Well, hello ladies and gents. Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com.
Today I've got special guest Phineas on the line.
He messaged me via e-mail couple months back with just a super
inspiring story about how he'd overcome addictions, drug and
alcohol addictions, turned his life around, switched over to a
ketogenic carnivore diet to help mitigate against some of the
issues he's now having with with diabetes.
Just a really inspiring story and I just wanted to bring on
the podcast. I want to bring on the podcast,
dive deeper, figure out his journey, how that looks for him
and just what he's been able to do to overcome all of it.
And I was just blown away. So I wanted to get him on the
podcast, let him share that story, that journey with Young
so that for the delay, sit back, relax and draw the recording
with Phineas. And we are live Phineas.
How are you, brother? I'm good.
Robert, how are you doing? I'm good, man, I'm good.
I'm excited to chat with you. Sent me an e-mail.
I don't know, man. It's probably what, December.
I think you sent that or was it back even before?
That something like that last year.
At some point and you had just this, you weren't trying to like
pitch yourself as a podcast guest or anything.
You're just talking about your story.
And I'm like, shoot, man, I got to get you on the podcast and
dive deeper into this. And you'd been struggling with
addiction, diabetes, all that stuff.
And you've overcome it all with a low carb approach.
So let's build the curtain back, man.
What? What got you what what was the
the trajectory of your life before you switch gears?
Yeah, the reason that I reached out to you is just for some
reason, it just felt on my heart to to do that.
And I said, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm like thinking, I'm going to
figure this diabetes thing out. And then I'm going to go on
Robert's podcast and tell everybody how I did it.
Because what had happened is it was September, September 16th
was when I finally ended up in the hospital.
But for months before that, I had been feeling I've been off.
I was making mistakes both in my personal life and at my jobs,
you know, and I work on vehicles.
And some of the mistakes were dangerous, could have been
dangerous if, if my partner didn't catch me.
I was very forgetful. I was forgetting events, times,
stuff that was going on, stuff for my children.
I was losing weight. I'd lost.
I'd gone from around 2:25 to just over to just under 200 with
for no apparent reason, there was no change in my calories.
There was no change in my diet. And then the what really got me
wondering what the heck was going on was this.
I got this insatiable thirst. I'm 43 by the way, 43 years old
never had any any issues with diabetes before but I got this
insatiable thirst that I that I couldn't get to go away and I
was urinating all night long and my wife says babe maybe you have
pre diabetes because she did the quick Google lookup thing and I
just kind of laughed because I had been.
I got sober off drugs and alcohol in 2016 and about a year
later is when I found keto. I found Tim Ferriss's book,
which he laid out the, the plan for the, the slow carb diet.
And from then I just naturally morphed over to keto.
And so I knew all about, you know, I well, I thought I knew
everything, you know, and all, there's no way, you know, I eat
really well and I had gone into this program of eating cereal at
night, though, so I said maybe. So I got out my glucose tester
in. My fasting glucose was 300.
Pretty high. And I'm going what?
And I've never seen numbers like that in my life.
Of course, of course I had the tester from all the years of
doing keto and self experimentation and whatnot.
So I said I immediately went into a 12 hour fast and I got it
down to like 110, which still to me is high for after fasting for
that long. So I was trying to figure out
what to do. I at that point I knew something
was wrong with my metabolism, but I, I wasn't thinking
diabetes. And then on the at the very next
day at work I had a panic attack and that led me to the hospital
where they took blood and they found ketones and they found
1.3mm ketones and high glucose in my blood were.
They worried about like ketoacidosis or anything and
that's. Not super ketones.
But they probably were worried about then.
Yeah, they were. So they put me on.
I forget exactly what they did in there.
It was all my brain was just like glazed over, man.
I remember. I remember at work, I was, I was
working on something with a drill and I just caught myself.
All of a sudden I was just standing there in this, in this
daze, and I didn't know what to do.
And I knew that I should probably go home because working
with power tools probably wasn't a good idea.
Then that's when the panic set in.
So the hospital told me that I had type 2 diabetes.
They looked at me at A1C, it was 10.1 and they said you have type
2 diabetes. Here's some metformin, you know,
make a appointment with your primary.
Well, my sister, she's two years younger than me in 2007 she was
diagnosed with type 1 diabetes out of nowhere.
No one in our family has it on either side of our family has
ever had a problem with diabetes.
And we've asked these questions since then.
You know, so she talked to her endocrinologist at one of her
appointments and the, and the doctor said, you know what, tell
him to call me, tell him to make an appointment.
I, I feel like, I feel like they're wrong.
I feel like he has misdiagnosed so that she was thinking that I
might have the Latta, the latent adult diabetes or I don't
remember exactly what the acronym stands for, but latent
autoimmune diabetes for adults. I think it is, but when so she
took she did a very extensive labs and she got all the labs on
my pancreas. And when I finally went to the
appointment, she said you're a type 1 diabetic, you you're not
making any insulin. And how?
How much did you weigh at that point?
