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This Is Actually Happening
377: What if you were a gay, Mormon, drug-dealing, federal informant?
01:10:10
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- [00:00]
Whit Misseldine
Wonder plus subscribers can listen to exclusive episodes of this Is Actually Happening by joining Wonder in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the Show Notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.
- [00:28]
Sean Hemion
It's just a horrible feeling to wake up every day and thinking something is profoundly wrong with you, that even God, who created the world that you exist in, doesn't want you to be here.
- [00:48]
Whit Misseldine
From Wondery, I'm Whit Misseldine. You're listening to this Is actually happening, episode 377 what if you were a gay Mormon drug dealing Federal informant.
- [01:12]
Podcast Narrator (ID / British Scandal)
From 1989 to 1995, nurse Kristin Gilbert murdered four of her patients at the Veterans Affairs Medical center in Massachusetts, and she's suspected of killing dozens more. On Mind of a Monster, a podcast from ID, criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward dives into Kristen Gilbert's twisted mind to try and find out why she killed her patients and how she was able to do it in front of her colleagues. She speaks with detectives, journalists, nurses and victims families to unpack Gilbert's life and crimes on Ward circumstances. Listen to Mind of a Monster the Killer Nurse wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:00]
Podcast Narrator (Convergence promo)
Chicago, March 2, 1976 A Savage Double murder rocks the city. Two young lives snuffed out in their prime, and the killer, a privileged rich kid caught within four days, only to walk free through a web of influence and power. For four years, the case gathered dust, the truth buried under the web of money, drugs and corruption until an unlikely hero emerged, former rock music musician turned star prosecutor who refused to let the justice slip away. Together with his determined partner, they dared to resurrect the case that Chicago forgot. Now, for the first time, step inside the investigation that brought a killer to trial. Convergence, the explosive new true crime book by Jonathan Dixon and Greg Owen from 26th Street Books. Convergence takes you deep inside one of Chicago's most shocking cases. Follow the evidence, witness the trial, see justice unfold. Convergence, available now on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
- [03:14]
Sean Hemion
My mom's gorgeous. Imagine her in college at BYU Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City, and she's like Miss Beehive. She is Miss Queen Bee, and of course her husband is the star quarterback of the BYU football team. But this young man was very abusive. My mom came from a family of seven and her older sisters tried to help her, you know, get her out of this. But this is the 70s and you don't get divorced in the Mormon Church until this husband, this BYU star quarterback was arrested because he was caught dealing steroids. Even then she wouldn't leave. It was the man's mother who like shoved my mom on a plane to send her out to my grandparents out there in Northern Virginia. When she landed, my very Mormon grandfather would not talk to her because she got a divorce. It's just not what you do. At that time she had two kids, my two older brothers with that now former husband. And so she was this broken bird trying to raise like a two and one year old. She got a job as a bank teller and my dad came into the bank and my mom's the bank teller and just kept coming in and kept charming her. They got married four months later after meeting and he adopted my two older brothers. @ that time, my mother, she truly believed she could get my dad to convert to the Mormon faith, she could get him to stop drinking. But that is not what happened at all. I was born in late summer 1981, coming from a womb of despair and depression and you know, the torment she went through with trying to convert my non religious father to the Mormon faith, trying to understand why he kept going out and drinking and couldn't stop. And there were many instances as an infant sitting in the high chair or in the crib trying to get her attention and she distracted by my father or her depression or whatever she was going through and not getting a response from her. So I'm four, 1985, and we are moving from one house to another house, essentially in the same neighborhood. It's close to a mile away, just a straight shot down this road and we've been moving all day. My mother is in the suburban holding my sister who's very young, and then trying to get the three older brothers in the seat behind her to calm down. And my dad's putting the last bit of furniture or whatever in the U Haul in the back. You know, everybody's saying goodbye to the house and we're going to the next one. As my dad clamps the U Haul shut smoking a cigarette, my mother's complaining about him not going to church, which was the normal chorus. So all of this cacophony of family noise and fighting and stuff, and in the middle of that I'm like, I gotta go to the bathroom. And my mom's like, hurry up. And so I run inside this house and I use the bathroom and you know, I'm sad because I have to say goodbye to it. And then I go out in the foyer and I hug the big wall and I'm Just like, goodbye, house. And then I tumble out the front door and then I look up and the Suburban is gone. I think I remember believing that they were just messing with me and they were going to come back around the corner and be like, ha ha. But nobody was coming. The neighbor up the street, she was this Italian woman, she was driving by and she stopped and she looked very concerned and she was like, where's your parents? And I remember feeling ashamed, not being able to say out loud like, they left me. And I just remember taking off, just starting to run away from her. I got to the end of the street, I'd never gone that far alone. And then I just kept walking and I got like halfway through the neighborhood before I just kind of sat down and gave up and was all teary eyed and just really sad and wondering, you know, if my parents love me or if they're going to come find me. And I had no idea where I was going. But I turned a corner and I look up and I see this glowing weeping willow. And it was in our new front yard. I was like, oh my gosh, I found it, I found it, I found it. And so I get to the end of the driveway and I realized, nobody realized I was gone. I marched down the driveway stomping my foot and going, mommy, you left me. And she turned around and the terror in her eyes in that split second of a moment when she realized that she not only left me behind, but forgot me. I still remember that look on her face. And then I just started sobbing. I just started sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And she scooped me up and she was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that my dad comes rushing in. But it didn't matter. The damage was done. I don't matter to them. What does a four year old brain do with that information? I just felt this extreme amount of shame. I don't matter. I'm invisible. My reaction to that was, oh, okay. I have to make myself matter to them. I have to work for their love. It spawned this rebel inside of me that was determined to prove them wrong that I did matter. I definitely do remember living in panic, at least for the following two years. Like four to six. Like whenever my mom left, I'd be like, no, I like hide in her. I'd hide in her car. She tried to take me to preschool. I just, I was that child that was screaming like, don't leave me. Took a long time to calm me down. So that's how I started my life. So ultimately my parents have A few more kids, and at the end of it, there's seven of us. For me, growing up with that many kids, everything became a competition for my mother's love. That looked like becoming the best little Mormon boy in the world. Best little Mormon boy, check. Really good student, check. But things took a turn when I was around 12 or 13. It was like, 93. And one of the things my mother and I would do that none of the other siblings would do was we'd watch Star the Next Generation together. And it was always like, Thursday nights at 10. She let me stay up late. It was a school night. I remember this one night very clearly, though, because there was that giant act up gay March, and the 11 o' clock news showed a preview. And so you would see drag queens and men holding hands and women wearing men's clothes and men hugging and kissing. And it was just so, like, foreign to me, but also very captivating. Like, what is that? But I distinctly remember my mother just, like, quickly turning off the TV and just being like, oh, disgusting. And I remember melting into the couch. Like, suddenly I was realizing that I might be different. And then I came to the conclusion that, oh, my God, God has cursed me with the disease of gayness. What did I do to God that was so bad that he would curse me with this? It's so bad that he won't even tell me what it is. And that's what I lived with. I lived with this belief that I did something so bad to God that He gave me the worst thing in the world. I didn't think necessarily of suicide, like, of doing it myself, but if a car I was in happened to go off a cliff, I would have been happy because I wanted to die. I just walked around with this feeling of, like, I want this pain and despair to end. Because something was fundamentally wrong with me at that point. The only place that I could find any kind of solace was. Was also the same place that continued to add fuel to the belief that I was a piece of shit, which was the AOL M4M chat rooms. I found some relief when I explored it. But