Transcript

[Intro] (0:00)

Vechi Mutum (0:23)

You know, I had a lot of difficulty in my teenage years. A lot of difficulty. Suicide attempt. And I've managed to find my way out. I got involved with a local program, Corporation for a cause in Mountain View, California.

Justin McMillen (0:31)

How old were you?

Vechi Mutum (0:32)

14.

Justin McMillen (0:33)

Okay. And this is all pre pre life part. Yeah. Okay.

Justin McMillen (0:45)

The story of that you moved him at this point. He's like he's doing something really cool. Yeah. Well your family's excited. Your mom's excited.

Vechi Mutum (0:53)

Well it was it was right before that. It's how it came to being. You know, these guys showed up, and, my mom didn't trust me with her personal room. Rightfully so.

Justin McMillen (1:03)

You were already a troublemaker.

Vechi Mutum (1:04)

Oh, big time.

Justin McMillen (1:07)

Got it. Okay. Big time.

Vechi Mutum (1:08)

I was so like a name like that. She, I mean, I'm at least a year. I was two years. I had it at one time in school. So even though I look big now, I was the same size or smaller as everybody else. I had zero social skills. Mom's gone trying to work and take care of everybody like we're when you're single mom.

Vechi Mutum (1:23)

She's single mom with three of us moms slept on the floor in the babysitter, had a bed. We were eating boiled macaroni with ketchup in it. I think that was her existence at that time. So I had, you know, my shoes were busted. I'm a 14 year old in junior high with a name like veggie, veggie, vegetable, Mitsubishi.

Vechi Mutum (1:42)

I'm getting picked on. I'm fighting constantly. So I got into it. I was looking for acceptance anywhere. No matter what story I had to tell or legend I had to make up to get you to like me. I would do it. And what ended up happening was it was it was a trick man. Because when people actually engage with the persona I created, I knew it was not me that they loved or cared for.

Vechi Mutum (2:03)

And I could only keep it up so long, getting involved with them. My life really came into alignment. I had a sense of purpose. Other kids were running around, you know, doing God knows what. Smoking weed and drinking. And here I was with these, with two professional racing drivers and this police officer from Mountain View police Department, Tony Lopez.

Vechi Mutum (2:24)

And they're changing my life. I'm going racing on the weekends. I completely change everything. And I did so well for so long. Came out here, laid my eyes on the on being in the fire department, went through Longview Search and Rescue and came out here. So this was in the Midwest. This is in, this is in northern California.

Justin McMillen (2:45)

Northern California. Oh. Excuse me. Okay, I didn't know. I had no idea that was in Northern California.

Vechi Mutum (2:50)

And then when we moved down here is when I got separated from all that. Now again, I'm trying to find my space. And I fell into a group of friends that, you know, with, some were good, some are bad. But there is one of them came to me was a security guard at Lakewood Mall.

Vechi Mutum (3:06)

He's like, hey, you know, Long Beach is having tryouts for search and rescue. You should try out. And the man I, I know I'm going to try it out. And I made it in, and it's an explorer program. But you work directly with law enforcement. You work directly. Fire department like ladder drills. A CPA training, fire station 23 right there in Long Beach.

Justin McMillen (3:27)

So interesting because you. So I imagine you're, like, at risk, kid, right? Like that's probably how people see you. So any of the adults that are in your life that are coming around as you're in school and it's like single mom and this kid could be a a nightmare. And then you keep getting pulled into these places.

Justin McMillen (3:45)

So there's some adults that are coming into your life that are like, hey, why don't you check out this race car thing? Or why don't you check out so, so people saw probably they saw one that you needed and you needed some help into that. There was potential.

Vechi Mutum (4:03)

Yeah.

Vechi Mutum (4:03)

You know, even when I couldn't see it, it there absolutely was. There was people along the route, throughout my entire life that would come and try to seek me out to help me. But, I went through my own research. And you loved it. Did really well. I was working for Starbucks, had a little crew right there at Cerritos Talent Center. It's first time I'd ever been in a lead position, but, some of the lingering stuff that I never addressed or took care of showed back up.

Vechi Mutum (4:28)

And one of those was that imposter syndrome, a fear like, I'm not really I'm not I'm not really good enough to be in search and rescue. I'm not really good enough to be a firefighter. I'm going to screw this up. And I felt like at the time, mom was so proud of me. My family was so proud of me.

Vechi Mutum (4:46)

I didn't want to. I didn't think I was capable, so I. I sabotaged it.

Justin McMillen (5:00)

What part of you.

Justin McMillen (5:00)

Was that? The part that every time you had a, like a come up, or there was somebody trying to help you or extend a hand, what part of you is it that you didn't believe that? And where does that come from? Is that based in being the way you, in the family you raised in? Not not not to put it on your family?

Vechi Mutum (5:21)

Me just circumstantially? Or do you know the answer to that question? I do want me to go here. I do partially, you know, and I've done I continue to do work keeping it. You know, I've got only 15 years sober in November, but it's not over. I just I just did a bunch of work on some of this stuff.

Vechi Mutum (5:37)

And that lack of self-belief really came from the way I was raised. You know, I'm not a perfect parent. I've never met a perfect parent. But there what I'll say is this, there are some things I will not be repeating in my children's lives, and one of them is value contingent upon use and value contingent and point of view.

Justin McMillen (5:56)

So if you're not useful, you're not of any value. Is this what this is from? Dad? Mom?

Vechi Mutum (6:05)

Yeah. Useless was a term I heard a lot. It didn't matter what I was doing. And it wasn't like she was in a high stress environment.

Justin McMillen (6:17)

I understand that, do you think parents know when they say that kind of shit or how much it.

Vechi Mutum (6:17)

No.

Justin McMillen (6:20)

Yeah. I don't think they do know. And they learn that somewhere. So that's what she was brought up with. She was trying to make an impossible situation feasible and was doing the best she could, but that that idea that I can't do this, I'm gonna let everybody down. Most will quit and I will burn it down, and I will blame it on everybody else when I do.

Vechi Mutum (6:43)

That's so crazy. I just heard a story of, somebody's mom saying. You make me not want to get up in the morning. And she absolutely didn't mean.

Justin McMillen (6:55)

Yeah. What the.

Vechi Mutum (6:57)

So the the the I will say the boy, the what, the what the boy heard was that, her is a girl. Okay. I'm trying to figure out how to protect, but there's nobody's going to, that her existence made her mother want to not be alive herself like that.

Justin McMillen (7:19)

Yeah, but but here's the crazy part is that's not what the mother meant. Yeah. And so, like, it's interesting how therapy sometimes is not even. It's not about, like, coming to some sort of being okay with our parents being, you know, monsters that do these terrible things.

Vechi Mutum (7:30)

Well, you don't understand really understanding that that's not what they actually meant when you're a kid, right?

Vechi Mutum (7:44)

The at least this is the way and from what I've learned afterwards, everything that happens in the world you have a role in, it's called locus of control. So if mom gets up and she's mad, it's because I didn't do something right. If Mom and Dad are fighting, it's because I'm not a good boy. Like these things we we layer on to ourselves because survival wise, we have to try to make sure that if we can make these things better than mom will be happy, then dad maybe won't fight.

Vechi Mutum (8:08)

Maybe they won't be so much yelling or screaming. So we do whatever we can to want to wake up in them. Exactly as with me. Because I'm better and she's not. It's.

Justin McMillen (8:20)

You know, I think part of it stems from wanting to take care of your family, even as a child, and not being able to, just with the circumstances, but just,

Vechi Mutum (8:32)

Yeah. And she she had your. It was what she was able to pull off. My mother was extraordinary. Like she kept us alive. She kept us fed.

Justin McMillen (8:45)

Yeah. What you've described to me about your mother has been nothing but amazing. I mean, in terms of her strength and.

Vechi Mutum (8:55)

Yeah, her, you know, she's. I can tell that a lot of who you are comes from her. A lot of the best parts of who you are.

Justin McMillen (9:05)

My great comes from her.

Vechi Mutum (9:06)

Yeah, yeah. Her just inability to give up or quit or. She just. I don't know how she did it. I know, but that, that trait I got.

