Justin Wren's Sobriety Journey

I decided not to go to, I could have gone to some of these places in Scottsdale or LA or Malibu and I could have gotten massages and had the green smoothies and stuff like that which can help a lot of people. But me, after having like a 15 year off and on battle, 10 years where I was pretty solid and I'd come out of it and I'd get right back on the horse and I'd be good for years. I decided I needed a fight camp. I needed a training camp, I needed the right coaching, the right strategy and I needed people to ride me, you know, be hard on me. This is to get sober? Yeah, this is to get sober. So that's what I wanted and so I sought out one of the toughest places in America to go to. It's kind of like a 12 step completion program. It's a big book boot camp but it's also like a, it's developed a little bit out of like militaristic style and I don't know, it was really hard on you. You know, I mean while we were there people were being called, you know, mask wearing clowns you fake as fuck motherfucker and you Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, I mean just like they would just grill people and you're up at five. Is that good? I don't know exactly but it was what I needed at that moment. Really? It was what I needed at that moment because I needed to not run from it. I needed to face it and I needed to look at the stuff. Are the people running or people that have gotten clean this way? Yes, and they have an 87% success rate for the people that do 90 days. Now a lot of them only do 45, some of them only do 60 days and then I would say probably more than half of the people that went there ended up leaving because of how hard it was. So the only reason they wanted people there is if you really truly wanted to get sober because for years you've been stuck in the cycle of addiction and for me the easiest way I mean they explained it and I had drawn it on whiteboards a lot but for me whenever you would have that first use you'd have this what they call an allergy set off. You have an abnormal reaction to a substance just like someone else can't have peanuts, I can't have drugs or alcohol because when I do an allergy goes off that says in my body they have an abnormal reaction that says I know rationally that one is too many but whenever I have that first use a thousand is not enough. I got to keep having it. And this is explained to you by these people at this rehab or this is just your own feeling? No, no, this was explained and there's this doctor that's really great, his name is Dr. Kevin and he's got like an Irish last name but he's got some stuff on I think Netflix and Amazon and he was a Navy surgeon and basically like he ended up writing himself scripts for oxy and then he was injecting himself with other stuff and he got put in a prison, a military prison, that one that got taken down in like Kansas, I forget what it's called but he wasn't Leavensworth or something like that, he was put in that prison. Anyways, now he spent his time there really trying to help people in addiction and that cycle of addiction basically is explained as after you have that first use and that allergy set off, now you go on your spree because what that doctor did, why he brought him up was he shows scientifically through brain research that an addict's brain is different like they don't have enough dopamine receptors and whenever that hits, now all of a sudden it goes back to that almost hunter-gatherer brain where it says this is a priority for survival. Like that's why some addicts will prioritize it above food or water or family and you see them do irrational things and then they go on this run and then after that spree, after that run, they come out of it and they emerge remorseful, they feel terrible. I've had moments like that and then all of a sudden you make a firm resolution, that's what you back it up with. Is that what you felt when you did it the first 30 days? When you did it for 30 days? Yeah, I came out, I emerged remorseful and then I promised myself, I promised my wife at the time, I promised my family, friends that this isn't who I want to be and what they say about an addict is you could hook them up to a lie detector and they absolutely 100% mean it, that they never intend to use again but then what happens is they back with that firm resolution, I promise, this was the last time. All of a sudden you get restless, irritable and discontented. But whenever an addict gets restless, irritable, discontented, I would ask the question, what's the difference between discontent and discontented? You know, discontent, you might be a little restless but discontented basically says, well, if discontent is I'm thirsty, discontented is there's not enough water in the whole world to quench this thirst. And so you get in that place where you have this mental obsession. So you have this mental obsession, you get restless, irritable and discontented and then you go back to that first use and then you get stuck in that cycle of addiction again. And that's where I lived for five years from 17 to 23 was I was just looping back and forth. So you get sober for a little bit and go back again. From 17 to 23, no, I wouldn't get sober hardly at all. I would get sober for my fights, the eight weeks of fight camp, 10 weeks of fight camp, nothing that's why Grudge Training Center had to kick me out. I mean, Brendan was on that vote, I think Rashad, Nate Marquardt, Shane Carwin, Dwayne Ben, Ben Ludwig, all those guys that invited me on the team after I got off the ultimate fighter, it was just a short while later that they were having to ask me to leave the team. It was like a vote. Elliot Marshall, Trevor Whitman, I think Justin Gaich was just starting to come up. I don't know if he's actually training full time then, but he was still at Northern Colorado State or Northern Colorado Wrestling there. But they said, Justin, like, we love you, but you got to go. You got to go get help. And I should have went and got helped, but that's when I