the second I got off a wave of shame and despair, I would live in that for the week. And then, not being able to take it anymore, I would go back to the chat rooms on a Friday night. And so that was kind of the cycle I was in. This older man messages me. He put his age as 38. I'm 13. And I was like, why is this old man talking to me? Because that was an old man to me at that time, you know, I gave him one word answers just to get him away and stuff. But unfortunately he was one of the first people to validate my feelings, to offer the potentiality that maybe they have it wrong and that he was so sorry that I was going through that, which prompted me to continue talking to him. I began to kind of look forward to our chats. At the same time I was feeling this sense of now I owed him. I just had this feeling in the background that I was going to pay for this somehow. Eventually he asked more provocative questions, so I'd answered, but not really answer, and then kept going like this until the one night when he offered me $300 and three cartons of cigarettes just to meet him. Which I knew deep down that's not what that fully meant, but I reconfirmed. You mean just to meet? And he was like, yeah. One night he pulls up in his like beat up red coupe that had like a Domino's Pizza sign on it. And I could feel the density of my actions in that moment, knowing that the actions I'm about to take are going to have such a profound effect. I also felt like there was no other way. So I get into his car and he looks like anywhere high school IT guy, his hair growing out the sides of his crew neck, T shirt and gray sweats and kind of chubby and just, just not, just not watching this adult look at me the way he did with such intense amount of desire, made me feel at 13, like I was a demigod. It was profoundly validating. Felt godlike, being wanted in that way. Without going into too much graphic detail, he took me to a dark corner in one of the neighborhoods. And the sad part for me is when he started kissing me, which was a big surprise. I felt bad because I was so concerned with my first, well, gay kiss, if you will. I'd kissed girls before then, but I was doing it wrong. I was doing it not well enough for him. He attempted to do more things on me, but I was not turned on. And so therefore things weren't working. But he got off and then offered to drive me home. And I was like, no, don't, I'll walk. And I remember watching the red taillights go away and then I just suddenly have to run into the woods and grab the nearest tree trunk because I suddenly was heaving up such intense deluge of tears that I felt like I was going to be sucked off the planet and I needed to grab something and hold myself down because from deep in my gut I just started wailing and wailing. I thought I was gonna, like, suffocate. I was wailing so hard. I was hating myself so much for that choice that I just made and being cursed by God. You know, I was warned in the Mormon Church already from the talks that, you know, homosexuality was a cancer. It was a choice. It will lead to nothing but a life of sin. And the older man, I walked away from that experience believing that he is what I deserved. I deserved to be molested. So I'm entering 8th grade and still wanting to die. It's just a horrible feeling to wake up every day and thinking something is profoundly wrong with you, that even God, who created the world that you exist in, doesn't want you to be here. And so I start playing the straight guy role as hardcore as I can, hanging out with dudes and, you know, trying to throw in faggot here and there to fit in. And there was this other young man, we'll call him Derek, who from across the hall, I could sense was like me. And I immediately knew I needed to stay away from him. This was trouble. This is not good. This is not good at all. And so I was starting to do more with girls to sort of keep up the appearances. I had to play sports. I had to fit the image of white straight frat boy. And I was going to football camp before freshman year. Lo and behold, Derek is part of the football team. I also did not expect him to be, like, the fastest running back the school had ever seen. So suddenly, it's like my peers were no longer calling him faggot, and they were praising him for his skills on the football team. He and I separately made friends with the quarterback, and he was this guy that lived with his parents at a townhouse like a block from the high school. And I would hang out with this quarterback all the time, and then I would spend the night. And one night, he invites Derek, and I'm panicking. So we were smoking weed, and I'm like, okay, well, let's just all get really drunk and pass out. And that's what happens. Except the quarterback passes out Derek. And I don't. I was so tormented by the obsession towards this young man that I would berate myself for, I would shame myself for. I would beat myself up for it. And so now inebriated, now kind of high, the quarterback passed out. I came to this determination that, you know what? Maybe this is a phase, and I need to go through this quickly to see that I'll get. You know, I'll move on with my life and be a good Mormon boy for my mom and straight for my dad. So I start, you know, like hinting at like, you know, hey, we should like, you know, hop the fence and sneak onto the football field. And he's like, oh, okay, yeah. So we hop the fence and we're standing in the middle of the football stadium, the 50 yard line, and it's like, you know, the towering lights above us and we're smoking cigarettes and putting them out on the 50 yard line and stuff. And then I'm like, hey, let's play truth or dare. Which is normal generally, but not necessarily for two boys to play truth or dare alone. So of course the dares are at first like, I dare you to streak the football field. So he would strip down in his bear white ass. You'd see it sprinting down to the touchdown and, and he dared me to do the same. And it was like, yeah, it was stupid stuff like that at first. And then when he said truth, I said, you know, my dad says it's like a phase, but like, I don't know, have you ever like been into dudes? He looks away and I'm like suddenly panicking, like, oh my gosh, he's going to turn back and start laughing at me. Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just said that. My life is over, my life is over. And then he turns back and he was like, I don't know, maybe once or twice. Thank God. And then he asked me the same question and I could see he was now panicking. And then I turned back and I was like, I don't know, maybe once or twice. And then I could see the relief wash over him. The storm clouds had been rolling in all night. Like a sheet of rain just falls like a curtain. And so we just hopped the fence to go find some kind of protection from this, I mean, torrential downpour. Track and field had this shipping container and we run towards that hoping it's open. And it is. And so we open it just as the sheet of rain just piles down on us. You know, with my lighter I go deeper into this shipping container and then my knee hits something and it's soft and I use the lighter and I look down and it's the high jump mat. And it looks like a king size bed, but like 3ft high. And Derek is with me. We look at it, we look at each other. And then a gust of wind blows out my lighter. And we just knew what to do. That night just saved My life. Because how could something so wrong feel so right? And he became my boyfriend. The fact that we were clandestine in this, the fact that nobody could know, the fact that by day we were both attempting to be straight and dating girls, but then by night, you know, back in each other's arms, made what we had even more special. Because it was us versus the world. It was Romeo and Romeo. And for once, I was feeling like I didn't want to die. Junior year of high school, he moved into my house. And the reason he moved into my house was because he lost both his parents to bad drug deals. And his step grandfather was physically abusive. And so my mother, seeing the bruises, was like, he should just live here. So suddenly, my lover, my savior, my God, was living in the basement with me. The relief I found in his arms eventually wasn't enough to keep up with the torment of living in a world that didn't accept me. My alcoholism increased. I was already blacking out. By my junior or senior year, my second oldest brother had just moved back home. He was dealing with his own issues with alcoholism and drug addiction and stuff. And now he was working at my dad's gas station, changing oil. He was just an angry guy. Derek and I come home one night, you know, we're drunk, we're throwing up in the toilet, and then we ended up passing out on top of each other in my bedroom with the lights on. I woke up to this brother throwing Derek across the room. I leap up. All I can think about is protecting Derek. My brother turns to me and he's like, I love you. You're not a faggot. And then he punches me to the ground. All I'm thinking about, like I said, is protecting Derek. So I leap back up, and I get between them, and I'm not gonna fight my brother, but I'm getting in his face. He punches me again. I get back up, Punches me again, I get back up. And the whole time he's just screaming, I love you, you're not a faggot face bloody. Now I'm screaming at Derek to run away. Finally, Derek gets out of there. Finally, in one big defiance. I just stand up right in his face. And he can tell I'm not gonna stop. So he suddenly realizes what he's doing and, you know, runs up to my mother for help. My mother doesn't know the details. She just knows that we all got in a fight. And she punishes me. She says, you know, Derek is not allowed in this house ever again. And that was, like, the beginning of F this family. F this family.