At that point I was probably down to still around the same
way like 195. But not, I mean, how tall are
you? I mean, you're not, you don't
look overweight. 6 foot. Yeah.
So I mean, you probably were scratching your head when they
were initially saying you were type 2 because you're like, it
just doesn't make sense. No.
And everyone I everyone I told that to said they said that
doesn't make sense too. Yeah.
You know, it's been a weird thing with the doctors, Robert,
like some of the doctors will, will, will just no, you don't,
they're wrong or this person's wrong or that person's wrong and
they'll totally cross you. Even my dentist had something to
say about it. You know, this is how you're
supposed to do diabetes. You're supposed to eat carbs for
breakfast, then you take your medication.
Just it's been crazy. But so she put me on a a long
acting insulin and a short acting insulin.
I should also mention that that since that the hospital I had
not had a carbs and my blood sugar it's it was still higher
than I'd like it to be, but I felt, but I felt like I was able
to. It was about averaged at like
1513150. And the few times that I did try
to have carbs, I remember getting a call we were trick or
treating and the lab that had done my my my lab work said had
called me. The doctor from the lab called
me on my cell phone and said, yeah, is this Phineas?
I'm calling from so and so regional lab.
And, and your glucose was 52 when we tested your blood, which
that's extremely low. And I'm like required by law to
call you to let you know that they need to figure that out.
So, and I was feeling, I was feeling the effects of, of low
blood sugar at that time too. It was just all over the place,
man. So I tried to eat a few kids
pieces of my kids candy to bring it up.
I think I tested it and it was like 65 that led into this
insane high where I where I had to use the, the insulin for the
first time. It was, it's just been, it's
just been a very tricky thing to navigate and it's and at the
same time I'm going, I know about this.
I know about keto, I know about all this stuff.
You know why me? Yeah, and you had been, I mean,
if you were doing like I've read Tim Ferriss book and if you were
doing all that before you ever even found keto, I mean, you're
someone that's you're taking initiative and like trying to
get things dialed in. You're not overweight.
You're reading his book. It's like you're not a stranger
to health and Wellness. No, and I take it upon myself to
learn as much as I could. I was listening to your podcast.
I was listening to, I think back then it was the Goody Beats was
doing the podcast. Thomas de Lauer.
I never really, I always felt there was a certain element to
him that wasn't too genuine, but I I listened to some of his
stuff. The Keto Gans guy, Lewis the the
prime alleged health guy that used to live out in the middle
of the rainforest. Remember him?
The bald guy? Yeah, Tristan thinks his name.
Yeah. Yeah, Tristan and then the keto
for normies, the couple I was, I was ingesting and consuming so
much of that stuff. I was trying new things and I,
and I was strict keto for like 3 or 4 years and I loved it and I
felt great and I tried to tell, tell everyone about it, but no
one wanted to hear me. Everyone thought I was crazy and
I was, I was going to like clog my arteries and all this stuff.
But there was a point where I kind of fell off and I started
doing like cereal after a workout and then that turned
into, you know, more cereal. It was Fruity Pebbles, man, the
bane of my existence. That's the worst.
And next thing I know, so for like months on end, I was eating
Fruity Pebbles uncontrollably at night.
I would wake up holding a bowl of Fruity Pebbles.
It's a lot of Fruity Pebbles. And so I don't know if that was
part of the diabetes was like at that point, because I feel so
much sharper now. And I've never woken up since,
since I got it all straightened out eating, never woke up in the
kitchen holding some food or, or woke up in the morning and
seeing cereal on the ground. It was almost like I was a a
Fruity Pebbles junkie. What?
What do you think? So, So what are you doing now?
So you've got your blood sugar under control now?
Yes, now I'm doing like a 90% animal based diet with a a few
very few vegetables thrown in. Once in a while I'll do keto.
Bricks have been amazing because I still have a wicked sweet
tooth that I can't seem to kill. And you're still diabetic type 1
as per. Are you still diabetic?
So you're taking insulin, but you're doing the slow acting and
the fast acting. Well I just saw her.
I had I, the only time I've had to take insulin so far is if I
try and mess around and have like a sweet potato or some
white rice or I think on Thanksgiving, it was stuffing
and it just shoots up. So I don't have too much
experience with insulin because as soon as I found out about
this, I stopped ingesting carbs for the most part.
But and then I would, I would inject the insulin, it would go
dangerously low. I would have to eat something
else to bring it back up. And it was just like this awful
roller coaster that I wanted no part of, you know?
So at my last visit, my endocrinologist, it was last
week, she said that I'm still in a honeymoon phase of, of type 1
diabetes, which is basically you, your pancreas is is she
says it'll happen. It can happen for up to six
months to up to five years. But eventually I will need the
insulin. On a regular.
Basis. Just on a regular basis for the
rest of my life. Well, I feel like, you know,
when you're type one, you're not producing insulin naturally.
You're like you're going to have to always supplement with it
exogenously. But like I've had several
clients that are type 1 diabetic.