Justin McMillen (9:16)

Do you think she really thought you were useless? Now, as of 40, I think she was upset.

Vechi Mutum (9:20)

I think she was scared. And I think she was trying to make things worse. And I was being a kid.

Justin McMillen (9:26)

I don't think she thought you were useless. I you have children, you know, like when you love them so much, we don't typically put, like, full adult ideas onto children. But people say things that can be really painful.

Vechi Mutum (9:37)

That's wild. You could spend your whole life trying to, fuck your head around it, right? Yeah, yeah. Why was this sad? What is this? You know, And then I like. I hear things. I hear things similar to what I was told. And the context can be different, right?

Justin McMillen (9:50)

But it's it's like pushing over a domino in my mind.

Vechi Mutum (9:58)

You immediately revert back to when you first heard that term or that tone. And here comes the emotion. That's a direct attachment. There's no it doesn't stop there.

Justin McMillen (10:07)

One of the things I think you and I've actually talked about this term, what's wrong with you? Yeah. Like it's super simple, like, hey, what's wrong with you? Like, that's not the way we see it.

Vechi Mutum (10:18)

What's wrong with you? Meaning you're defective. You're broken. What's wrong with you? It's what? Us? Yeah. That came from somewhere. You know, why isn't it?

Justin McMillen (10:27)

It's so funny. I talked to, we'll call them, well, adopted people, stable, emotional people. And you go, hey, what's wrong with you? And they go, oh, I didn't sleep well, you know, everything's all right.

Vechi Mutum (10:40)

Talk to somebody like, you know, me or you, just like, what's wrong with there's like, well, there's a lot here. I've got a little bit of pressure. This is going on a little bit. Maybe I, we we break down a list of actual defects. That's if you actually know who you are.

Justin McMillen (10:56)

You see that as somebody who is in incredible amounts of pain and doesn't know who they are, and they haven't looked at it yet.

Vechi Mutum (11:07)

You're literally cutting open wounds and like, yeah, I wonder about this.

Justin McMillen (11:23)

I think it's fair to say that you work a lot. Yeah. How much do you think? I mean, I don't want to overstep, so. But how much do you think somebody's telling you were useless when you were a kid? Plays into you waking up every day telling yourself you need to be useful.

Vechi Mutum (11:23)

So that's that's, That'd be interesting to look at from a distance, because I don't want to reduce your life down to that because it's way more. Yeah, we'll get in. No, of of wonders like you, you are a bit of a you're an anomaly in terms of just your Energizer bunny nonstop. Go go go.

Justin McMillen (11:51)

You know, I don't think it's so much I mean, it plays a part, right? In a small piece like, Longview Search and rescue you.

Vechi Mutum (12:00)

Absolutely. It was there, right? Like, I get it. If I can just do this, then I'm okay today.

Justin McMillen (12:03)

It's a little bit different, man. My fuel is. It's so clean burning. It's my purpose. My family, my wife, my kids. Building things, helping. Like it's. It's just a clean, burning fuel.

Vechi Mutum (12:14)

It's not out of I need to do this or any. And that, that went away. I'd say probably 6 or 7 years ago when I got the boys into my life, was like, wait a minute. There was this. And you think you're strong or you think you know how strong you are, you become a father. Right. And then you got to be strong because that's just it.

Vechi Mutum (12:34)

You think you're, you're, you've reached your level of what you can do here on earth, and then a circumstance shows up and you need to figure out a way over, through or under no matter what. And you just you just do. So today that comes from a deep drive of purpose. Yeah. I really feel like I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing for right now.

Vechi Mutum (12:55)

If that changes one day it may change. But and until then this is what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it the best I possibly can. That's so important to me. I, it is important to me. And when I go to lay my head down at night, did I do everything I possibly could to make this go right?

Vechi Mutum (13:10)

And if I didn't, I get up and I pray about it. And what can I have done different? You know, a friend of mine recently just said, what's the delta? The perfect. And what are we doing today to get there? That means something. Could I be in a little bit more gentler? Could I have been more assertive?

Vechi Mutum (13:27)

Could I have set a standard? Could I have been more malleable? Like I'm not, I think most powerfully, I am not done evolving. I want to keep learning. I'm not. I'm not done. Yeah. We talked the other day. I said, I want to get better at what I do. I want to be I want everything I can. It's good.

Justin McMillen (13:48)

I have watch I've been such a spectator to your journey. Right. And so I've watched you go from like the initial seeds of trust and respect and care and taking on adopting responsibility. It started with you adopting responsibility for an environment or a house and and that grew and continued to grow. And you have adopted so much responsibility.

Justin McMillen (14:12)

But the early years, my perception, which is perception may not it can be bullshit. But it was like first you were trying to prove to yourself that you had value, that you could do something, that you could keep your word. And then I watched that transition into, there's still a lot of insecurity, which was interesting to see.

Justin McMillen (14:33)

And all I want to do is just love you all in the way so you can so instrumental in so many different areas of my life. So I'd say there's so much grace on my end. So if I see something this is I'm talking years ago now. Yeah, I see something that seems odd. It's almost always be explained through compassion, understanding.

Justin McMillen (14:50)

So it looked like there was still insecurity. And then it was like, I need to I need to prove to the world that I, that I value or that I'm good. And, there was a lot of that. And then in the last couple of years, you, you've shifted towards, more it seems like more inward and like, I want to I want to be as great as I can.

Justin McMillen (15:11)

Like you seem more settled into knowing who you are. Yeah, it's less a need to prove to anyone. It's more just about your family, yourself. And I love whenever I hear any powerful person start to talk about what? How they need to be better at all, my like, little lights flicker, you know, because it's like, this is I see this in high performing people across the board.

Justin McMillen (15:34)

Everybody gets to a certain point, in their trajectory, people can come get really far in success and I mean success, like financially or family or, you know, the community respects whatever it is. You get to a certain point and then plateau. If if we don't evolve, where we start really analyzing how we can be better. And it's hard to do and a lot of men and women, everybody doesn't, they get comfortable in that.

Justin McMillen (16:01)

Yeah. They get comfortable in they start living in this sort of false ego of, this is who I am. And it was so cool. And I know you've seen this because you mentor a lot of people too. Is that when a person is not afraid or they're not judged by saying it, or they're around people that support them to say, maybe I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Vechi Mutum (16:20)

Even after you've had success, that's where everything gets rocket fuel on it and it just go off. And, that's that's a trait that I think all really high performing people have. And yeah, anyways, I, I, I agree, I forget who said it, but there is a guy who said, extremely successful. I wish I could remember who it was.

Vechi Mutum (16:43)

I can't, but he said had I been knowledgeable in the business I was trying to open, I would have failed. I was so ignorant, I didn't know I couldn't succeed.

Justin McMillen (16:55)

Yeah. And that I missed it, I do, I miss that. So I think it's true to say this. And the more I want to explore this, because I think this is a topic that's valuable, it's,

Vechi Mutum (17:07)

You know, guy has idea, a person has an idea, and they're like, okay, I want to do this. You don't know what you can't do. Know. And that's like the best gift of starting something, as a new person. So if you're starting a business or you have a big idea, the best thing you can have is, like, complete, utter ignorance around what's how to do it.

Vechi Mutum (17:33)

What's possible? Because once you know, it's possible, you also know what can fall apart. Yeah. And then you start creating this story of how, well, if I do that and that can happen if you do this analysis and then your brain becomes clouded with, static like noise, so much chatter. What's the tightrope? Right. Yeah. So we've got a tightrope.

Justin McMillen (17:53)

There's a cavern of dragons and alligators and fire and all this, and across this immense success. And there's this. This small web lies.

Vechi Mutum (18:03)

There isn't like bones and crunch and stuff like that in there. Interesting. I mean, there's probably a good argument for every rolling, hold on, I.

Justin McMillen (18:12)

Dude, I need to turn this off.

Vechi Mutum (18:15)

Yeah. You do.

Justin McMillen (18:16)

By the way, this is the first time this phone has been turned off for any extended period of time. In a minute. So if I turn that back on and the world's ended, we know you know what was attached to my phone.