- [23:18]
Whit Misseldine
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- [24:25]
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- [24:47]
Sean Hemion
So senior year, Derek and I are already pulling apart. As a result of this, I'm going deeper into alcohol and drugs and by the time I'm a freshman in college, I go to Richmond. I go to VCU in Richmond, Theater School and we break up. So I was back to wanting to die. So I punched a mirror one night and I very dramatically, you know, stabbed my wrist with the shards. The next morning when I woke up in the spare bedroom upstairs, my wrists were bandaged and I looked down and my mom was sleeping at the end of the bed with one hand on my ankle to alert her if I woke up and tried again. I remember thinking in that moment, like, maybe she does care about me. So she takes me to a therapist, and it's a Mormon therapist. So my mom thinks this therapist is going to tell me to like, go back to the church and pray harder and do all these kinds of things. But then this Mormon therapist does something which I was not expecting. She kind of laid the door open for me to admit that I was going through a breakup, but with a guy. And then she says, you know, a lot of things my faith has right, but this one thing they have wrong. And I had never had an adult outside of the man who molested me validate my feelings in that way. And she encouraged me to come out. And so that day, my mother and I go to P. F Chang's, and over chicken lettuce wraps, I tell her, derek and I broke up, meaning I'm. I'm gay. And my mother, tears already coming down her face, panics and says, do you have aids? And I'm like, no, mom. No, I don't. And then she starts crying a little bit more. And then she's like, well, I'm never going to have grandchildren, you know, And I'm just like, okay. She's making it all about herself. And then she says the very classic thing of, well, you know, we accept you, but not the lifestyle. By this point, I had gone to my first gay clubs. I experimented with crystal meth, and I just loved the freedom it gave me to dance. Richmond, Virginia, is 90 miles south to D.C. so every weekend, I would travel up with this. This emt, by the way. We'd party through the weekend, and we'd come back Sunday night. Then we would go to enough after hours where we would see addicts, tweakers, if you will. And, you know, but I wasn't like them. I was still, you know, living my life during the week. And then one Sunday afternoon, this young man who was from New Orleans, he rolls into the after hours. And my goodness, it was as if the second coming of the Lord and savior happened. The way that these tweaker addicts just flocked to him. I mean, just more than a celebrity. He rolls out a snack bar of drugs and paraphernalia. And I was like, oh, this guy's a drug dealer. And I was like, oh, this is so cool. The guy was enamored with me immediately and was like, you come with me. Cut to, like, an hour later, we're at his suppliers, and it's a hotel room, and the guy is smoking meth. And I'm like, oh, my God. Wait, this is insane. I'm with all these addicts. And then on the bed is the most drugs I've ever seen in my life. So I'm just so fascinated. I end up staying with him for, like, three days. When school starts, I'm in the fall production, and when rehearsals start, I go still on the weekends, quickly back up there. And it doesn't stop With Beau, because every time I'm with him, I'm getting free drugs. Every time I'm with him at the club, it's like, I am the queen, he's the king. The consequences of my use sneak up on me in ways I obviously was not expecting, but I was also batting them away. Meanwhile, I'm trying to go to rehearsals for the school play, and I would start missing classes. And it got to the point where the director of the play, she was so disappointed and so upset with me that I missed so many rehearsals, literally said to me the words, you will never work in this town again. And then one weekend, a couple months into this, I'm with Beau, of course, who is on meth all the time, and also ketamine. And he was in a K hole this one weekend, and a lot of his clients were blowing up his phone, and they were not going to have fun that night. And I remember being like, if I'm ever a dealer, I will never do that. So with that justification, you know, I took Beau's phone, and I was like, you know what? I'll go run these guys. I'll save the day for everybody, and I'll go deliver some drugs for them. Secretly, I just wanted to feel like a drug dealer for a night. So I went to a number of his clients, a number of different places, sold all the drugs, made all the money, thinking I was going to come back to Beau being super proud of me. Instead, I come back to a phone that was torn out of the wall, but, like, zinging past my head because he was freaking out, thinking I was stealing from him, and I gave him all the money. I was like, I'm not stealing from you. He's like, you're just trying to steal my business. And this led to the breakup fight, which ended with me so resentful at everything he was saying to me. And he eventually was like, yeah, you could never do what I do. You're just some stupid college boy. And I heard myself say, oh, yeah, I can do what you're doing, and I can do it better. In fact, I'm gonna steal all your clients. And then he was like, an uproar, like, I told you so. My stubborn need for validation, my stubborn need to be accepted. You know, the rebel energy in me of proving everybody wrong. Who says I can't do anything? Like, Jess was launched, and I was like, oh, yeah, watch me. I can deal drugs and go to school at the same time. So I'm attempting to infiltrate his suppliers, and I do. I win. Them over. I use my charms and I get them to front me drugs. And I go to the main club, Velvet Nation, But Beau's there, and he actually gets the security to bus me and ban me from the main club. So I was like, game on. You know, I'm 22. I'm invincible. I don't think the consequences will happen to me. I don't tell anybody, but I don't return to school. I'm just going to deal, prove I can do it, and then I'm going to get out, and then that's it. And then I'll go. You know what? I'll go to community college, and then my acting career will start, and this will be great, and that's what I'll do. I had some good friends, some good addict friends who were close by and would run drugs to the club for me since I was banned and. And I was doing pretty good. February 23, 2004. I'm finishing the weekend at Lizard Lounge. By this time, I'm using every day, and I don't clock it. I just don't even think about it. But I'm using every day. I'm living in hotels. And this weekend was my most successful weekend ever. And I made thousands of dollars and I sold all to both clients. So I'm like, cool. And I'm telling Lexi, she's my best girlfriend out there. I'm done. I was, like, celebrating with her at Lizard Lounge. I was like, cool. I did it. I'm still young. I'm going to probably go sleep for a week, and then I'm going to go to Northern Virginia Community College, and then I'll figure it out from there. And I'm in the car. I lean back in the chair. The heaters are on, and I fall asleep. So I wake up to a tap, tap, tap. And I just feel this