I've got several clients now they're type 1 diabetic and
their insulin requirements are significantly diminished once
they go keto carnivore. You'll just need much less of
it. It's not bad to have some
insulin. If you're type 1 diabetic,
you're going to have to have exogenous.
But if you can mitigate how much you're using, what blows my mind
is when you've got like a type one or type 2 diabetic that's
taking insulin and there's not any conversation around the
nutrition and they're just like taking insulin so that they can
eat standard American diet foods, fast foods, sugary junk
foods. And they're just constantly
inundating themselves with like, that's what you don't want.
That blows my mind too and it angers me is and it's because my
sister is in that exact situation.
So she's not doing low carb keto or anything like that?
No, I cannot. I cannot get her to do it.
And she's type. Two as well.
She's type 1. Yeah.
She ended up in a coma because she had all the symptoms I had
but she ignored them and finally I guess her her legs hurt her so
bad that her boyfriend was the one that had to like drag her
into the hospital where she ended up in intensive care for
like 7 days. She's very stubborn.
Yeah, I hate that man. And she was Type 1 before you
were diagnosed, right? So she's seeing you kind of
mediate this symptom, these symptoms with your diet.
Yes. But she's still not.
But she's still, she's still believe in the hype man, she's
still buying into it and I want it so bad for her, but she's
very hard to convince. I'm not going to give up.
Yeah. You know, I might take a back
channel through her husband. I thought about doing that too.
Like, hey, all these ups and downs that she's she's going
through compounded over years and years and decades is not
going to be good later on. Is she overweight or no?
I think she would say she's a little overweight, yeah.
She train. No.
Yeah, I feel like that's going to be key too.
You, you train. I mean you're you look pretty
freaking lean based off of this video.
Yeah, I do. I train on average like every
two days. What do you do for?
It so I work at a sprinter van conversion shop where we turn
sprinters into RV's. I work there part time and then
I own an off road A4 by 4 shop in Grover Beach, CA where we
specialize in lifting Toyotas and doing Toyota stuff.
And the conversion shop is also in California I'm assuming?
Yeah. I need to talk to you, man.
I got this massive rig that I call it the rig that's like a
1999 Freightliner ambulance that's been converted to a
camper, but it's like not done yet.
I'm trying to find a place to take it, to hook it up.
I need to go out to California and see you, man.
How long you been doing that? They're never done, Robert.
They're never done. They're never done.
I mean, I got it from a guy that had like kind of like he put
solar panels on top, but there's no battery bank in it.
Like nothing's hooked up right now.
There's like a little sink, but I need to get like it.
I need to get it done done so I can use it.
Yeah, yeah, that's that sounds awesome.
I love those, those conversions. They can.
So I watch some of them on YouTube.
They're just far out. Yeah, yeah, we, I got into it.
I just saw the ad. I, I was running a nonprofit.
It was a sober living facility that housed nine people, 9
recovering addicts. And it was also a meeting place
for a, A and NA meetings. And I did that.
I was the executive director of that for five years.
So when I got out of that, I was on paternity leave for two
months. We had just had a baby and then
I just started looking, looking for jobs and it just it spoke to
me. It said van builder slash 12
Volt electrician. And I'm like, well, I know how
to build and I I know something about 12 volts and I just went
to the place and they hired me and it's been great.
I've learned a ton. That's awesome man, That's
awesome. You got a website and
everything. We have a website for our shop,
yeah, our shops called Tree House Off Road.
Nice, nice. I'll check.
Definitely check that out. I want to hear about the.
YouTube channel going. Yeah, I'll check all that out,
man. Yeah, I won't hear about the
back story. So you mentioned that you were
in that program as a director. You mentioned that you'd been
recovering from alcohol and and drugs.
I mean, talk to me about that if you're open to it.
Like, what was that like for you?
What was? Yeah, I'm open to it.
I'm open to it. Let's see.
High school was mainly drinking beers.
Grew up in Massachusetts, Cape Cod, found the town was called
Falmouth. So it was a nice place to grow
up, a touristy place, but in the winter that it was dead, it was
dead nine months out of the year.
So kids there do what kids, kids everywhere do.
And you know, we find beer and pot and party and stuff.
And I think it was 1999. I graduated in 1999.
So yeah, right around the same year I graduated high school, I
was involved in a a car accident where I was, I had a Jeep and I
got T-bone and, and it flipped over.
I ended up breaking, shattering my right scapula shoulder blade,
breaking my left elbow and fracturing a a knee.
And I was in the hospital for I think about a week and a half
and then they sent me home with Percocet.
And I know I real quick I'd I noticed that the Percocet just
made me feel amazing, gave me the warm fuzzy feeling kind of
like something was hugging me. And you were just doing a dose.
Yeah, first I was Yep, Yep. And I don't think aside from
changing the dressing on my arm, which which was painful, it was
a, it was a akin to a third degree burn on this part of my
arm where my sister or my mother or somebody would have to change
the dressing twice a day. I wasn't in as much pain to
where I looking back that I think I needed those things.