found my purpose with the Pygmies. I've heard this quote that said, no act of kindness, no matter how small, ever goes wasted. And so I started at the local children's hospital, became a local volunteer, went through night school for it. Later, you remember HDNet and Inside MMA with Boss Rutan. Those guys came out to the Denver Children's Hospital. This was like nine months of me being sober. All of a sudden now I have Rashad visiting the kids at the in Shane Carwin, Duane Bing, Brynn and Shaw visiting the kids that I would push around in the wheelchairs and stuff. It gave me purpose. So the purpose helped me stay sober. Sorry. So 2020, this was the first time you had had anything since 2000 and like when it wasn't I'd had three pretty big relapses. So ten whole years of sobriety. Pretty much. But I had relapsed three times in that time. Oh, in the 10 years. In the 10 years, I'd relapsed for 30 days. I'd relapsed for nine days and I relapsed for five days. Oh, because these are different relapses. Yeah. This is not the ones you're talking about the recent ones with your shoulder. No, that led in that five day then led into a big a big one. I'll go ahead and I was confused because when you said 30 days, I thought you meant this year. No, no, not this year. Basically March to May 15th. Well I was out. I was out there using. I felt so much shame and so much guilt because I've been on your show. I've been doing good things. I've been really trying to live the right life and my marriage failed, which is okay. That happens. And I just took on a lot of like shame. I couldn't I couldn't, you know, have that relationship be a success. Then whenever I went back to weed, all of a sudden that weed. I just kept going more and more and more and more. And then all of a sudden I found oxy. Then all of a sudden I felt found coke. So you started with weed. Yeah. But then I went right to the oxy and I would, I would, what I would do as in my addict mind, I would think it would sound rational. I'll just have weed so I don't go back to oxy. And that will help me with pain if I'm injured because I had actually hurt my neck training with Rafael a little bit. And he was sweeping me and I put my head out. I put my head out. I crunched right on top of my, my neck or my head. And he just sent this like crunch down into my cervical neck and it was hurting. I was hurting more emotionally and I was stuffing it. I wasn't looking at it. I was stuffing it, stuffing it, stuffing it. And then what happened was I felt so much shame. I told, I told my board I needed rehab and I said, I need, I need help. Like I've relapsed and I need help and they've always supported me, but I was scared that would they support me in this? You know, if I'm the leader of the organization or the founder and the spokesperson, you know, we got an incredible internal team, but like we've had donors from thousands, thousands of donors from all 50 States and 59 countries. You know, did I just let everybody down? You know, is this going to be taken from me? Is this life of purpose that I found? You know, am I going to lose it all? And I felt so much shame. They were going to send me to a place in Oklahoma, not to knock it at all. But I had known people from the recovery world because I had been going and sharing my story of recovery in rehabs, in, in, in different sober living homes. And now all of a sudden I'm back to where they are. What is this rehab place? You said this hard ass rehab place that has an amazing percentage of people get successful. It's out of Dallas, Fort Worth and it's called Stonegate. And I don't think they advertise it as that hard, but it is that hard. And I wanted a place once I talked to him, I realized like, so they get there and they do. They absolutely do. They did yell at me. Really? I had a 21 year old kid yelling at me. That was over what? Over a green towel. I had a, I was just like, bro, I kind of wanted to at first. What they think is they got to humble you. And I'm like, man, life is humbled me. That's why I'm here. Right. And I've been humbled enough. And then I came here to get help. And but their whole thing is if, if, if there's no bullshit, if they get to you to actually look at your, if they call you on your, your shit, then you can start working through it. Yelling at you over a green towel. Because we're only allowed to have white towels that they gave you. So when you get there, they give you Walmart shoes, they give you paper underwear and they give you this hideous paper underwear. Why that paper underwear? Cause they, they take your clothes and they put them in a hot box and then they try to kill if there's any, cause there's guys coming from all over the place. Right. And I mean, we, we had people that were Ivy league professors, professional athletes. I'm not sure. We had people also that from homeless shelters and we mean hotpox was a hot box kills any of the, the like bed bugs. Oh, so if someone were to bring bed bugs in, um, and get in the mattresses and things like that, like if someone came from a homeless shelter or from the streets, how could they afford it? Uh, I don't know. Honestly, I think there was like a scholarship program because some of the people were paying $895 a day there. But that, I think that's what they charge insurance. Um, it was expensive man. So I just went through the divorce and I, I basically gave the finances we had so she could go back to school and I was going to restart. And then, um, then all of a sudden I need rehab and that's expensive. Um, insurance helped, but then I had to find yourself, this is a weird question, but I think it's, I think it's valid. Do you find yourself always in like a new problem? Do you, do you create problems? Do you think? I think I try to help find a solution to problems, but I think for me, um, you asked me a question after we got the treatment, our shoulders, our knees and you asked, what are you manifesting to have this like sickness? You know, these, all these sicknesses inside of you, I think now