looming image. I crack the window, and it's a police officer, and he's asking for my license and registration. I think nothing of it. So I slip it through the crack. Another cop car shows up, and I'm like, what is. What is happening? I still had a lot of drugs on me. I didn't know that, but I knew that I wasn't doing anything illegal. He comes back, he tells me my license was suspended because I failed to show up in court, apparently due to reckless driving charge after driving my car under the back of a Mack truck. I knew none of this. They rip me out of the car, you know, rip my jacket, and they find all the drugs, thousands of dollars Worth and a whole bunch of paraphernalia. Like, minimum is three years. They can do well over 10 if they wanted to. So they haul me away. I'm shoved into this giant cell with about 50 other men, and I'm, like, one of three white guys. The judicial scene in D.C. was notoriously racist. I didn't know it at the time. In fact, when I was then hauled downstairs and put before the judge, I was brought into the room while he is presiding over two young black men before me, who I overheard was, like, caught with, like, a dime bag of cocaine. And as I'm hearing this, I am like, I am so fucked, because I was a dimebag of cocaine compared to, like, my hundreds, thousands of dollars of crystal meth and GHB and ex. Like, I was charged with possession with intent to distribute. So, like, I am fucked. I am fucked. I am fuck. My name is called. I'm hauled up there. This judge is like a shorter, balding white man, and he looks me over, and he looks at his file, and he looks back up at me, and he's like, son, are you in school? And I'm like, yeah. I go to VCU in Richmond, Virginia. And then his eyes light up, and he goes, oh, my God, how about them rams? And I'm like, excuse me. He's like, oh, man, I think that can go all the way. He's like, yeah. I mean, he was so nice to me. He looks at my file, looks at me again. He's like, oof, that's a big charge. And then he was like, all right, well, I'll release you in your own recognizance so you can go back to school, but I'll ban you from coming into D.C. and just like that, I'm released from jail. I call my parents and I tell them I was arrested, and they come pick me up and then take me home. So a couple days later, the federal government sends a fax saying I have to come do this mandatory debrief. Then they took me into this boardroom to basically interrogate me. The first thing they do is they slip over the police inventory of everything they found on me. The whole list of all the paraphernalia, all the drugs, everything. And then they started asking me names of people. The interrogation went on, and this is what's important. They, in so many words, said, listen, you need to get us some information if you want the potential of your court case to be reduced or dismissed or anything like that. They couldn't confirm fully if it would. Then I said, in so many words. But you don't understand, like, I would have to deal more than I would have ever had to before. Because if you want viable information, I need to get it from, like, a supplier I've never worked with who's big enough for you guys to bust that, you know, would get my case dismissed. And they essentially said, yeah, after the interview portion of the interrogation, they slipped me an informant agreement. So the federal government is telling me to go back and deal drugs, but, like, in a bigger amount. So suddenly I'm back out on the streets. I started going, you know, up to New York and finding somebody temporarily down to Florida. I became a known entity in D.C. again with really good meth. And because of the stress of the investigation, it was my excuse to start smoking. The meth, was using every day, all day. And I would use GHB to actually feel kind of happy on top of that. And then on the weekends, if I really wanted to dance and stuff, I would just swallow a whole bunch of ecstasy pills and then other drugs on top of that. Since I was dealing with federal agents, I just assumed that gave me a superpower. No matter what state I was in, it just made me feel bold with my choices and decisions to get where I was going with these drugs. From Atlanta to D.C. through the airports, I would get searched twice. They found two baggies of powder. The first time, the guy looked like my football coach. And I totally played off. Like, me and my stupid friends, we were messing around, and the guy took pity on me, threw it out and let me go. And then the other time, the guy was clearly homosexual, and the guy grabbed my bag. He's like, I'm so sorry, I have to search this. And I started flirting with him right away, and he was just sort of like blushing and da, da, da, da. And then he finds the baggie, and he looks at me, and he looks at the baggie, and he looks at me, and I swear to you, I grab the baggie, I turn to the trash can, I throw the baggie out, I turn back to the guy, and then there's like a beat. And then he zips up my bag and then lets me on my way. It could never happened any other time in America because this was 2004. This is still post 9 11. And I swear to you, the TSA was only concerned about Middle Eastern men, not some white frat boy looking dude. That's what I tried to play every time I went through security. White entitled privilege. I was able to gain admittance back into Velvet Nation, which is a giant warehouse, and it was the club and the place you wanted to be, and I was the emperor. My normal paranoia about being followed by cops and whatnot was just not there. Like, I felt like a God. I'd get text messages from the agents being like, give us intel. Or, like, you know, clock is ticking. Or frustratingly, I was like, okay, I got to find my way to a supplier here in D.C. who's big enough. So I was waiting for that, and I'd be able to give intel on that. That was my plan. All of this changed. One night, I met a young man who just looked like a bright, young college student. He looked like the COVID of the Abercrombie and Fitch bags. I mean, he was gorgeous and stunning, and he was into me, and I was like, oh, this is great. And I fed him some drugs, and then he wants to do ghb. And I'm like, great, you've done it before. He's like, yeah. And it's known in the scene that you never mix GHB with alcohol. Never. Because GHB hits the same part in the brain as alcohol does, and it shuts down the system. It's. Everybody knows that he left me at some point, but he was gone for, like, an hour. Or you think later that, like, he went to go drink alcohol, because when he came back, he was very, very, very messed up. What we normally did when people were falling out, we would try to shove crystal meth up their nose, and I tried to get him to snort it, and it just. It wasn't working. And so when Steven came back from his supply, we lied him on his side in the backseat of Steven's car, because Steven wanted to go to a bathhouse, which, in the gay scene at bathhouse is where you can go meet other men and, you know, engage sexually. But for me, as a dealer, it was like being a hot dog or a beer vendor at a Dodger game. I could charge whatever price I wanted and make a lot of money. So I was like, sure, let's go to the bathhouse. We go to the first