Justin McMillen (18:30)

By the way, this is the first time this phone has been turned off for any extended period of time. In a minute. So if I turn that back on and the world's ended, we know you know what was attached to my phone.

Justin McMillen (18:35)

How close or far should this be?

Vechi Mutum (18:38)

Try to keep it like a fist. It's just take your hands like this.

Justin McMillen (18:41)

He said a fist. Every time he does that, there's somebody that I can't be inappropriate with.

Vechi Mutum (18:43)

I can sort of chuckle inside. Yeah, look at their face. I can tell they're saying the same thing. This looks like.

Vechi Mutum (18:47)

Yeah, just take both fist and we're here.

Justin McMillen (18:51)

When doctor did this, he came here last week. He brought his, shaman headdress and shit. It was.

Vechi Mutum (18:55)

Did he really?

Justin McMillen (18:56)

Oh, yeah. It was interesting. He's such a character. I told them he was batshit crazy last night. He wrote me so many tags about what I wrote is soon erotic.

Vechi Mutum (19:05)

He's just, like, obsessing over.

Justin McMillen (19:11)

What do you mean?

Vechi Mutum (19:15)

You don't live your life that way and all this stuff? And does that mean you don't have boundaries? How do you live? You're so successful. How do you live a life without that? All this stuff.

Justin McMillen (19:21)

He's so insecure, you have no idea if you were.

Vechi Mutum (19:24)

Yeah. He sent me a very nice text message, though.

Justin McMillen (19:26)

He was talking to, K.J. and he goes, I was just talking to K.J. and he said, you reach out to him.

Vechi Mutum (19:35)

I said, of course I do. He trusted us with this section of his life to get well, that's on it. Like, he's like, you're a good man. That's just we're just like, yeah, you can you can kind of like, you can pull these little things to.

Vechi Mutum (19:45)

Yeah, I kind of want it to be off the side, but I want you to be able to hear so I don't have to speak, because sometimes my I'll drop low.

Justin McMillen (19:53)

That's actually pretty good. I would can you get it a little bit closer in front of your face by rotating. There you go.

Vechi Mutum (20:00)

Yeah, yeah. You're good. You have a nugget. We were on it. Had a good deep, deep voice. It'll be it'll resonate.

Justin McMillen (20:04)

But these this is my nemesis. Like these things. Because I'm like, you'll see during the thing I'm used to for and doing this.

Vechi Mutum (20:20)

We have to we got to be doing something all the time. It's like I'm constantly fucking with this thing and it's it's, I wonder if maybe at some point, we could get one. That's just some of the table, man.

Justin McMillen (20:27)

And, yeah, I mean, even if we just had one that was like on the table and then we could lean forward into it and it might look better.

Vechi Mutum (20:36)

Pick up the audio from here, then you can get shot.

Justin McMillen (20:40)

Yeah, that might be a good move for the future.

Justin McMillen (20:44)

We're already rolling. So, they said that, you know, go on the other side.

Vechi Mutum (20:50)

Yeah. It's me down here. No, no, you can put it on the table. Don't be weird.

Justin McMillen (20:55)

Yeah. Keep all this in there.

Vechi Mutum (20:58)

This is good stuff. Yeah. We're not sponsored by Avion, but maybe.

Justin McMillen (21:03)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Once they realize what we're up to, clear thoughts, clean water goes together.

Justin McMillen (21:06)

Yeah. Do you think this really comes from springs?

Vechi Mutum (21:10)

I have no idea. Some guy in wherever this is from. Probably just sitting in his house, filling it up, from a sink.

Justin McMillen (21:18)

Marketing genius. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, so I'll tell you a funny story. In college, I had this class. It was like some global politics class, and we had a guy come in and he said, he was talking about oil, and it was, you know, this is early Iraq War time.

Justin McMillen (21:35)

And he said that, that right now or. No, it was in Iraq. It was early, you know, post nine, 11 kind of thing. And he was talking about the invasions and all this, and he said, right now it's gas like, like, you know, petroleum. That's the big subject, right?

Justin McMillen (21:45)

And he was like, and maybe it's not bad because we need to be maintaining our foothold, you know, in the world.

Justin McMillen (22:00)

And so that's power and control and American interests. And but then he said, but where we're headed is that you are all going to be convinced that you have to buy water, and that, and it and he said, how long can you live without water?

Vechi Mutum (22:10)

And I was, I was like, obviously like three days.

Justin McMillen (22:13)

And, and he said that you're going to be convinced that we are running out of water, even though whatever percentage of the world is covered in it.

Vechi Mutum (22:28)

Yeah. I mean, he said in that that will be a big myth that the people are getting bottled. Yeah. And I think about that every time we have these water shortage things. I know they mean potable water.

Justin McMillen (22:35)

Yeah. But the funny thing is, why are we not doing desalinization? And, you know, technology has improved greatly, especially in the Middle East or Dubai.

Vechi Mutum (22:50)

They're doing it. Everything's there. We pull water out of the air. It's also very interesting the amount of rules that are being put around it. I read an article recently about a gentleman in Portland that was arrested for collecting rainwater.

Justin McMillen (23:00)

Oh, yeah, that's real insane.

Vechi Mutum (23:02)

Also for putting solar panels on your house. If you go to my parent's house, you know they live in Arizona suns blazing and you would be shocked at how few people have solar panels on their roofs, right?

Vechi Mutum (23:17)

We had an exchange student from Germany that when I was a kid, she came to visit and she was just like, how is it that everyone's not hard, you know, harvesting sunlight here?

Justin McMillen (23:25)

It's just that's so weird. And. Yeah, I mean, it's it's the almighty dollar, right? That kind of like, dictates things that power companies don't want people to be doing that.

Vechi Mutum (23:36)

I heard another one. Interesting one, which was, the Amish use this cooling method to cool their houses. So fascinating. And it's it's basically like you can do it for, like, $400. I mean, it keeps your house at a constant 69, you know, 68 degrees.

Vechi Mutum (23:50)

And it's a clay pipe that you put underground. And then it has this, this thing that comes up out of the ground, but the clay pipe has to be deep enough, like six, eight feet underground.

Vechi Mutum (24:06)

And then it travels through and it comes up into the house and, the Amish don't do it, but some people put a fan on it. And what it does is the the temperature of the soil and the clay pipe being the way it is produced is like a cold chamber, and the air pulls through and it absolutely keeps the house cold.

Justin McMillen (24:18)

They do it in their barns, like if you go into an Amish barn, nobody's sweating.

Vechi Mutum (24:27)

Yeah. And and I guess the, the reason people don't do it is because there are no building. There's no way to. And if I'm wrong. So people put it in the comments that, you know, you're full of shit. But this is what I was told is that the, the building codes don't allow for us to do that.

Justin McMillen (24:49)

So. Yeah. And then there was actually like there's well documented lobbying groups that came in with AC that was very key in calling.

Vechi Mutum (25:00)

Yeah. It was like a big push to remove gas stoves like cheapest like way. But right now it's the money makes the world go round. So.

Justin McMillen (25:10)

Okay. Go to same before, you know, I think we're, we're 20 episodes in and congratulations.

Vechi Mutum (25:15)

Thanks.

Justin McMillen (25:16)

And we'll we'll have more energy. I think probably by the time this one comes out, they'll be like 24 or so, 25 probably as the, you know, gets it done. And, and when I first created the list of the episodes, you were like on the top of the list. So I feel like in some way I've been training myself and preparing myself to have this conversation with you.

Justin McMillen (25:36)

Okay. You know, because I you're such a people who know you, you're you're pretty public guy. You're definitely known in our area. And sort of the you're the face of people, in recovery. You're you represent that and you're highly respected. Revered and all that. I very I don't think you.

Justin McMillen (26:01)

Yeah, I mean, it's just true.

Justin McMillen (26:05)

It's it's a fact. And then even on nationally, I mean, there's definitely communities in this country that know who you are and what you do. And so you've been on different podcasts and you've been interviewed. And so what I've been thinking about over time is how I could have a conversation with you that would be maybe different than what you've had in the past.

Justin McMillen (26:25)

And there's certainly there's gonna be all kinds of veggie.

Vechi Mutum (26:30)

Yeah.