I've started to find freedom. That's not exactly how I said it. I said, do you wonder if you're doing that? You're right. Because sometimes people do, you wonder if you're bringing this into your life. Sometimes people do create problems. It's like fine. They find themselves in this eternal state of conflict. Like some people, they figure their way through life with very little conflict. They're magical people. I know a few of them. It's rare. Yeah. Some people are constantly engaged in some insurmountable problem. And then they also go and like in your case, you find insurmountable problems like what you're doing with the Congo and the pygmies and Uganda and the, and helping these people. Like it gives you purpose and it helps define your life in a positive way. Yeah. Then when you're not there, problems come up again, like all kinds of major problems. There's always something right. I've had some health problems for sure. And then these relapses that had happened were really tough. The biggest one was this one in March. And let me, let me tell you what happened because I didn't want to go to this rehab in Oklahoma that, that I had known people that were there that talked. It had a reputation for people using while they're even there because they could have their phones at 5 PM. They could have visitors. They could go to Walmart two or three days a week and then you can call your, your connection and they can leave it to you at Walmart. They could throw it over the gate and it's on 110 acres and they can send you a picture of where it's at. Right. And you can just go dig it up or find it and use. And I wanted a place where there, I wasn't going there for that. I knew I was going to get sober, but I didn't want to be around other people. So they take your phone away. Yeah. You don't have your phone, paper underwear, paper underwear. You get comfortable or paper underwear. It's terrible, but you get it back the next day or that night after it gets out of the hot box, one day. That's how I get my towels back. I brought nice towels and I got, they gave me my towels back. Well, this guy's doing room checks. Room checks are every day, at least once a day. And anyways, they found my green towels. My first like 24 hours being there at our, you didn't know that you can have green towels. They give them them back to me. So also I was using that and he gave me an infraction for a, and if you get three infractions, you lose your phone call that week. You don't get, you don't even get one phone call until you've been in there three full weeks because normally when guys go to rehab and then they start calling their families, they start feeling like I got to get out of here. I got to get home. You start telling yourself this, like it, my family's more important to take care of than me right now. When in really you're in crisis mode and you got to take care of yourself before you can take care of anyone else. And so I got two infractions for the two green towels I had and I was about to lose my phone call at the three week mark. And if you get three infractions in those first three weeks, you lose your phone call. I got two for things I didn't even know I couldn't have. What was the other one? No, that was the green towel. You took one green towel, we started walking off where they looked back and saw in my cubby that there was another green towel there. So you got two infractions for the same thing. Right. And so what a dick. So but, but I would say that the counselors that were there and the recovery advocates, they're really hard on you because some of the guys that have left there, if they let them leave, they're overconfident that they've got their problem nicked. And they can go right back out and relapse. How do they keep you from doing it again? For me, well, they can't. You have to keep yourself from doing it. No one can keep me sober. No, no, no therapist, no sponsor. It's got to be me. But what, what do they do to give you the tools to let you do it yourself? I think you really start to unwind the tangled web of why you use. And for me, it's always been like self worth. It's been like that bullying moment when I was a kid, my, my record can go right back to the three things the kids told me. And so I dressed up for a costume party. I went to my middle school crush his birthday party. I crushed there because I was dressed up like a Dr. Pepper transformer, 24 pack of head, 12 packs on my arms. I went all out. Everyone was excited because she loved Transformers, Optimus Prime. I went as Dr. Optimus Pepper. Anyways, I get there, go to the backyard and when the door opens, I get hit with a couple flashes of light and it's them taking pictures. I hear the sound of laughter. I see that no one else is dressed up. And my middle school crush said, I can't believe you thought you're good enough to come to my party. Right next to her, a boy said, you're worthless. And then my notorious bully from like third, eighth grade said, you should just kill yourself. And so that leads to basically whenever I would relapse, I would say to myself, you're not good enough. You're worthless. Maybe you should just kill yourself. You know, suicidal at 13. I didn't kill myself because my mom, I thought, what would this do to her? You still go back to that one day, like that one day when you were a child hurt you so badly. That's that's still in your mind, almost as like a benchmark for who you are. I did. And that's why I think I've really come to a place of like self love, seeing myself that like when I'm needed. Well, the last six months. But this is after your UFC career, after your Bellator career, all the amazing things you've done with Fight for the Forgotten all the time. I would know what Congo I would know it. But when I would relapse, I would feel like such a piece of garbage. I would feel like I was a disappointment to myself, but also to everybody else. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free only on Spotify. 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