bathhouse, we go to the next one. And then I'm still worried about the young man, so I tell myself, I'll keep checking on him. At the bathhouses, you can sort of rent little rooms or something. So I just rented a little room just to go sit and smoke methen. That's really all I did. An hour passes, and I'm like, oh, crap. Supposed to go check on this guy. And I go. And I go Check on him. And it just doesn't feel right. So I kind of shake him awake. He doesn't wake up. And I feel for a heartbeat, and I feel one. I must have been on day three of being awake. So clearly my brain isn't in the right place. But regardless, this sense of something's not right here. Let me go talk to Steven real quick because this is a little weird. I find Steven, he's busy with some boys in a room, and I'm just like, something's not right here. Something's not right. And Steven's like, you're being paranoid. Just stop it. You're fine. You're fine. That paranoid drug dealer, crazy sleep deprived brain was, I'm almost ashamed to say, was relieved when my supplier friend was telling me that I was just being paranoid. So I, like, deferred responsibility to him. It was like, oh, okay, yeah. One small voice in my head was like, this person is dying. And then three quarters of my brain was like, no, that can't be. That doesn't happen. You know, I mean, at this point, I had enough experience with meth and other drugs where I know I get paranoid. Like, I know, I know shadow people live behind the curtains on day four. Like, and I had been in enough situations prior to that too. People having too much. Like, I. I've seen people almost ODing, but this was different. And I. And, and like, I knew it and I knew it, but my brain was like, if I do enough drugs, maybe, maybe it'll change reality. So when he said, you're being paranoid, just go, you know, calm down. I was like, okay, yeah, he's right. But that little voice, I was like, you know what? That little voice, you know what I'll do? I'll go check on him again in like 20 minutes. That's what I'll do. But I was hammering down more meth and other things just to, like, erase this reality, to change it. I was trying to change reality. And then I blinked and it was literally an hour later, just like that. And I panic. When I come to, I panic. And that voice came roaring back. That's when I saw the situation. For there was no denying what was in front of me. I was like, oh, fuck. And I literally run outside praying that he's okay, praying that this is all made up in my head and I'm just being paranoid and yada yada. I get in the front seat, I turn around and I scream and I fall back against the front console because he's staring at me now. His Eyes are open, there's a pee stain. His face is blue, his hands are blue. There's snot on his upper lip. I try to lean over to like, prop him up to like, feel something. And as I prop him up, the true phrase dead weight is because a dead body feels unusually heavy. In a very weird way, as his body flopped back down, his head hit the door in such messed up way that I knew right then and there I was like, this young man is, is not alive. Now I run back inside, I'm screaming at Steven, you need to come out. He's laughing at me. He's like, okay, fine, fine. He's joking with me. As I'm bringing him out to the car and I'm making him hurry, I'm panicking. I get in the passenger seat, he gets in the front seat and he just turns around, takes one look and just starts screaming. And that screaming is what validated it at all. I slapped him because he just kept screaming and wouldn't stop. He is panicked. He is just rambling. It turned out that we were not far from a hospital and it was going to be faster for us to even drive them to the hospital. So didn't have to call 911. I screamed at Steven, drive. And we pull out of the lot. This is like six in the morning, so rush hour sort of just starting. And he goes up a one way street and he's freaking out, taking his hands off the wheel, and I grab the wheel and I'm like, just drive. It was in that moment when I realized that I had spent many summers as a lifeguard and I knew cpr. I literally said it out loud. I was like, oh, my God. Oh my God, I know cpr. I know cpr. So I jump in the back seat, I put the young man on his back, I get ready to do compressions, and you know, Steven's just swerving. So I fly back against the door and I'm yelling at him to calm down. Fortunately, the hospital was like two minutes further. We pull in and hop out and we run inside. You know, we're like chickens with their heads cut off. And the nurses are like, calm down. They bring the gurney, they open up the back door, and the young man's head flops in such an unusual way. As they open the door, I heard the nurse go, oh, fuck. And so they put him on the gurney, they pull him in, and one of the nurses immediately gets on top of him. And as they're gurneying him in, she is doing chest compressions and the doctor appears, and he's like, wants to know information. And we made up some story. Like, oh, we're at a party, and someone gave him stuff in our room. We think it's ghb. And the guy was clearly very suspect. He's like, you two stay right here. As he goes in and tries to do the thing, Steven turns to me. He's like, go grab your bag from the car and get out of here. I didn't want to leave. I needed to know what was going to happen to this young man. I needed to know if he was going to be okay. I needed him to be alive. Steven actually started pushing me out the door. He's like, go, man. We can't get in trouble. And he was right. And so I grabbed the bag and I got out of there. I get to the airport. You know, I'm transporting more drugs, but this time I get to the security. But, like, the Ziploc bags and how they're taped under my crotch, it's just so, like, I just want to just reach in there and just, like, rip it out. Like, I just want to rip it out, throw it away and walk away from, like, I just am feeling this rage and sitting there waiting to board the plane. I did call my mom because I just wanted to hear her voice. I called my mom. What does a little boy do, but he calls his mom. I was really feeling like this young man, his mother was going to get a call. They made it very real. Afterward, we went back to, you know, my supplier friend's place. I mean, we both just sat there in silence. I walked away from that experience thinking I let somebody die. I was just so. I was so, so shut down. Two weeks later, I get a phone call. And it's this deep Southern drawl, this deep Southern accent, and it's this woman, and you can hear her kind of crying. And she's like, please don't hang up. And I'm like, who is this? She's like, please, this was the last number on my son's phone bill. And I immediately know who it is. And she's like, I just want to know what happened to my baby boy. My mind immediately goes to, oh, the cops are trying to get me to confess. This is a recorded conversation, and they want me to confess. She's like, please, I just. I just need to know what happened. And she's begging me and begging me, and all I'm thinking is, like, I can't confess to this. I can't confess to this. I finally say, I Don't know what you're talking about. And I hang up. And from that moment on was the belief