Justin McMillen (26:31)

Is your name that you modem?

Vechi Mutum (26:33)

That's right.

Justin McMillen (26:34)

Which means to conquer.

Vechi Mutum (26:36)

It's actually supposed to be VCE, right?

Justin McMillen (26:37)

That's correct.

Vechi Mutum (26:38)

Yeah. It's Vina Vida VC. We came we saw, we conquered.

Justin McMillen (26:41)

Have you ever thought about going by VCE?

Vechi Mutum (26:44)

You know, I have, that felt a lot.

Vechi Mutum (26:47)

It's just, I don't know, it seems more, American. You know, we're not. My mom was not born here. She's not from here. So she really came here as, like, a first year immigrants, English as a second language, like. And I was trying to do as much as I possibly could kind of to fit in. So making it sound as is normal as possible was important for the.

Vechi Mutum (27:08)

Then you end up with people saying veggie, which drives me.

Justin McMillen (27:15)

Absolutely. Oh it's great.

Vechi Mutum (27:18)

Listen, today I love my name, I really do. Third grade was hell. I very kindly correct people because I, you and I end up introducing each other to people all the time and, you know, get text where it says veggie over and over.

Vechi Mutum (27:29)

Recently with doctor Mike was okay, you got a so I, I actually called him because we were texting and I was like, hey, just a heads up here. And then he was like, oh my gosh, that makes some lot more sense. I was like, yeah, it's definitely not veggie. It's yeah. So anyways, veggie veggie mushroom.

Justin McMillen (27:57)

And like I said, you are you're so good at speaking that you've got a lot of canned responses, meaning your things, your go to things that save lives. So some of that will be in here, but I want to get, maybe into other subjects, maybe outside of recovery.

Vechi Mutum (28:07)

Let it let's do, you know, your, your journey.

Justin McMillen (28:10)

But I don't want your bio in the same way that you normally are used to. Okay. Also our relationship. I know you pretty well. I've known you for how many years now?

Vechi Mutum (28:18)

It's at least 14. Little over 14. You know, the first, few months, we really weren't allowed to interact too much. And then after that, it's been hell, man. We built worlds.

Justin McMillen (28:28)

Yeah, yeah. And for for people who who don't know, veggie was in my sphere before the treatment center Treehouse recovery began. And he represents something much, much bigger than just even the organization, which is like he was around when the will to create the organization existed.

Justin McMillen (28:53)

And then he's helped to build that. So he's one of the founding fathers of the organization. He's been instrumental in making it all happen. And one of the most loyal people I've ever met, which is really cool. So when I met you, I don't know that loyalty would have been a way that people described you in the previous few years.

Justin McMillen (29:18)

Is that fair?

Vechi Mutum (29:23)

Absolutely, absolutely.

Justin McMillen (29:25)

Who were you before I met you?

Vechi Mutum (29:28)

I was a culmination of every failure I had ever lost at. I was a it was a running total of every bad decision I had ever made. Very unsure. Zero worth. So much so that to get anybody to engage with me in any way, shape or form, I had to create of this simile or a facade just to get somebody.

Vechi Mutum (29:53)

Because look, when you don't like you, it's really hard to convince yourself that somebody else is going to like you.

Justin McMillen (30:05)

And that's an interesting sentiment.

Vechi Mutum (30:07)

So when I showed up, I. I didn't like me, and rightfully so. I'd been doing horrible stuff and I was just not a good person, and I was not a good father, and I was selfish and self-centered and all the all those things and more.

Justin McMillen (30:17)

But to be fair to you, like the part of why that is so tragic at that point is that there is a lot of hope for you prior to your falling apart. Yeah, you were at least as far as I know. You were sort of the story of, you know, this you you had a lot of things that could have realized themselves into something really extraordinary.

Vechi Mutum (30:39)

Yeah. You know, I had a lot of difficulty in my teenage years. A lot of difficulty. Suicide attempt. And I've managed to find my way out. I got involved with a local program called racing for a cause in Mountain View, California.

Justin McMillen (30:50)

How old were you?

Vechi Mutum (30:51)

14.

Justin McMillen (30:52)

Okay. And this is all pre pre life part. Yeah okay.

Justin McMillen (31:01)

So the story eventually moved him. At this point he's like he's doing something really cool. Yeah. Your family's excited. Your mom's excited.

Vechi Mutum (31:07)

Well it was it was right before that. It's how it came to be. You know these guys showed up and, my mom didn't trust me with her personal room. Rightfully so.

Justin McMillen (31:19)

You were already a troublemaker.

Vechi Mutum (31:21)

Oh. Big time.

Justin McMillen (31:23)

Got it. Okay. Big time.

Vechi Mutum (31:24)

I was so, like a name, like she, I mean, I'm at least a year. I was two years ahead at one time in school, so even though I look big now, I was the same size or smaller as everybody else. I had zero social skills. Mom's gone trying to work and take care of everybody like we're when you're single mom.

Vechi Mutum (31:39)

She's single mom with three of us moms slept on the floor in the babysitter, had a bed. We were eating boiled macaroni with ketchup in it. Like that was her existence at that time. So I had, you know, my shoes are busted. I'm a 14 year old in junior high with a name like veggie, veggie, vegetable, Mitsubishi. I'm getting picked on.

Vechi Mutum (31:59)

I'm fighting constantly. So I got into I was looking for acceptance anywhere. No matter what story I had to tell or legend I had to make up to get you to like me, I would do it. And what ended up happening was it was it was a trick man. Because when people actually engage with the persona I created, I knew it was not me that they loved.

Vechi Mutum (32:18)

I cared for, and I could only keep it up so long, getting involved with them. My life really came into alignment. I had a sense of purpose. Other kids were running around, you know, doing God knows what. Smoking weed and drinking. And here I was with these, with two professional racing drivers and this police officer from Mountain View Police Department, Antonio Lopez, and they're changing my life.

Vechi Mutum (32:41)

I'm going racing on the weekends. I completely change everything. And I did so well for so long. Came out here, laid my eyes on the on being in the fire department, went through Longview Search and Rescue and came out here. So this was in the Midwest. This is in, this is in northern California.

Justin McMillen (33:02)

Northern California. Oh. Excuse me. Okay, I didn't know. I had no idea that was in Northern California.

Vechi Mutum (33:10)

And then when we moved down here is when I got separated from all that. Now again, I'm trying to find my space. And I fell into a group of friends that, you know, with, some were good, some are bad. But there is one of them came to me was a security guard at Lakewood Mall.

Vechi Mutum (33:22)

He's like, hey, you know, Long Beach is having tryouts for search and rescue. You should try out. And, man, I, I know I'm going to try it out. And I made it in, and it's an explorer program. But you work directly with law enforcement. You work direct with fire department, like ladder drills. A CPA training, fire station 23 right there in Long Beach.

Justin McMillen (33:43)

So interesting because you. So I imagine you're, like, at risk, kid, right? Like there's probably eight people. See you. So any of the adults that are in your life that are coming around as you're in school and it's like single mom and this kid could be a a nightmare. And then you keep getting pulled into these places.

Justin McMillen (34:01)

So there's some adults that are coming into your life that are like, hey, why don't you check out this race car thing? Or why don't you check out so, so people saw probably they saw one that you needed you needed some help into that. There was potential.

Vechi Mutum (34:18)

Yeah.

Vechi Mutum (34:19)

You know, even when I couldn't see it, it there absolutely was. There was people along the route, throughout my entire life that would come and try to seek me out to help me. But, I went through Long Beach Search and Rescue. Loved it. Did really well. I was working for Starbucks, had a little crew right there at Cerritos Talent Center. It's first time I'd ever been in all you position, but, some of the lingering stuff that I never addressed or took care of showed back up.

Vechi Mutum (34:44)

And one of those was that imposter syndrome, a fear like, I'm not really I'm not I'm not really good enough to be in search and rescue. I'm not really good enough to be a firefighter. I'm going to screw this up. And I felt like at the time, mom was so proud of me. My family was so proud of me.

Vechi Mutum (35:02)

I didn't want to. I didn't think I was capable, so I. I sabotaged it.