Yeah. But I kept getting them and they
kept prescribing them and that was my first kind of dive into
the world of opiates. After that we started looking
for them at parties and started taking painting narcotics at
parties. Then the Oxycontin wave swept
through my town viciously. People were crushing those up,
snorting them, injecting them. Then almost overnight the
Oxycontin disappeared and heroin was in my town for the first
time, almost like it was pre planned.
You know, one disappeared. Although I don't have that, but
I have this and it's 10 times cheaper.
And so people that you would never think, ever think were
even associated with the word heroin, which is just a dirty
word in general. We're taking this stuff and I
got addicted. I I needed it every day.
I was doing that. I was drinking.
I had a, a problem with cocaine too.
I it was just AI was just a Poly drug abuser.
And heroin, I don't me if I'm wrong, but heroin is a downer,
right? Like you, you take that and then
you just like you're like super chill or how's, what's that
effect? Heroin can can do that in higher
doses and lower doses it can actually get you going, like get
you energy. And I don't know if there's
different types or, or what different types or anything like
that do. But yeah, basically what you,
what you hear about heroin is somebody injects it and then
they go like this and then they wake up an hour later or two
hours later and want to do more. But it, it's the, it's when you
stop taking it that the evil sets in and you realize, man, I
I actually really need this stuff.
You, you start sweating, your bones hurt your, the anxiety
goes through the roof. It's, it's awful.
And it's, and it's much easier to just find some more than to
just go through that for five days or a week or whatever it
is. So you just, you just delay the
inevitable by finding more. But skip ahead a few years.
I got myself into a treatment program with medication called
methadone, which is a, a liquid that you have to go to a clinic
to take. And basically it takes the place
of the heroin. You go there every day in the
morning and you drink it and then you're good for that day
there. There are methadone clinics all
around the country. It's been around forever, I
think since the 40s. But it develops a stronger hold
on you than the heroin does. So it it, it takes longer to get
out of your system than the normal heroin would.
And I found that out the hard way too.
But everything, I believe everything happens for a reason.
The reason I came to California was my sister was out here and
she said she saw that nothing was good for me, was back home,
none of the friends, none of the people, none of the places.
And she said come out here and I'll let, I'll give you 6 months
on my couch and you can, you can get clean here.
And I thought that was a wonderful opportunity and I took
her up on it. She flew me out.
She lives in San Luis Obispo, CA Still grateful.
I went from the methadone clinic in Massachusetts and I
transferred to the one here, but I was still drinking.
So now drinking had become my big thing.
I would go in the morning to get the methadone and then I would
go immediately to the store and buy vodka and just start
drinking vodka during the day. Were you like working or like
were you like functional as an alcoholic or what were you
doing? I was not working when I came
out here. My, the plan was to get a job.
You know, I but that, that took a long time.
I was, I was coming home, drinking, telling my sister I
looked for a job, acting out in front of her friends, you know,
getting drunk and acting foolish.
And finally she had enough, which I completely understand.
So I had to end up having to move out of her house.
I ended up on the street. I ended up homeless.
My first night at homeless, I remember being extremely scared.
Not only did I not know the area very well, but I didn't know the
people at all. And I ended up going to the
homeless shelter, staying there for a little while, and then got
kicked out of there for drinking.
Then I really ended up on the street, living out of my
backpack, sleeping in tents, incredibly unhealthy, very
bloated, waking up in the middle of the night needing a shot of
vodka. That's all that my life revolved
around. Drinking vodka and whatever
other drugs were around. You know, there was meth was out
here. Meth was never anything in
Massachusetts. I dabbled in that.
My life got so dark, man, 'cause you just, you find the people
that are at your level, you know?
So I found, I found my people and they were all doing the same
thing I was. And we were sleeping outside,
stealing alcohol. That lasted five years.
Five years of that man. What, What is your like when
you're on the streets living in tents, getting drugs and
alcohol? Like when you wake up, what do
you, what is your thought like? Are you beating yourself up on a
daily basis or do you just is that just become the new norm
and that's just the plan for the?
Personally, how does that look like?
I was beating myself up. Yeah.
And the reason I was is because I knew that that that wasn't my
destiny. I was I I was destined for
greater things. And, and I'm thankful when I was
talking about my wife about this last night.
She's taking a drug and alcohol course right now for school and
I'm really thankful that I had that like that pinhole or that
little teeny Angel on my shoulder that just kept saying
this isn't how it's supposed to go for you.
This isn't how how you're supposed to die because people
around me were dying pretty frequently or they disappear and
get go to jail or whatever. I tried a few, you know,
inpatient program or outpatient programs, which is something
that you go to during the day and you sit in the group and
talk and but that wasn't enough for me.
Finally, I remember just I was riding my bike one day.
I had my backpack on. I don't remember where I was
going. I just started crying out loud,
just absolutely bawling like this has to change.
Something has to change. It had become like 95% darkness
and like five 5% light, 5% fun. I had.