that, you know, I am a bad person. I'm a piece of shit. The Mormon God was right the whole time. And I just found this stupor of pitiful despair. I was the kid that grew up with the imagination of being a superhero, like Superman. Like, this is what you do. That was who I saw myself as. And so now I can't, because I didn't save a life. Now there's this debate with myself of like, well, am I supposed to be responsible? He willingly took the drugs. I gave them the drugs, but he willingly took the drugs. But there was an opportunity to save a life, period. End of story. This debate is raging. It increased my drug use. By now I'm smoking an eight ball and meth a day. And especially after the phone call from the mother, because I'm trying to smother that voice. I'm trying to cut it out, shut it down, and to shut me down as much as I possibly could to smother that voice, or else that little voice was going to swallow me. The mother escalated the emotional stakes. She made it real. She made it real. Her voice reverberating and echoing in my mind. Her tears, her crying echoes in my mind 20 years later, sure, she may have found her way around her grief or not. She could still be suffering. And I had the antidote to that. I had the elixir to her burning question of what happened to my son. She knows from, like, the toxicology reports or something that, you know, her son OD'd. But what? Why? How? And I could have closed that for her, and I robbed her of that. When I hung up on her begging, I knew in that moment what I did. I knew it. My world was tilting, flipping. Like whoever I thought I was before then obliterated. Whatever preconceived ideas about who Sean Hemming was gone. Because I just did the worst thing I've ever done in my life next to not acting in time to save her son. You think of yourself in one way, and then you observe yourself. You know, how you act in the world and kind of reinforces that one way of your thinking. And you're like, okay, this is who I am in the world. But then you act in the exact opposite way you ever thought. And it shattered me because who I thought I was was not that. And yet I'm doing that. So what does that mean? What does that make me? The emotions of this young man and this. This Mother. I couldn't smother enough. It came screaming up. Can I use enough meth to OD myself? Is this my solution? Is this what I do? I get deeper into the drug use. I'm back at square one. I have nothing for the agents, no drug supply. I'm feeling like the worst person in the world. One of my runners, if you will, he had a business where he would cut hair for people at their home, style it, but also deal drugs for me at the same time. And one of the clients he had was this girl whose boyfriend was supposedly trying to get in the business. The only hiccup was he was supposedly affiliated with the Russian mafia. So now, with the agents breathing down my neck, needing something, I said, okay, set it up. So I go meet this guy. He did, at one point, pull out the meth. And I tried it, and it was the best meth I ever had. And I immediately knew I needed it no matter what. But then he pulls out his gun, lays it on the table, and, you know, says, you know, I may or may not be affiliated with a group that can do a lot of damage to you and your family. In my head, I was like, whatever, just give me this meth. I just wanted it. I just needed it. That's all I wanted to do. And so within a short matter of time, this meth took over the city. And I was more than the God I was before. Like, this myth was the next level for most people. So, like, this was. Like, this was beyond. But I was feeling so bad as a human that the thrill of being this man on top was not even overcoming what I was feeling. With this anguish deep down, failing to act sooner, this young man could still be alive. And that. Not only that, hanging up on his mother, looking for closure, I couldn't overcome it. So I started using more product than I was selling. So I was holed up in the studio by myself and just losing track of days over and over. And then I looked up, and I realized I owed the mafia guy, like, thousands of dollars. And then before I know it, it's August. I'm going to my sentencing. And by the time my sentencing was happening, I owed him thousands of dollars. He was threatening violence. The agents were pissed. And I cannot stop using. And I can see that. And I'm feeling so bad about myself that I'm starting to feel like I deserve prison. I deserve it all. My dreams of hitting it big as an actor or my really big, powerful ambitions, I was grieving them in that moment. And so I'm thinking my life is over. What happened inside of me was I think I deserve to go to prison for what I didn't do, which was act in time for the young man. I deserve to go to prison because I feel so gut wrenchingly awful, so much self loathing. But this was like, this was like a new attack on myself. This was like self loathing on steroids. Like I needed to punish myself, not like shame punishment, which is something I was obviously very familiar with. But this was like I was my own executioner. Prison was my answer. This was now my solution. In November 1974 IRA bombs ripped through two Birmingham pubs, killing 21 innocent people. Hundreds more were injured. It was the worst in the attack on British soil since the second World War.
- [53:13]
Podcast Narrator (ID / British Scandal)
When a crime this appalling and shocking happens, you want the police to act quickly. And boy did they. The very next day they had six men in custody. Confessions followed and the men were sent down for life.
- [53:26]
Sean Hemion
Good riddance, you might think. Except those men were innocent.
- [53:31]
Podcast Narrator (ID / British Scandal)
Join me, Matt Ford and me, Alice.
- [53:33]
Sean Hemion
Levine, for the latest series of British scandal all about the Birmingham six.
- [53:38]
Podcast Narrator (ID / British Scandal)
It's the story of how a terrible tragedy morphed into a travesty of justice and how one man couldn't rest until he'd exposed the truth.
- [53:47]
Sean Hemion
Follow British scandal now wherever you listen to podcasts and binge entire series early and ad free on Wondery plus.
- [54:02]
Nick Cannon
It's your man, Nick Cannon and I'm here to bring you my new podcast, Nick Cannon at Night. I've heard y' all been needing some advice in the love department, so who better to help than yours truly? Nah, I'm serious. Every week I'm bringing out some of my celebrity friends and the best experts in the business to answer your most intimate relationship questions. Having problems with your man? We got you catching feelings for your sneaky link. Let's make sure it's the real deal first. Ready to be. Bring toys into the bedroom. Let's talk about it. Consider this a non judgment zone to ask your questions when it comes to sex and modern dating in relationships, friendships, situationships and everything in between, it's gonna be sexy, freaky, messy. And you know what? You'll just have to watch the show. So don't be shy, join the conversation and head over to YouTube to watch Nick Cannon at night or subscribe on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast. Want to watch episodes early and ad free? Join Wondery plus right now.