Justin McMillen (35:15)

What part of you.

Justin McMillen (35:15)

Was the the part that every time you had a, like, a come up or there was somebody trying to help you or extend a hand, what part of you is it that didn't believe that? And where does that come from? Is that based in being the way you in the family raised in not not not to put it on your family, me just circumstantially or do you know the answer to that question?

Vechi Mutum (35:40)

I do want me to go. I do partially, you know, and I've done I continue to do work keeping it. You know, I've got I'll have 15 years sober in, November. But it's not over. I just, I just did a bunch of work on some of this stuff, and that lack of self-belief really came from the way I was raised.

Vechi Mutum (35:56)

You know, I'm not a perfect parent. I've never met a perfect parent. But there what I'll say is this, there are some things I will not be repeating in my children's lives, and one of them is value contingent upon use, value contingent upon you.

Justin McMillen (36:17)

So if you're not useful, you're not of any value. This is what this is from. Dad. Mom?

Vechi Mutum (36:23)

Yeah. Useless was a term I heard a lot. Didn't matter what I was doing. And it wasn't like she was in a high stress environment.

Justin McMillen (36:33)

I understand that, do you think parents know when they say that kind of shit? How much it.

Vechi Mutum (36:36)

No.

Justin McMillen (36:38)

Yeah. I don't think they do know. And they learn that somewhere.

Justin McMillen (36:41)

So that's what she was brought up with. She was trying to make an impossible situation feasible and was doing the best she could. But that that idea that I can't do this, I'm gonna let everybody down. Might as well quit. Might as well burn it down as well and blame it on everybody else when I do.

Vechi Mutum (36:59)

That's so crazy. I just heard a story of, somebody's mom saying. You make me not want to get up in the morning. And she absolutely didn't mean.

Justin McMillen (37:07)

Yeah. What the.

Vechi Mutum (37:09)

So the the the will say the boy, the what, the what the boy heard was that, her is a girl. Okay. I'm trying to figure out how to protect, but there's.

Vechi Mutum (37:27)

Nobody's gonna, that her existence made her mother want to not be alive herself like that.

Justin McMillen (37:40)

Yeah, but but here's the crazy part is that's not what the mother and meant. Yeah. And so, like, it's interesting how therapy sometimes is not even. It's not about, like, coming to some sort of being okay with our parents being, you know, monsters to do these terrible things.

Vechi Mutum (37:54)

Well, you don't understand really understanding that that's not what they actually meant when you're a kid, right? The at least this is the way and from what I've learned afterwards, everything that happens in the world you have a role in, it's called locus of control.

Vechi Mutum (38:05)

So if mom gets up and she's mad, it's because I didn't do something right.

Vechi Mutum (38:12)

If Mom and Dad are fighting, it's because I'm not a good boy. Like these things. We we layer on to ourselves because survival wise, we have to try to make sure that if we can make these things better than mom will be happy, then dad maybe won't fight. Maybe there won't be so much yelling or screaming. So we do whatever we can to try to want to wake up in the morning.

Vechi Mutum (38:29)

Exactly who's with me? Because I'm better and she's not. It's.

Justin McMillen (38:35)

You know, I think part of it stems from wanting to take care of your family, even as a child, and not being able to, just with the circumstances. But it,

Vechi Mutum (38:45)

Yeah. And she she had an arm. It was what she was able to pull off. My mother was extraordinary. Like she kept us alive. She kept us fed.

Justin McMillen (38:58)

Yeah. What you've described to me about your mother has been nothing but amazing. I mean, in terms of her strength and.

Vechi Mutum (39:05)

Yeah, her, you know, she's. I can tell that a lot of who you are comes from her. A lot of the best parts of who you are.

Justin McMillen (39:15)

My great comes from her.

Vechi Mutum (39:17)

Yeah, yeah. Her just inability to give up or quit or.

Vechi Mutum (39:20)

She just. I don't know how she did it. I know, but that, that trait I got.

Justin McMillen (39:27)

Do you think she really thought you were useless? Now, as of 40, I think she was upset.

Vechi Mutum (39:31)

I think she was scared. And I think she was trying to make things worse. And I was being a kid.

Justin McMillen (39:37)

I don't think she thought you were useless.

Justin McMillen (39:41)

I you have children, you know, like when you love them so much, we don't typically put, like, full adult ideas onto children. But people say things that can be really painful.

Vechi Mutum (39:55)

It's while you could spend your whole life trying to unplug your head around it, right? Yeah, yeah. Why was this sad? What is this? You know, And then I like.

Vechi Mutum (40:02)

I hear things. I hear things similar to what I was told. And the context can be different, right?

Justin McMillen (40:15)

But it's it's like pushing over a domino in my mind. You immediately revert back to when you first heard that term or that tone. And here comes the emotion. It's a direct attachment. There's no there's no stop there. One of the things I think you and I've actually talked about this term.

Justin McMillen (40:28)

What's wrong with you? Yeah. Like it's super simple, like, hey, what's wrong with you? Like, that's not the way we see it.

Vechi Mutum (40:40)

What's wrong with you? Meaning you're defective. You're broken. What's wrong with you? It's what gets us. Yeah, that came from somewhere. You know, why, isn't it? It's so funny.

Justin McMillen (40:49)

I talked to, we'll call them, well, adopted people. Stable, emotional people. And you go, hey, what's wrong with you? And they go, oh, I didn't sleep well, you know, everything's all right.

Vechi Mutum (40:57)

Talk to somebody like, you know, me or you like, what's wrong with. There's like, well, there's a lot here. I've got a little bit of pressure. This is going on a little bit mania. We we break down a list of actual defects.

Justin McMillen (41:04)

That's if you actually know who you are. You see that as somebody who is in incredible amounts of pain and doesn't know who they are, and they haven't looked at it yet.

Vechi Mutum (41:15)

You're literally cutting open wounds and like, yeah, I wonder about this.

Justin McMillen (41:27)

I think it's fair to say that you work a lot. Yeah. How much do you think? I mean, I don't want to overstep, so. But how much do you think somebody's telling you you were useless when you were a kid? Plays into you waking up every day telling yourself you need to be useful.

Vechi Mutum (41:39)

So that's that's, That'd be interesting to look at from a distance, because I don't want to reduce your life down to that because it's way more.

Justin McMillen (41:51)

Yeah, I'm getting enough of it. It's like you, you are a bit of a you're an anomaly in terms of just your Energizer bunny nonstop. Go, go, go.

Vechi Mutum (42:00)

You know, I don't think it's so much I mean, it plays a part, right? In a small piece like, Longview Search and Rescue. You absolutely was there. Right? Like, I get it.

Vechi Mutum (42:05)

If I can just do this, then I'm okay today.

Justin McMillen (42:12)

It's a little bit different, man. My fuel is. It's so clean burning. It's my purpose. My family, my wife, my kids. Building things, helping. Like it's. It's just a clean, burning fuel.

Vechi Mutum (42:25)

It's not out of I need to do this or any. And that, that went away. I'd say probably 6 or 7 years ago when I got the boys into my life, it was like, wait a minute, there is this.

Vechi Mutum (42:40)

And you think you're strong, or you can think you know how strong you are. You become a father. Right. And then you got to be strong because that's just it. You think you're, you've reached your level of what you can do here on earth, and then a circumstance shows up and you need to figure out a way over, through or under, no matter what.

Vechi Mutum (43:00)

And you just, you just do. So today, that comes from a deep drive of purpose. Yeah. I really feel like I am doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing for right now.

Vechi Mutum (43:10)

If that changes, one day it may change. But until then, this is what I'm going to do, and I'm gonna do it the best I possibly can.

Vechi Mutum (43:16)

That's so important to me. I, it is important to me when I go to lay my head down at night, that I do everything I possibly could to make this go right. And if I didn't, I get up and I pray about it.

Vechi Mutum (43:27)

And what can I have done different? You know, a friend of mine recently just said, what's the delta to perfect and what are we doing today to get there?

Vechi Mutum (43:39)

That means something. Could I be in a little bit more gentler? Could I have been more assertive? Could I have set a standard? Could I have been more malleable?

