occurred about making money, getting everyone high, getting my friends high. And then I started to think about the needs of the prisoners. You know, a guy went into my cell the next day, he’s got a steel rod in his leg, the screws lose his inagone, he’s got syphilis, hepatitis C, and stomach cancer. So advanced, he’s gonna die in the jail. And I was thinking I was feeling so sorry for myself, I was gonna kill myself, there’s always someone worse off. And seeing all the guys in there for drug offenses, you know, the media lead leads us to believe all the prisoners are really violent, dangerous people, but average arrest in the jail, especially in the lower security levels is like a black kid Mexican kid, 

 

two to five years for weed possession back then, because he was a repeat offender. So I started to help the Mexicans right home in Spanish to their loved ones. The neo nazis the area brother had a problem with that. My cellmate in max security was a chemist. And he was working with a B and he got the green lights for me to continue. I started to read the legal paperwork for the prisoners. My education became my currency. And I started to write down the conditions and my aunt smuggled them out of maximum security visitation, put them on the internet as a blog john’s jail journal. And that’s how my activism began.  But when you’re helping other people, it puts the brakes on your ego, and it’s good for your soul. And that was the beginning of me turning that corner the shame you describe putting my parents through the flying 5000 miles every year to visit me, my dad in court, I start crying when I’m hearing my dad tell the judge, he would trade places with me in the jail. The affection, the harm you cause your family members. My mother had a nervous breakdown. My sister had counseling. All these things are on your mind when you’re looking at it from the sober perspective.  I went on this fantastic journey through literature, read over 1000 books in just under six years a lot philosophy and psychology. And that enabled me to go deep inside myself and address my own trauma and the root causes of why I was taking drugs. And towards the end of the prison. There was a psychotherapist who no one would speak to because the prisoners felt it’s us versus them. If you say anything to him, they’re going to use it against you. But this guy was into Eastern philosophy and neuroscience. And in my book prison time, I document all my therapy sessions with him. And he’s saying, Sean, it’s great you’re reading these things in philosophy and psychology, but come in with quotes you think you can use in your life. And to this day, I credit him setting up this framework whereby now the things I used to think about, they’re all short circuited out of my brain. He’s laid down these new neural pathways and I fall back on the advice he gave me. I’ve reached out to try and get a hold of him to thank him, but I’ve not been successful so far.  

 

It’s amazing how much some of us need to take to crush that ego and that sense of pride. And it’s so true. I found the same thing that helping others not only brought me finally the real sustainable joy that I had been looking for my whole entire life. When I came out of rehab the second time, I started going around and feeding the homeless and handing the women feminine products and men’s socks and trying to find out where more of them were because the more I could help, the more, quite frankly, I felt better.  And I looked for any reason to pay it forward. Now I work with a ministry and speak at some of the jails and work with some men who are coming out, helping them from everything, from building a resume to being able to understand how to interview or even look for jobs. And yeah, it’s the drug lords to dead ends because that’s where it ultimately leads. But for me, the true rehab to your point was not why I was doing these drugs, but why the pain and what was underneath that. And once I got to the root of that, then I was really starting able to show up truly authentic. I was wondering, you mentioned how much you regretted and thanks for really sharing the price you paid. I think that’s such an important message too, because I remember that I heard you once say that dealing begins with the glitz and glamour, but it’s a slippery slide and it’s a hell of a price to pay. And now I can understand what you mean by the price that you paid. You regretted bringing wild man over, wild man ultimately died. Do you still carry that regret?  

 

I think that Wildman wouldn’t have had access to as much product if it hadn’t been for my organization. If we’d just been two ordinary lads in England doing our thing, and he was unlimited. I remember we were on the way to a rave once, Big Bar Lake. I think we had an ounce of meth in the car. And we were with some ravers. We’re all at a good time listening to music. We took some acid. We thought the cops were behind us when they weren’t even behind us. So we’re like, who’s going to eat the drugs? How are we going to get rid of the drugs? Wildman’s like, I’ll eat them. Bam. Whole thing in his mouth. Would have killed a normal person. We’re at Big Bar Lake, which is freezing cold. We’re not Arizona clothes. People are giving me like a winter coat. A Wildman’s sweating, sat there sweating. His eyes almost popping out of his hair because he’s at all this meth sweating. This freezing cold, he would stay up for weeks smoking unlimited amounts of crack and meth. And I believe that contributed to his multiple organ failure which killed him in his 40s.  So we’ve all got to look at our roles in enabling people’s behavior that can lead to their deaths. Most of my male friends are dead from that period of time. But anyway, I did ayahuasca last year. I don’t touch substances at all. I don’t even drink alcohol. I did this in a medicinal setting. And it was extremely intense. And I didn’t even know who I was at one point, but I went to this realm where all my dead friends came and talked to me. I still to this day don’t know if it’s real or not. But I thought whether that plant opened a portal to our dead people. I’ve done that. I’ve been there. And Wildman was like leading the conversation and cracking jokes. And they were all saying they were proud of me, to have a family and baby Ziggy, Ziggy Wilder, named after Wildman and Jen, my partner, and helping all the prisoners through the podcasts and stuff like that. And he said he was still protecting me from above. And that was nice. It really, I have a good feeling to this day about my relationship with him and how it’s continuing, even though he’s dead. He’s still, the spirit is still in me.  