I had been hospitalized 6 times with acute pancreatitis, which
is when you drink so much that your pancreas swells up and
produces this, this vomiting, continuous vomiting of bile and
absolutely like excruciating abdominal pain.
And the only thing they can do for you in the hospital is keep
you there for a week, give you painkillers and not let you eat
or drink anything and, and just give you fluids.
And it got to the point where I was so tired of being outside
that if I started to feel the symptoms of pancreatitis
approach in a sick, weird way, I would get a little bit excited
because I knew for the next week I'd be inside.
I'd have ATV to watch, I'd be safe.
It was almost like a miniature vacation.
And my, my whole thought process was very, very twisted and toxic
at that point, you know? Do you have a relationship with
your parents at all? Like were you in contact with
them? Like what that look like?
Not really. My mom and I at that point, we
hadn't been getting along. I, I found out later, though,
that my mom had came out to California and went to every,
every sober living, every hospital, every homeless shelter
looking for me. And she would see a group of
homeless people on the street and she'd ask if they knew me,
if they'd seen me. So that was, that was very
touching when I heard that. But I at the time, I didn't know
that. No, at the time it when I'm,
when I was in that state, I was too ashamed to reach out to
anybody. Robert, what am I going to tell
him? Yeah, I'm still, I'm still
living outside. I'm still drinking and and
numbing myself and what I didn't really like to call without good
news. I'm I mean, and they were
worried sick about me. Yeah, what, what is the, what
are other people like when you're out there with them and
you are, you know, intense and stuff Like what?
What is the dialogue between you and others that are out there?
Like are they also feeling that this isn't the way it's supposed
to be for them or have they succumbed to those situations?
Like what's, what's the overall vibe out there?
The overall vibe is pretty bleak.
I did not really have any conversations like that about,
hey, we shouldn't be doing this. You know, those were more of my
inner thoughts. A lot of the people are, they're
just lifers and they're going to die out there, or they already
have. I still see people when I walk
downtown that I, I still see someone every now and then and I
just go home. Like God, you are still doing
this. How?
But no, there's not really any deep connections.
In fact, it, it can be quite the opposite.
You know, somebody who you thought was cool could RIP you
off and then you never see him again.
It's pretty cutthroat. Living in a nice town, it's a
pretty cutthroat. What what are people that are
not living on the streets? Like what?
It's probably going to be dependent upon location, but
like there's a few homeless people here in Northwest
Arkansas, but not that man, I like California.
What what should people that see the homeless people do?
Because I'm always conflicted, man.
Like I see some people that I feel compelled to help and I
will and I see other people that I don't get that, you know,
compelling nature towards. So I don't.
But like I see people that seemingly are very able bodied.
I saw one guy a day that had a sign that said no handouts need
work or something like that. So like that, that like I can
get behind that. But like what?
What are people seeing people like that?
Like what's the best thing we can do for them there?
Is there anything? I, I don't even know the answer
to that for myself because I'm the same way.
I sometimes, sometimes it's just, it just comes on my heart
to give to that person, you know, no matter what, they're
going to use it for it. It's just like, well, I'm doing
1000 times better than them right now.
I can give them 20 bucks and, and they'll be happy even if
it's just for the night, even if it's for the wrong reason.
But sometimes I don't, even though I was involved in that
whole situation for so long, I, I don't have any ideas how to
solve it. I really don't.
Because a lot of the people that are out there, they want to be
out there for whatever reason, and it's always turning over,
like it's always a new group of people.
Yeah, so when? I mean the when when you broke.
Down and you were there and you were like crying.
I mean, what that was the catalyst.
That was like the the low that you hit that you had to come
from. I think it, when I think back, I
think that was the lowest, yeah, I was on probation at the time.
I was constantly in and out of jail.
One good thing about the in and out of jail thing was that I was
able to get off that methadone in jail because they they don't
give it to you there. So it was 40 days, 454045 days I
was in there and I don't think I slept till the last night.
And I know people can we'll hear that and say bull BS but this
stuff has get such a hold of you.
I remember just being up all night while everyone else slept,
tossing and turning and hurting and just, it was intense.
But I was in there long enough to not want to go back to the to
the methadone clinic when I got out.
So that was an absolute blessing.
So yes, I was on probation. I had a probation officer and
one day it struck me to just call him and say, hey, you
can't. Your only job can't just be too,
you know, tracked me down, drug test me, locked me up.
You got to have some connections too, like I need help.
I am going to die out here. And so he said, let me see what
I can do. And he ended up getting in touch
with someone at the county Drug and alcohol Center.
And he got me into a program. And the program was they put you
into a house, a sober living facility, which do you know what
that is? Vaguely, yeah.
Yeah, it's basically exactly how it sounds.
So it could be a men's house or a women's house.
And it's people, they're either coming directly from prison or
jail or any really walk of life. And you go there for
accountability. You you share a room with other
men, you live together, you cook together, you watch TV together.