Vechi Mutum (43:50)

Like I'm not, I think most powerfully, I am not done evolving. I want to keep learning. I'm not. I'm not done. Yeah. We talked the other day. I said, I want to get better at what I do.

Vechi Mutum (43:59)

I want to be I want everything I can. It's good.

Justin McMillen (44:05)

I have watch I've been such a spectator to your journey. Right. And so I've watched you go from like the initial seeds of trust and respect and care and taking on adopting responsibility. It started with you adopting responsibility for an environment or a house. And then that grew and continued to grow.

Justin McMillen (44:26)

And you have adopted so much responsibility. But the early years, my perception, which is perception may not it could be bullshit, but it was like, first you were trying to prove to yourself that you had value, that you could do something, that you could keep your word. And then I watched that transition into, there's still a lot of insecurity, which was interesting to see.

Justin McMillen (44:49)

And all I want to do is just love you all on the way so you can so instrumental in so many different areas of my life. So I'd say there's so much grace on my end. So if I see something this is I'm talking years ago now, I see something that seems odd. It's almost always be explained through compassion, understanding.

Justin McMillen (45:06)

So it looked like there was still insecurity. And then it was like, I need to I need to prove to the world that I, that I value or that I'm good. And, there was a lot of that. And then in the last couple of years, you you've shifted towards, more it seems like more inward and like, I want to I want to be as great as I can.

Justin McMillen (45:27)

Like you seem more settled into knowing who you are. You know, there's less a need to prove to anyone. It's more just about your family, yourself. And I love whenever I hear any powerful person start to talk about what how they need to be better. All my, like, little lights flicker, you know, because it's like, this is I see this in high performing people across the board.

Justin McMillen (45:50)

Everybody gets to a certain point, in their trajectory, people can come get really far in success and I mean success, like financially or family or, you know, the community respects whatever it is. You get to a certain point and then plateau. If if we don't evolve where we start really analyzing how we can be better, and it's hard to do and a lot of men and women, everybody doesn't, they get comfortable in that.

Justin McMillen (46:17)

Yeah. They get comfortable in they start living in this sort of false ego. Oh, this is who I am. And that was so cool. And I know you've seen this because you mentor a lot of people, too. Is that when a person is not afraid or they're not judged by saying it, or they're around people that support them to say, maybe I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Vechi Mutum (46:36)

Even after you've had success, that's where everything gets rocket fuel on it and it just goes off. And, that's that's a trait that I think all really high performing people have. And yeah, anyways, I, I, I agree, I forget who said it, but there is a guy who said, extremely successful. I wish I could remember who it was.

Vechi Mutum (46:59)

I can't, but he said had I been knowledgeable in the business I was trying to open, I would have failed. I was so ignorant, I didn't know I couldn't succeed.

Justin McMillen (47:10)

Yeah. And that I missed it. I do, I miss that. So I think to say this and the more I want to explore this because I think this is a topic that's valuable, it's

Vechi Mutum (47:23)

You know, a guy has idea, a person has an idea, and they're like, okay, I want to do this. You don't know what you can't do. Know. And that's like the best gift of starting something, as a new person. So if you're starting a business or you have a big idea, the best thing you can have is, like, complete, utter ignorance around what's how to do it.

Vechi Mutum (47:49)

What's possible. Because once you know, it's possible, you also know what can fall apart. Yeah. And then you start creating this story of how, well, if I do that, then that can happen. If I do this, this, this. And then your brain becomes clouded with, static like noise. So much chatter. What's the tightrope? Right. Yeah. So we've got a tightrope.

Justin McMillen (48:09)

There's a cavern of dragons and alligators and fire and all this in a cross is this immense success. And there's this, this small web in front of us. And if we just walk straight, we're good.

Vechi Mutum (48:15)

Oh, what if I fall? What if this, what if that.

Justin McMillen (48:18)

What if you just walk. Yeah. What if you just go straight.

Vechi Mutum (48:20)

You might. What if you don't. It's so that you're even on top 100%.

Justin McMillen (48:25)

Yeah. Yeah. No I yeah. A lot of that in the early time was me and you're absolutely right.

Vechi Mutum (48:33)

Like I didn't know I could do any of that. I'd never held a consistent job outside of. So I got well. And when I was 32 back in 2011, from 2022 until 2011 was an absolute debauchery.

Vechi Mutum (48:51)

I mean, it just, you know, we talk about it evolving forward now, but I, I kept getting worse from 2020 to 20, 2000, 2000 and yes, from no 20 2120 2021 till 20 2011. No, that's not possible. 2021 I'm sorry from 2001 2001.

Justin McMillen (49:05)

Got it. Okay.

Vechi Mutum (49:07)

I just want other people to listen to it and go, no, 2001 I'm sorry, I'm not the numbers guy is okay. Those are big numbers. I get confused.

Vechi Mutum (49:16)

Yeah. I missed a little bit of my dyslexia coming up. But it was, it was complete debauchery. I kept on lowering standards, and things kept getting worse and bad. It went from here. I am, you know, doing call outs with Long Beach Search and rescue and really, like, embracing what my career could be.

Vechi Mutum (49:43)

Five years later, I'm in a police chase. I'm running from the same guys I used to work with. There were people I would get picked up and especially Long Beach PD. God bless a man. Like that's what happened. Like, oh, you don't understand. There was this and there it was, diarrhea.

Justin McMillen (50:11)

Like, bro, what's going through your mind when you're getting when you're in a police chase in a car and people are coming after you run?

Justin McMillen (50:15)

Right. Are you are you, like, thinking, like, I hope this makes the news.

Vechi Mutum (50:18)

No, no, no, there's. You're not thinking that there's no ego in there at all. No. It's run. Well, I don't know for anybody else.

Vechi Mutum (50:25)

For me I was. Look fear drove a lot of big components of my life. And when I was running, I was running out of fear.

Vechi Mutum (50:30)

Right. Fear of jail, field of repercussion. Feel of fear of all kinds of stuff. Rightfully so. I committed crimes. They should have been. You know, I'm not. I'm wasn't a victim here like I did dumb shit. But it was always fear. It was fear. And I would run whether I was sitting in a car on a bicycle or on my on my feet, like I ran out of my shoes.

Vechi Mutum (50:51)

Once you literally left one of the shoes and just bolted.

Justin McMillen (50:57)

So what, the police chase? Where was it? I'm just curious.

Vechi Mutum (51:01)

Long beach? The girl I was with at the time, we were both heavily addicted. She was, going to the methadone clinic, and you have to get to the methadone clinic by a certain time to catch your dose.

Vechi Mutum (51:16)

And we were late. She was going to miss her dose, and if she missed her dose, she was going to be sick all day. And if anyone's ever been in love with or had a, engaged or had a heroin addiction or a methadone addiction, that's a sick you don't want to feel. So I was driving the car I was working for, I was working for this guy, and I was supposed to be fixing his car, actually just drove it.

Justin McMillen (51:37)

What kind of car?

Vechi Mutum (51:40)

It's a 94 Acura Integra.

Justin McMillen (51:41)

What color?

Vechi Mutum (51:42)

Black. By the time I was done with it, it was pioneer Black Integra that you're supposed to be fixing. But really, you're just driving your girl to the methadone clinic now, and it's all souped up because, you know, I took my experience from racing. I've got an intake on it, and I think I'm Ricky Racer with matching mechanic's gloves to back to back.

Vechi Mutum (51:58)

And, we were late and I blew past a car doing 130. At that point. I'm not stopping. You know, when I stop, she's going to freak out. It's going to be hell anyway. So they just roll in behind you and it's off to the races at that point.

Justin McMillen (52:12)

Off to the races?

Vechi Mutum (52:14)

Yeah. I mean, it's foolish.

Vechi Mutum (52:19)

It's terrifying. Thank God I never hurt anybody. But, at that time, it was fear. I'm going to die. They're going to kill me. I got to get away.

Justin McMillen (52:27)

Yeah. Did you get away that time?

Vechi Mutum (52:29)

Yeah. She got her methadone on time. She did. I got picked up a couple days later, walking down the street because a cop recognized me, and they just.