- [55:05]
Sean Hemion
So I go to my sentencing and I stand up there expecting, you know, 10 plus years at this point. And so the judge is looking over my file, he's about to say something, but the federal prosecutor says, you Honor, the United States government is asking for this case to be dismissed. And the judge is like, are you sure? He's like, yes. My entire court case disappears. All the six months of torment prior to that just vanished. Dennis Braddock, my court appointed lawyer, grabs me and he pulls me to a side room and he's like pacing. He's like, I've done hundreds, if not thousands of these cases. What did you do? I've never seen that before. What did you do? And I'm like, I, I, I have no reply for him. I have nothing. I was like, I didn't help the agents. I don't know. And then he looks at me, like, kind of welling up a little bit, you know, a little. He's like, you are being given one second chance, man. Don't mess this up. I call my mother and I tell her it was dismissed. And then she is just sobbing. When the case was dismissed, the immediate aftermath was this seeming miracle of shock and awe of like, what just happened. And then it's slowly coming upon me that I, I'm free. Because, you know, the second I was arrested, it was almost like this giant hand was pressing on my back and just pushing me down and smushing me and smushing me and smushing me. And now that's gone. And I felt like a coiled spring. So there was an initial thought where I was like, this is when I get sober. Like, hello, you know, you just heard your mom sobbing with gratitude that your court case was dismissed. And any quote unquote normal person would realize that this is their bottom, this is when they stop. And I was literally thinking that, like, this is when you stop. That was a thought. But because I was this coiled spring, I basically celebrated for the next week, two weeks I went and I danced the ecstatic dance. It was like I danced for two weeks straight. Just, just kept going. I didn't hear the small voice in there. It was eclipsed by this new profound sense of being able to breathe again. That voice about what I had done, what I had been a part of, it just wasn't around because I was in this phase of ecstatic freedom, like literal freedom. And then it became that wild devil may care drug use. It's almost like that little voice didn't come back until I got sober. But there was another voice that was still present, and that was the mafia guy. And he was still being Very volatile, was now threatening my friends. And I needed to keep finding a way to deal to pay him back. I was in this cycle of pitiful despair until my roommate Lexi turned to me and she goes, I don't want you to get upset, but I want to go to rehab. And I remember looking at her and I remember thinking like, you can do that. By the end of it, I'm like, maybe I can go to rehab too. And then I was like, you know what? My birthday's in two weeks. Let's have a going away party and then we'll get sober. As if it was going to be that easy. So we lasted two more weeks and on my 23rd birthday, I have a going away party at Velvet Nation. I'm telling people I'm leaving. And on the morning when I was supposed to stop using, I watched my hands pick up the pipe and continue to smoke meth. And I'm screaming in my head, stop using. Watching this happen shattered any illusion that I thought I had any control. This is what I get for making the choice to be an addict. This is what I get. The truth of what I had been doing the last year and a half hit me and I was like, where am I? And I looked around as if I just woke up in somebody else's story. The thing that shattered all of that was in remembering the 13 year old who was still holding onto the tree because he was crying so hard. Or the four year old at the end of the driveway realizing nobody noticed he was missing. When I thought of them and how innocent they were and saying, but they don't deserve this. A clarity was opening and I needed to jump through. It was for them. I called my parents, but only after having to overcome the belief that they don't love me. I could do it believing I was rescuing that 4 year old and that 13 year old still in pain inside of me. So for them, I called my mom. She answered as she was getting ready for church. And I just said, mom, like in the most broken voice. And there was a beat and she goes, where are you? As if she was waiting for this call. So they come and pick me up and then I get in the minivan and I drive away, away from D.C. dad still complaining about the church and my mom still harping on him. It's the same stuff, but I am so happy to hear it. So I sleep for two weeks and then I go to a 28 day treatment and then I go to Whitman Walker Clinic of D.C. and the counselor there changed my life. I Would like to say that I set off on rebuilding my life, but I never had a chance to, like, build anything. So I don't feel like I was rebuilding anything. I was a shell. I was building. I had one thing. I had a dream of being an actor in Hollywood. For whatever reason, that thing just kept firing inside of me. I had so much fun in acting classes and doing plays, and I was, like, shocked that you could do that for a living. And I moved out to la. My mom drove with me across country. When I moved out here, we were like the best of friends again. She just rescued me, you know, so we were. We were close despite everything else, you know, her Mormon faith and me being her gay son. I was just happy to have my mom. And the first five years was building. Put my head down, go to meetings and do the job that's in front of me. And maybe one day I'll look up and maybe I'll like myself a little bit more, or maybe I have a deeper understanding of this. Recovery is like, at first, like duck and cover. I got nothing. I got nothing to feel powerful about. I just have really awful feelings about myself that are so big that my nervous system, it does not have the bandwidth. So the impact of the story with the young man is so big, my brain was still compartmentalizing that in my first, like, 10 years of recovery, most of it was shut down during that experience to keep going. A year after being sober, I tried to find the mother. My phone bill, because it was a year prior, I could only get access to it up to a certain date. I remember trying all these numbers that I didn't know, hoping it was one of hers, and I couldn't get it. And so that, at that time, is as far as I got. My sponsor directed me to write a letter that would never be sent to the young man and the mother to allow me to sort of process it a little bit. But then the next, like, 10 years, it just. It just. It just falls to the back, you know, When I got to recovery, I was carved out, carved out. I was just a shell. And so recovery for me has been filling that in. And then my last 10 years of recovery, I think I filled out enough where now I can actually feel things more. That's why a couple years ago, I think for the first time as a whole human, I didn't choose to say, okay, I'm going to feel this experience now. No, it just was like my nervous system opened up, expanded, and I started writing about this young man. And then at that Same time, I tried to find her again. I tried to find her. I don't even think the hospital is there anymore. I looked through obituaries in Atlanta and. And I don't have much details. There's a lot of missing information. But the writing about the story, as if I was sharing her, telling her the story. The initial impetus for this message in a bottle for me trying to reach her without being able to actually contact her was the initial reasoning behind why I wanted to write my memoir was because it was like, here's what happened to you. I'm sorry about your son. Here's what happened to you also, Mom. Here's what happened to me and Sean. Sean, here's what happened to you. I have the capacity to really grapple with those questions that I couldn't grapple with while the incident was happening immediately after it happened, and I was still shutting it down, even in recovery. But now, like, what does this actually mean about me? Did I have responsibility? I think I had a responsibility to save his life because I could have done it in time if that first time I went out to the car and felt the faint heartbeat. If I acted then he probably could still be alive. People I tell this story to, they follow it up with, well, like, you were really high, you were sleep deprived. But to me, that's not good enough. That's not good enough. Like, I was impaired, but it was my choice to be impaired. It was my choice to be impaired, and it was my choice to continue to be impaired, to shut it down. When I was growing up, my favorite childhood movie was like Last of the Mohicans. Because that whole final sequence when Daniel Day Lewis is like, saving the day. I mean, it's such an epic sequence. And I've seen it through 30, 40 times, and it gets me every time. But just the hero aspect of that, we'd always watch action heroes, you know, Bruce Willis, Arnold, back in the 90s. And on top of that, my mother was just so depressed, and I just was convinced I could save her. If I was just the best little Mormon boy, if I was just the best son, if I was the best everything I could save. My mom, she could finally be happy. And so I had this savior complex. Even when I started acting, I was like. And struggling with being gay. I was like, well, I'm going to be the first gay