And then you get drug tested there and you have to pass your
drug tests in order to stay there.
So it's a place just to get better.
It's like a stepping stone. Just to get sober.
Based. Yeah yeah.
Sober living. They ended up putting me in
sober living. What would in that context like,
most of those people aren't working or anything, right?
So how are they getting food? Or are they working?
Most of them. Some of them are and some of
them, some of the sober livings will let you stay for like a
week until you get a job. Some of the, a lot of the
people, their family was supporting them.
You know, in my case, the county was supporting me and the deal
was they would pay my first month's rent, My second month's
rent they would pay 3/4 of third month they would pay 1/2 and it
would go on like that until I was paying my own rent.
Gotcha. Gotcha.
And at the same time, I'm going to these classes every day from
9:00 AM till 12:00 every weekday, just intense counseling
group sessions. And it worked.
You know, I was able to get a job.
I was, I, my first job was a fast food, which, you know, at
that time I thought I was a rocket scientist and it, and it
was way below my pay grade. But when I look back, it was the
best thing that could have happened because it, it humbled
me. You know, I consider myself
pretty intelligent, so having to sit behind a fast food counter
with the hat and the shirt and the name tag and deal with the
customers, I was very humbling and it and it didn't pay a lot,
but it gave me purpose which I hadn't had in a long, long time.
Was that the first moment you felt like hope?
Like you can crawl out of this hell that you've created.
Yeah, right around then, yeah. When when I'd say like, I'd say
like about a month after my last drink when it went all the they
call it wet brain, it just soaks into your brain.
So I didn't really make a good decision.
And that's why they kind of just make the decisions for you at
first. You know, I wanted to go to work
right away. They're like, no, you know, do
the program keep showing up, keep staying clean.
But I'd say about a month, yeah, I started feeling clear head and
I started feeling like that I could do this, I just needed to
get inside. There was just no way I was
going to be able to do it sleeping outside.
Yeah. How'd you meet your wife?
I met my wife match.com. What were you doing then?
Right. Around, yeah, right around
COVID. Nice.
Everybody was using those dating apps.
Yeah. So are you at the fast food
joint at that point? Were you doing something else
when you met her? No, that I that I did that for
about a year and then I went to a warehouse, like a sports
warehouse, worked in the warehouse and then I took over
that the nonprofit. So when I met her, I was working
at the nonprofit. Nice.
That'd be pretty cool working with the nonprofit because I'm
assuming in that position you were helping other troubled
individuals and you'd come from all that let.
Me turn my window up real quick. It.
Was super cool. It was cool.
It was fulfilling. Yeah.
I loved it because I, I originally moved in there.
I, I was renting a room there and then I became close to the
director and then I became the assistant manager.
And then he told me one day that he was thinking about leaving
the position and was I interested and I'm, I'm, I went.
Absolutely. That's awesome man.
Did your did your wife have a similar story at all or was that
totally foreign to her To her? Totally foreign.
Nope. She grew up in a very, very
close, I think 1010 siblings. Half of them were adopted and
half of them weren't very, very Christian family.
I'm really lucky to be hooked up with with my my family in law.
They're just amazing people. That's awesome man.
You said you got a kid too. Yeah, so I had when I was
homeless, I met a woman who had a one year old son and I think
at the time a four year old son. We got together and we ended up
having a daughter. She's now 10 and the one year
old named Anthony just started calling me dad pretty early on,
I'd say around 2. His father was not in the
picture at all. So even though he's not
biologically mine he he is still 100% my son and I see him.
I have and always have seen him just as much as his sister.
So I had two going into this relationship and my wife had two
and then we had one. So we got.
Five nice, nice and do your son and daughter live with with you
then? They live half, half between our
house and their mom's house. And she's stable.
Yeah. That's awesome, man.
Yeah, there's stuff like this, man.
It's like it moves me, you know? You see people on the streets,
you don't really know what's going to become of them.
But then I hear stories like this and it like, gives me faith
and hope and humanity, 'cause I mean, I mean, how long were you
on the streets in total? Five years, 5 Christmases.
It's a long time, man. It's a long time.
And to be able to come out of that, come out the other side,
not just improve your own life, but be able to raise kids and be
the director of that, help other people have like an awesome
relationship. I meant that that says a lot,
brother. It's crazy.
Out of the the 25 people that were in that class that I took,
I'm the only one that's still still going.
So it, it's definitely gives me hope too, but it's, it's such a,
it's such a bleak scenario with addiction.
I don't know what the percentage is, man, but I feel so blessed
and, and lucky to have made it. Even though I worked my ass off,
there was definitely some God shots thrown in there, you know?
Yeah, You feel like, I mean, a lot of this kind of came on to
you because that initial injury, we were taking the pain meds.
But I feel like a lot of people that are in that setting, I
mean, like when you're on the streets, are most of them coming
into that because of mistakes made in their adolescence before
they'd really solidify themselves and their identity?