Vechi Mutum (52:45)

They knew who I was. Man, I'd been in that neighborhood for so long. They knew exactly who I was. In fact, the last time I got arrested, again, I was known for running. I had, I was walking across the street from Walgreens, and, there's this little circle. It's Lakewood, Long Beach, Bellflower, Norwalk, and it's it's just known for drugs, particularly meth and heroin.

Vechi Mutum (53:10)

And I was walking across the street, and I had a whole bunch of meth in my pocket and, like, an ounce, like, more than I ever had before. I had a hotel room, which is like, these are levels of success as a, as a as a drug dealer. Success. Yeah. I've got I've got to go to check. I got a motel, got a car.

Vechi Mutum (53:25)

You know, a little thing going on. It's just a complete delusion. And I walked across the street and the sheriff walks up and he's like, hey, that. And I just looked at him and I was so fucking tired. Just. And he was like, what? Dude? And he puts his hand on this guy, goes, you're going to run?

Vechi Mutum (53:42)

I ain't got no, I'm done. And I pull it out of my pocket. And I handed it to him and he goes, me wow. It was right after that chase that I was like, I didn't I was dying, you know, when I got out after that, I went to go back to another girl's house that I was. So hold on.

Justin McMillen (54:02)

So you've got locked up?

Vechi Mutum (54:07)

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The Acura Integra, thank God, got pled down to a taking a car without the owner's permission. Because I did have his permission to have it.

Vechi Mutum (54:15)

But, yeah, I was in for, like, 48 days, I think.

Justin McMillen (54:18)

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And when you're in there, are you thinking. I can't wait to get out, to get back to what I was doing?

Justin McMillen (54:23)

Was there any moment of thinking maybe that to stop?

Vechi Mutum (54:27)

Yeah. That time. Yeah. You get sick and dude, the when you run yourself through cycles that destroy yourself and people who love you, you get so sick and tired of your own shit.

Vechi Mutum (54:31)

And like, I did this again. What kind of person does this again? Like, what are you and what is wrong with me?

Vechi Mutum (54:49)

I'm just. And then you know it. It can get dark. You know, depression is a real thing. Thinking it maybe this world will be better off without me. You know, that's a that's a permanent solution to a temporary problem whose people do it all the time. But I know what that's like. I know how dark it can get.

Justin McMillen (55:07)

So that it's. What's interesting about that is in order to feel that, you have to believe that there's a better thing that could be there for you. Did you ever get to a point where you were like, I'm a monster and I've accepted this?

Vechi Mutum (55:15)

No, I didn't want to be that.

Justin McMillen (55:18)

Yeah, that's that makes sense. I mean, but here's the thing, to be completely honest, and only somebody like me or us could laugh at something like this.

Vechi Mutum (55:25)

I remember trying to kill myself, waking up and thinking, I can't even do this, right. It was laughable. So for me, that meant I wasn't even worthy of death.

Vechi Mutum (55:37)

It wasn't that I was a demon. I wasn't even good enough to go. I had to stay here and suffer. And that to me was terrifying.

Justin McMillen (55:50)

So when you, you got out of jail. Who were you? High like the day you got out?

Vechi Mutum (56:03)

Not that. Not the last time. Every other time. My poor mom, she got up at 430, 5:00 in the morning to go to work. They release you at two a am. There's a reason for this.

Vechi Mutum (56:15)

Years ago, they released somebody around midnight. He went to a bar, got drunk, murdered the bartender.

Vechi Mutum (56:23)

New law. They don't release you till after bars are closed. So they would release me at two, three, 4:00 in the morning. I would be high by the time my mom's coffee pot would start at 430 in the morning. And she knew, like, I get to the door and she be like, oh, how are you? I'm like, hey mom, what's up?

Vechi Mutum (56:39)

And she's like, you're already high. Like, no, what are you talking about? No, I'm not sorry.

Vechi Mutum (56:50)

Let. And that's crazy. But they did these arrests, which is an interesting word because you're arresting the addiction to meaning stopping right. Putting it on hold. Saves people's lives to save some life. Sometimes it's like the best thing that could happen is it's, you know, we, we talk about it in the rooms is, a higher power in the universe conspiring to save us, doing for ourselves or doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Vechi Mutum (57:12)

And there were so many times where, you know, they kept me safe. They stopped me from hurting myself or anybody else.

Justin McMillen (57:29)

You know what I don't understand? And I'm sure you've thought about this, and maybe not in this way, but you couldn't. You can't work in outer space without thinking about it. Is. Let's see if I could say this simply.

Justin McMillen (57:35)

So. We all have a brain. The brain is contains our mind. You take drugs, our mind is impaired. Our mind is the thing that's going to tell us to stop using something that's going to give us what, you know, it's it's the decision maker. So you have a whole bunch of people on the street whose mind is impaired, and then there's an expectation that they're going to make a decision, stop.

Vechi Mutum (57:53)

Yeah, that's a really complicated problem. Yeah. You know, and I think this is where a lot of people that work in mental health don't understand people who work in substance abuse, because a lot of our job is figuring out how to like, you almost have to.

Vechi Mutum (58:00)

I don't know if the word is manipulate, but you have to like to get people to stop using.

Vechi Mutum (58:16)

It's like it's a whole different animal than because you're not to expect them to make the decision. I think it's unfair to expect them to make the decision, especially with you can't chain them up like people say, oh, I would just chain my body up to a tree and then you'd get sober. You've heard this, but they. The gross misconception is that the drugs are the problem or the alcohol is the problem.

Vechi Mutum (58:37)

That's not true. The drugs and the alcohol are symptoms of the problem. So if you abstain from the drugs or the alcohol, let's even go into behavior gambling, sex addiction, whatever it may be. That's not the problem. That's how it's appearing symptomatically. And for years the industry has been.

Vechi Mutum (59:00)

Time, effort, millions of dollars in lives playing whac-a-mole with Symptomology. Well, if we just go with this and, you know, then then they provide this medication and it when the true cause the thing that's kicking the domino over is usually much deeper. Expecting a brain, especially when hijacked by a substance, is powerful as methamphetamine in particular methamphetamine, the way it hijacks the prefrontal cortex, impulse control, emotional regulation.

Vechi Mutum (59:28)

These are the things that keep you from doing, going back out and doing dumb stuff. They're disabled, he doesn't have the faculty to be able to do that. You know, methamphetamine on its own. I don't quote me on this, but the success rate for methamphetamine only abuse is something like one half of 1%.

Justin McMillen (59:50)

Yeah. No, it's not good because it destroys that center.

Vechi Mutum (59:55)

So expecting your loved one to come through you just because you're talking at them enough or hitting them with logic, you know, where where I've been able to reach somebody immune in that state has been through their emotion and their heart. It seems to override everything else. Like how do you feel right now? Is this where you want to be?

Vechi Mutum (1:00:11)

Who's missing you right now? Talking to them about those things will bring them through.

Justin McMillen (1:00:11)

It is so crazy. You can't you can't use pretty words. Or because some of these people are very intelligent, some of them are smarter than I am. Oh. I'll debate. Yeah, yeah. You can't lodge. You can't. Yeah. You can't do it. You know, it's interesting.

Justin McMillen (1:00:31)

You say talk to their heart. I've heard, I've done this too. But one of a one powerful tool for people who are listening. If you have a loved one who's currently using, rather than sitting down with them and tell them how terribly you feel about the fact that they're using is to actually go earlier to a point where they were healthy and describe that right is in, you know, that that seems to work.

Justin McMillen (1:01:00)

At least it opens the doors up. You see people start to get emotional. They'll start crying. Why do you think talking about the time before a person was addicted has such a profound impact on the their ability to start to open up, to consider getting sober?

Vechi Mutum (1:01:10)

When you are in such a desperate and dire place in your addiction, and you remember when you were happy, at peace and felt safe, it's such a different feeling.

Vechi Mutum (1:01:31)

It's like going from ice cold to warm. There's such a contrast to it. Like the the soul literally shudders because it's so opposite of it. You don't you don't feel loved or accepted or safe when you're in the middle of your crap and you're doing horrible stuff, so you get like, almost like temporary relief from incredible amounts of pain.