superhero. This is back in, like, 2010, when I first moved to LA. But then I'm faced with this experience where I do the exact opposite. I do the exact opposite, realizing I'm not what I thought. I was shattering that to pieces. I think ultimately I needed to be saved. I needed to save myself in order to be this savior that I thought I was, that I wanted to be. I had this 4 year old screaming and crying inside of me my entire life. I just needed to turn around and I needed to pick him up and embrace him. That illusion started shattering with this event, with this young man and his mother. It shattered all illusions in order to allow me to ask for help. As I gained more esteem for myself and more confident and I was moving my way through my acting and, you know, actually starting to book Hollywood jobs and I was standing on my own. By 2020, I start dating my now husband and he really wanted to meet my mother. So somewhere near the start of the pandemic, my mother lives near Zion in southern Utah. And she was like, would you guys want to, I don't know, come out here and go to Zion? I'd love to see you. And I was like, okay, I'll do that. So we go to Zion and everybody's on their best behavior and it's actually really, it's really nice. It's really pleasant. We do the hikes. It's like, okay, this is cool. Somewhere in there, my mother says something that just triggers me, just. Just sets me off. She said something very flippant about the childhood. And I'm like, do you have any idea the damage you did? Like, you know, I went off. So later in the hotel room, my. My husband, he just very casually just, just says, like, well, why don't you forgive her? I'm so offended by that. I'm like, what do you mean, just forgive her? Do you have any idea what she did? I mean, and I'm just spouting off all the reasons, and he's just like, well, yeah, you just. Why don't you just forgive her? You talked about these years where you didn't see her and you said you did all this work, so why are you still triggered? And on the last day, she goes, I had this inspiration to do something and I'm hoping you'd let me do it. And could I just speak with you alone? And I was like, this is weird. Okay, sure. So, you know, she pulls me into the side room and she's like, come sit with me. Put your head on my lap. I was like, okay, I'm six four, like 220 pounds. So I scrunched my big frame up on the left seat, I put my head on her lap and I flinch when she Starts petting my hair and she's like, I don't know why, but I just, I felt the need to do this. And I just want that little boy inside to just know that I'm really sorry. I wish things could have been different for him. I'm sorry he didn't get everything he wanted. And I tried really hard, but I failed him. And I am really sorry and I hope he can forgive me. And I could feel her tears, like, falling. I forgave her entirely in that moment. I thought I wasn't needing that from her ever again, especially to calm the four year old. But I heard her, he heard her. We have the best relationship today. She's still Mormon, but it doesn't matter. Like, I love and accept her exactly as she is and I appreciate her for who she is. In fact, my mother remarried another Mormon and my dad also remarried in 2023. When my husband and I got married, he said he wanted his mother to walk him down the aisle. And I was like, oh, I wonder if my mom would do it. And when I asked her, I mean, before I even finished the sentence, she was like, absolutely, like genuinely happy to do that. So on the beautiful day, our mother's walking us down the aisle, looking at my soon to be husband and then looking at like the 150 people staring at us. I was suddenly at this moment that I never in my life believed I would be. It shattered all of that disillusionment that I was unlovable or unworthy or not deserving. Like, this isn't supposed to happen. This isn't supposed to be happening. Everybody's looking at us and cheering. My brother, who 20 years earlier was breaking his fist on my face because he didn't want me to live a life as a faggot. He's at the end of the aisle, beaming brighter than anybody and just so full of joy. My dad was terminal at the wedding and we knew that two months later, at the end of August, August 27, 2023, I barely made it back to Virginia from LA in time to spend alone with him the last hour of his life. In his own way, he was able to. To say how proud he was and how much he loved me. And I was able to say the same to him. And then that night, he just, he never woke up again. Part of being raised in a Christian faith that believes in like heaven or hell or, you know, that kind of worldview is it makes the world black and white. You have to think in those dualities, like, that's just the way it is. So my whole thinking in general was it's always this or that. It's like I'm a criminal or I'm not a criminal, I'm bad or I'm good, period. But as my own personal spirituality has evolved, it exists more in the grayness of the, I don't know, having this just expansive, I don't know ness. You know, I can hold space for all of those things. The sum of all of that may be who I am, but not a single thing defines who I am. I think standing at the end of the driveway and realizing that they didn't even realize I was gone created in me the belief that, you know, I don't matter, but at the same time created in me this rebel, this deep, powerful rage and resentment. Talking back to that part, saying, no, that's not true, you are enough and I'm going to prove it to you. And so these dualities, I think, were created in me at that moment. I've kind of vacillated between those two places, ultimately an insecure core. But I've gone from this I'm worthless place or I'm not only better than I'm the best. No middle ground. And I've always vacillated between the two places. You know, I couldn't just be a Mormon boy. I had to be the best Mormon boy. Couldn't just be a great. I had to be the best drug dealer. I couldn't just be an actor enjoying acting. I have to be the next Tom Cruise. That rebel energy is very powerful. I feel like it in so many ways saved me. I used it when I got sober to prove that I could. The problem with it is it's based upon reaffirming the belief that I'm not enough. I need the belief that I'm not enough for that to continue to exist, to continue to thrive in that sort of rebel energy which keeps the four year old in pain. It keeps the four year old, in a sense, controlling the show. I've had to go back to the four year old and hold him finally getting to a place of not having to prove anything.
- [73:41]
Whit Misseldine
Today's episode featured Sean Hemion. His forthcoming memoir, the Good Little Drug Lord does not yet have a set publication date, but you can follow him for updates to connect with Sean. His email, website and social links are available in the show notes. And a special thanks to Todd Rennebaum of the Bunny Hugs and Mental Health podcast for referring Sean to our show. From Wondery. You're listening to. This is actually happening. If you love what we do, please rate and review the show. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or on the Wondery app to listen ad free and get access to the entire back catalog. In the episode notes you'll find some links and offers from our sponsors. By supporting them, you help us bring you our show for free. I'm your host Wit Misseldine. Today's episode was co produced by me, Jason Blaylock and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the this Is Actually Happening team including Ellen Westberg. The opening music features the song Sleep Paralysis by Scott Velasquez. You can join the community on the this Is Actually Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook or follow us on Instagram Actually Happening on the show's website thisisactually happening.com you can find out more about the podcast. Contact us with any questions, submit your own story or visit the store where you can find this Is Actually Happening designs on stickers, T shirts, wall art, hoodies and more. That's thisisactually happening.com and finally, if you'd like to become an ongoing supporter of what we do, go to patreon.com happening even 2 to $5 a month goes a long way to support our vision. Thank you for listening. If you like this Is Actually Happening you can listen to every episode ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
- [75:38]
Sean Hemion
Prime.
- [75:38]
Whit Misseldine
Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey.
- [75:50]
Denise Chan
Hi, I'm Denise Chan, host of Scam Factory. You might remember hearing about our investigative series that exposed what's really happening behind those suspicious texts you get inside heavily guarded compounds across Asia. Thousands are trapped and forced to scam others or risk torture. One of our most powerful stories was Jella's a young woman who thought she'd found her dream job only to end up imprisoned in a scam compound. Her escape story caught the attention of criminals Phoebe Judge and am honored to share more details of Jela's journey with their audience. But Jella's story is just one piece of this investigation. In Scam Factory, we reveal how a billion dollar criminal empire turns job seekers into prisoners and how the only way out is to scam your way out. Ready to uncover the full story? Binge all episodes of Scam Factory now. Listen to Scam Factory on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.