Or like a lot of these people getting into that position later
in life, I feel like a lot of them, they just, they take the
wrong turn when they're young and then correcting from that
trajectory is just that much harder.
I, I think I saw a little bit of both, but yeah, a lot of it, a
lot of the people I think problems originated with trauma
when they were young of some sort.
Yeah. Trauma that they never dealt
with. Yeah, it's crazy, man.
Like people, they turn to some form of coping mechanism and I
feel like if it's a substance that they don't know how they
can control or can't control physically, mentally, emotion,
psychologically, it just grabs hold of their life and breaking
free of that. It's just challenging, man.
Like, I don't know what the statistics, I don't know what
the percentages are, but I would imagine once you take that path,
there's probably more that don't recover from it than not.
So you being one of the ones that did speaks volumes brother.
Yeah, I've heard, I've heard the number like 10% make it thrown
around in in the Alcoholics Anonymous circles.
Yeah. But being that, being at that
job for five years, I just saw so many people would come in and
they'd be, they'd be doing OK. They'd start attending meetings
and then you wouldn't see them for six months.
And then they'd come back looking like they went through
the cheese grater, just dilapidated man, skinny and
dirty. And then they'd get better
again. And then they'd disappear again.
And they just this cycle of how bad can I beat myself up until
one day I just don't recover from it, you know?
Yeah, and you've been it's. Hard to watch.
Yeah, I can't imagine, man. And you've been sober now?
How long in total? It'll be nine years in May.
Nine years from alcohol and drugs of all kinds.
Yeah. It's crazy, man.
What do you, what do you live for now?
Like what gets you up now? I live for my family and as far
as hobbies I live for the the Toyota community.
I'm totally into it. We're trying to make our shop.
We're trying to right now we're at, we, we work at our shop part
time, but hopefully by the end of this year we can be there
full time. Yeah.
I, I wanted to talk about one other thing real quick is, is
like a theory of why the, the diabetes came and where it came
from. Because when I asked the doctor,
the best thing she could tell me was some sort of that she said
it was dormant inside me, but some sort of really traumatic
thing if I go back 6 to 9 months, like triggered it.
And I've never heard that before.
Like some an event, a life event can trigger type 1 diabetes.
But it does line up with we moved, our family moved and we
almost didn't find a house until the last second.
And we have that many kids. It was extremely stressful but
we were, we were getting new owners bought our apartment and
they wanted to redo it. So they gave us a 30 day notice
like around Christmas. And then we were also moving
shops too at the same time. So I don't, I don't know, part
of me thinks that all those trips to the hospital with the
pancreatitis damaged my pancreas in some way.
I would imagine, I mean, I would, I would, that makes sense
to me. And I feel like, you know, with
with diabetics, with anything gene related, I mean, if you've
got enough gene mutation taking place due to hardship or just
the taxation you place on and over the years, and then
something is just a straw that breaks the camel's back, so to
speak. And then it makes that gene
active or inactive, it's going to have that lasting effect.
So I don't know, I don't know the science behind that, but it
definitely sounds like you were taxing your pancreas in more
ways than one. Yeah.
And everything really. I mean, I'm sure your adrenals,
I mean, just simply staying awake for 40 days, 40 nights in
the prison, I mean, you're, you're beating your body up
pretty good there, man. Yeah, I still, I saved the labs
that I got the the the last set of labs that I got before I got
sober because every once in awhile I'll just look at them
and just an astonishment. I mean, just read you a couple
of the numbers. Yeah, I'm curious.
My my testosterone was 25. And that's total testosterone,
right? Yep, that's crazy man.
I was down to 89 when I was super lean.
I remember seeing that video. Yeah.
So I mean it was down temporarily, but I mean, I
imagine yours was down for a while.
I couldn't get it to start back up.
I tried. Are you an?
HRT yeah, I had to do it, man. Yeah, I, I did it at first not
knowing much about it, the what the doctor suggested it, I was
doing the cream. And then once I figured out a
little bit more about it, we, we wanted to have a baby.
And I know that you can't get pregnant on TRT.
So I stopped and I said this is a good time to just stop and see
if I can regain it, you know, on my own.
I was told that I probably wouldn't, we probably wouldn't
conceive, but I took a combination of HCG and HMG and
within like a almost a month we were pregnant.
Yeah, that's awesome, man. And when was that?
Then I waited. What?
When When was it that you all had the baby?
That was February, she just turned 2, so February 2023.
Nice man. Yeah, our our son's 2 1/2 is the
best thing in the world, brother.
Yeah, it's great, man. I love it.
Little personality start coming out and you never know what
she's saying. New words every day.
It's yeah, it's it's amazing. What's her name?
Her name is Malia Skye. Malia Skye, I like it.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's Wildman.
Like when do you have any views on like people that go through
stuff like that? They, they get spiritual, they
whatever it takes, they get through and whether they become
like meditative or spiritual religious or whatever.
Like did you have any thoughts on that at all?
Like do you feel like there was anything helping you?