 

You know, it’s so interesting for me, too, the experience was that I went on a plant medicine retreat and also experienced ayahuasca. And, you know, I know the power of forgiveness. And if you don’t forgive, you’re the one really carrying it. Somebody’s not even thinking about you anymore, but you are.  And, you know, forgiveness is like, you know, trying to give somebody, you know, hoping somebody dies, but you’re taking the poise, like all the cliches and all the things in the power. But, you know, there was just something about my parents that I just couldn’t let go and I couldn’t forgive. And, you know, ayahuasca opened that portal and allowed me to heal in that way. So I joined you in that very powerful experience.  

 

And baby Ziggy, Zigmond Wilder, he came out at 10 pounds. He’s not stopped growing. He’s a year and a half. He’s 34 pounds an hour, 50% over the body weight of a normal baby his age.  He’s in three to four year old clothes. He power walks now. He’s just started power walking to the part where the slides and the swings. I would, while I just walked constantly, constantly walked everywhere. And he’s just got all these, he’s got this determined luck of babies. He’s got this determined luck on his face. And all these traits with me and Janet constantly saying, well, man, well, that we saw these traits come out of him.  

 

You know, for me, the ultimate healer was being able to have these conversations. Because for a while, I wouldn’t want anybody to know anything that I did. And, and so I carried it. And, and really, what happened was when I was able to step out in front of that shame, when I was able to own my story, when I was able to say that those moments didn’t define me, and they weren’t a lifetime sentence, and be vulnerable, particularly with another man, and give men the permission because I would go first and say, this is what I this is what I’ve had, this is what’s happened. And this is what I’ve been through. I just learned that owning my story was the most powerful thing I could do.  And loving myself in that process, with compassion and, and lots of grace. And I’m wondering, you know, as we wrap up here, Sean is, is how has owning your story through your your talks, and through your keynotes and TED talks and books and podcasts, and I mean, really, in the incredible work that you’re doing, how is owning your story been your power.  

 

Oh, my goodness. So I was released in December 2007. And I was asked to speak in a school quite soon. And I said I got to get my head straight first, because I was a bit shell shocked after the Arizona Experience incarceration. And it was about a year later, I did my first school talk. And I was pacing like a lion in a cell in a cage at the front of the stage the whole hour, soaked in sweat, this raw, nervous energy crackling off me. And I thought those kids must have think I’m insane. You know, I’m not cut out for this.  And I was in a funk. And then I got an email from the school, like a few days later. And he said that the kids voted me the best talk of the year. And would I like to come back again next year? I couldn’t believe it. And it went from strength from strength from the that helped me with my confidence. And there’s like an energy exchange with the kids. You know, by the end of it, everyone’s on the edge of their seats. And they ask loads of questions. And you just feel that you’ve influenced these people in ways that you don’t know how until years later, I’ll get an email from someone saying I’m backpacking in Indonesia. I’ve just seen you locked up a broad episode on the TV. And it reminded me of the talk you did at my school. I just want to tell you that after your talk, you know, I was in situations with drugs, and I decided not to continue that. And friends of mine have got in trouble since some have ended up dead, some have ended up in prison, etc. And that just feels good in my heart that it’s balancing out the karmic account because I know I harm society. That’s one of my regrets.  Putting people on the road of drug use, I saw what it led to in the jail. I know I have my parents and, you know, I can’t change my past. But all I can do is continue to go into schools and go into prisons, like you said, as well, when you go into prisons, and it really resonates when you just come out and you’re driving home and it just feels great. It’s not like a financial thing. It’s not like, you know, how many followers have you got? How many views have you got thing? It’s just a human level thing that you can look back on, you know, for the rest of your life and be proud of. And I think that’s what’s more important. I think that’s when you’ve got your connection with the universal the most is when you’re talking to people and you’re transmitting your story to them. And they’re taking life lessons or whatever they can from it to adjust their own lives in a positive fashion.  

 

I love that. It’s it’s like, you know, I know that when I do keynotes, part of that keynote, I I’ll say about helping people step out from their shame.  Well, well, who else has been high on meth and caught up in a Mexican drug cartel raise your hand as a semi joke. And nobody usually raises their hand or they’re just laugh. And, and really, it’s it’s I’ll get an email later that I’ll say, you know, I wanted to raise my hand, but I noticed nobody else did. So I didn’t put my hand up. But I wanted you to know that I actually went through that. And your story resonated with me. And it was just like, it’s just like one receiver in the room, and sending out that frequency. And that one connection just just keeps it going, just keeps me going.  

 

Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing man, good on you.  

 

Sean, I can’t thank you so much for connecting with me. We’ll have all your links and everything in the bio so that everybody knows where to follow you and find you and get more interested in you.  But, you know, we’re going to have to do a part two. The part one was our drug lord deadbeat days. And I think our part two is I’m going to have to fly out to the UK and we’re going to do a talk together at a school or a jail. And that’d be a powerful moment because we were in the rooms together at one point and we didn’t know it. And now we need to work together and do it.  

 

Absolutely. That’ll be amazing. We look forward to you coming here because I’m banned from there.  

 

Sean, thanks for your time today. Appreciate you coming on.  

 

Oh take care bro, much love and respect, cheers.