Yeah, I got, I got spiritual. I'm actually like lacking in
that department at the moment. But I was I you have to cut, you
have to find some sort of higher, some sort of higher
power. You know, that's one of the big
tenants of Alcoholics Anonymous is you need a higher power.
It could really be anything, but a lot of people just use God.
I use God, I believe in God. And the only thing about
religion to me that I'm just way too analytical And I, I have so
many questions about like, well, how did he, how did he do this?
You know, how did he feed this many people with, with two fish
in a in a loaf of bread, like, and I just really am very
skeptical, too skeptical for my own good.
I've tried to join Bible studies, you know, I believe
that steel sharp and steel. And I wanted to put myself in
the middle of like a bunch of other good men, good Christian
men and those guys, they just believe wholeheartedly 100%.
And I want that for myself. But again, I'm just I have I
question everything. You remind me of me in that
regard, man, I'm super, I'm super skeptical of everything as
well. I, I was raised like my dad's an
evolutionary biologist. So he's an academia, he's a
scientist. So like I have like I think in
terms of black and white and data and evidence, you know, so
like I'm very analytical as well.
So I can relate with you on multiple fronts there.
I've been diving into like apologetics and philosophy and
stuff like that and that's helped because it's a lot more
historical and evidence based and just how to think.
So that appeals to me. But I have a hard time with just
like blind faith as well. But I feel like when you're,
when I've been in my darkest chapters, like when those are
always the biggest moments of growth, like when I'm in some
freaking hell that I've created for myself, overcoming that is
when I grow the most as a person.
And like this last prep I did, I just surrendered, as weird as
that sounds. And I feel like 'cause I'm and
you probably the same way, but like you hold on so freaking
tight to everything. You're very just specific and
how you go about how you think and you feel like you have to
have control over everything. And I feel like that it just
wears you down, bro. Burn your candle at all ends
just is not sustainable. I guess your computer died.
Everything surrenders. Yeah, I feel like for me, and
you're probably the same way, but like you want to have
control over everything and you hold on so tight to all the
variables and all the levers that you've got a handle on, but
then you'll just burn out. So it's like in order to level
up in life, you have to almost just surrender that control.
And I haven't figured this all out either, but I did that with
my last prep and that was when I was able to actually find peace
and succeed. And I don't know man.
It's probably a plot applicable in multiple facets of life.
Absolutely. I My trouble comes with knowing
when to surrender. Yeah.
It's hard. Like, yeah, Co parenting is a
good example. You know, I can't control what
goes on at the other house. But for years I tried to manage
it, you know, have them do this, have to make sure they brush
their teeth, make sure they're on time for school.
They're they're asking today. Did you call the school?
And it got to be so much. Finally, I just went done.
I got it out of my control. I need to focus on what is in my
control, which is when they're at my house, they will have a
bedtime, they will brush their teeth, they will be on time for
school. And that's the best I can do.
Otherwise, yeah, Burnout City. Yeah.
Yeah, and it's. It's, I mean your relationship
with your kids probably improved once you surrender that though,
I would imagine. Yeah.
But yeah, it's, it's tough, man. I don't, I don't know, I haven't
gotten life figured out either. I mean, I don't, I don't know.
All we can do is the best we can with every day that's given to
us. Every day is a blessing, but
it's a it's awesome to see you go from where you were at the
depth of your, you know, darkness to where you are now.
Like, I feel like that's a message of hope for anybody, you
know? Yeah, yeah.
Thank you. I agree.
And it's cool that you're doing it all now with like keto
carnivore approach to mitigate the insulin requirements.
I mean hopefully your your sister will start taking notes
and follow suit. Yeah, it's amazing all the stuff
that's gotten better with with the meat diet.
I mean, earwax is gone, boogers are gone, feet odor is gone.
Just stuff out of your odor. Never expected.
Yeah. You know, it's just, it's just
one thing. I keep noticing more stuff as
the days go. By yeah, just keeps getting
better man. It's a lifestyle for sure.
Yeah. Well, Phineas, I know your,
your, your computer crashed. You probably got to get back to
work. My, my camera's all jacked up.
But listen, man, I really appreciate you appreciate you
coming on. I appreciate you sending me that
e-mail back a few months ago and creating the catalyst for this
conversation to take place. Man, I will 100% check out your
website because on a totally personal note, I need to get my,
my rig outfitted for the over landing and whatnot.
So I might be knocking on your door with some some help and
then and asking for questions. Yeah, dude, YouTube Treehouse
off road A. 100% brother, where else can people go to find out
more about you and dive deeper? We are Treehouse Off Road on
YouTube, Treehouse under Score Off Road on Instagram, and then
we have a pretty basic website, treehouseoff-road.com.
Sweet man, well, I will link out these people to find you and
just keep being a voice of light man, like keep being a game
changer. I think keep keep doubling down
on that positive hope that you've generated and you know,
keep keep on the upper trajectory your own brother.
Yeah, you too man. Thanks for all the inspiration.
You bet brother. Keep in touch man.
All right, Peace. Take care.