Vechi Mutum (1:01:53)

You do, but you're also it makes it very clear how far away from that you are. Like, whoa, that's how it. Whoa, wait, how did I get from here to there? Like what I do remember feeling this way at one time. I did feel good. What am I doing over here? How did I get here? So then the people snap the door close, probably pretty quickly.

Justin McMillen (1:02:13)

How do you, you know, in that, like, oh my God, I used to be this guy. Now I'm this guy. If you get someone to that place where they realize there was a time when their life had hope, or that they were a quote unquote good person, what is going through their head at that point?

Justin McMillen (1:02:25)

Let's say that you let's walk through this, let's say that that you're using and I'm talking to you and I get you to remember a time before everything got bad.

Justin McMillen (1:02:42)

And I see that I've cracked into you. Right. And this is good for people who are listening, who's talking to somebody who's struggling. It's like, yeah, I remember when we should go to the lake when you were ten. Yeah. You know, remember that inner tube? Your smiles were big. And so I get you to open up. What do you do from there?

Justin McMillen (1:03:01)

How do I how do I and what's going on, by the way, what would be going on in your head as the person who's addicted after that happens? That shudder that that. Oh my God, that remembering connection, that remembering being loved and safe and warm and comfortable and then, you know, being it's kind of like peeking into a room and then you got to come back out because you're still in hell.

Justin McMillen (1:03:25)

What's the dialog that goes on in the head? Is it what are the doubts around that? So now you remember when you were ten and you were happy, but you feel like shit? Tell the the person who's watching this what kind of narrative is going on in the head of somebody who realizes how fucked up their life.

Vechi Mutum (1:03:44)

Actually, the addiction part goes into overdrive. You'll never get back there. Things have changed. Look what happened. You're not worthy. You were a kid, like eight years.

Vechi Mutum (1:03:55)

It's wild how the mind will try to convince you to stay sick. They don't know you. They're lying to you. They're trying to trick you. That you were never that happy. That it's wild, that journey that your mind would take you on.

Vechi Mutum (1:04:08)

And we. For the longest time, I believed that what I thought and felt was absolute fact. I really did right. And I, I learned there's a mentor of mine who stopped me. We were talking one day and I go, well, I and I was talking about walking into a room of people and like, well, they hate me.

Vechi Mutum (1:04:26)

Or they were thinking this, or they were thinking that he's like, number one, not everybody's thinking about you. Number one. Number two, you're what you're thinking and feeling is skewed by your insecurities, by your past, by all these other things that you think and feel is not fact. I'm like, what do you mean it's me? I thought it was me, I thought I was the inner dialog, I thought it was me talking to me.

Vechi Mutum (1:04:48)

And he said very simply, she if you're talking, who's listening? And it was the first time I'd ever thought about my thinking, which is a complete separation from the way I had reactively lived my life up until then, I felt something, I acted, and it was true. If I'm scared, I'm actually in danger. You know, if I think you're wrong, me?

Vechi Mutum (1:05:13)

It's actually happening. It can't be because an insecurity or fear or or past traumas or anything like that, that's just what was happening. Sure. It's just true. Thinking about that gave me I mean, it's.

Vechi Mutum (1:05:25)

To the normies out there, it's kind of standard. But to us, it's a superpower. It's absolutely a superpower. To be able to think about my thinking and address what's going on gives me the ability to respond instead of react. And that was something I never had. I'd be in situations where I'd be like, in my head, I'd be screaming like, dude, don't hit him, don't hit him.

Vechi Mutum (1:05:47)

And then the next thing you know, I'm standing over somebody. They're calling the cops and it's all over. Like it stopped the behavior, didn't ask for permission from the brain. It was just. It was done. That was it.

Justin McMillen (1:06:12)

So. So. That was not a skill set. I had, Yeah, I developed that skill set about six months into sobriety.

Vechi Mutum (1:06:15)

It was the first time it happened, and I was blown away because I didn't revert back.

Justin McMillen (1:06:25)

Yeah. You pause. Pause. Control. Yeah. Know that I want to get back to this idea that because I want this to be useful. And I think you have useful information here. So we were just talking about if a parent or a loved one, a wife, husband is talking to somebody that's deeply in the mess of drugs, the question is like, how do you get through to them when their brain doesn't work?

Justin McMillen (1:06:43)

One of the things we've been talking about is bring up a time before they were bad. You mentioned that this would open a door into their psyche. And you'll start to capture the you'll capture their attention, they'll remember it. It'll be painful. They'll realize where they're at. And then you said that. But with with all of that comes this internal dialog.

Justin McMillen (1:07:04)

So, so as a person trying to help somebody, you got to know that the story that's going on in their head is probably far worse the way you could even imagine it.

Vechi Mutum (1:07:15)

Absolutely. Yeah.

Justin McMillen (1:07:19)

So then what do you do about that. How do you how do you if I'm trying to love somebody and I know they hate themselves and their emotional and I got their attention, how do I get them from there to actually making a decision to go get help like call you.

Vechi Mutum (1:07:33)

I, I'm that's kind. But can you because you can't talk to start with love. Start with love. It's okay. Tell me what's going on right now.

Vechi Mutum (1:07:37)

Where's your head at? Ask them questions. You know, I and it was a shift I. I took in the way I work with people. Instead of telling them, I ask them, is this where you want to be?

Vechi Mutum (1:07:53)

What do you think it would take? Because then their mind starts thinking about hope, which they've been devoid from. And if I can get them to start to consider possibilities of hope, it brings down the defenses a little bit. What does that even if it's crazy? What if I just had all the drugs I ever needed? Then everything would be great.

Vechi Mutum (1:08:09)

Okay, what does that look like? Do you know anybody who's like that? Are there any successful drug dealers who are on the phone or like on fortune 500 now they're in prison or dead? Like it opens up the ability for you to start a dialog, and hopefully that person will walk you to where their heart is instead of directing them, ask them, how can we help?

Vechi Mutum (1:08:27)

What is this look like? What do you think you're missing? Is this where you want to be? You know, and I got this from you. If you could snap, you're telling somebody. If you could snap your fingers right now and make everything better, what would you do? He's. That person is going to tell you everything. They will if you let them.

Vechi Mutum (1:08:47)

But if you're in there and immediately you have to realize when you're going in to talk to that persona, they've got a response for everything. They've already planned, how they're going to get out their plan, how they're going to get high. They plan whether or not they're going to manipulate you into getting money, car, hotel, whatever. It is it's so interesting.

Vechi Mutum (1:09:06)

The reason that I'm like, belaboring this or I keep is just because I feel like.

Vechi Mutum (1:09:12)

There are certainly millions of people in this country that wish they could have a conversation with somebody who's actively using, and they have no idea where to begin. And and then there's so many different people tell you to do this and do that. And, the information in your head for how to do it, I don't think it could be boiled down into a couple simple steps that, you know, that's part of why you're so busy.

Justin McMillen (1:09:41)

But man, if we could if we could, maybe this is just a subject for another time, or it's just an invitation to be a book. You write at some point here, you go. It's an invitation.

Vechi Mutum (1:09:50)

Ask them what's going on, you know, and that was something that I always remember when I would get sat down and kind of talk to, I would be told, you're missing school, you're doing this, or we found this or you're doing drugs, are you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Vechi Mutum (1:10:03)

It was never what's going on? Like, are you are you happy in the scenario? You know, there were times I was so delusional or high be like, yeah, this is great. But then it come back and, you know, on the downward swing and this is terrible. Is the great worth the terrible. Can you sustain this? What is this?

Vechi Mutum (1:10:21)

And just talking to them, inviting them to to be part of the discussion. You can't go in there Punitively if you go in there. Here's the deal I talk. My inner dialog was so bad, telling me things about myself that I was a piece of shit that was never going to amount to anything, that everybody who'd ever call me useless was right.

Vechi Mutum (1:10:40)

My entire existence. There was a running dialog of that in my head on a nonstop tape when I was using. And the only way, only way to shut it up was to get high. I didn't get loaded for some great experience. It was the only time I had left me alone.

Justin McMillen (1:10:55)

I get it. I mean, that is important for people to hear because I think any, any parent or anybody who's trying to love somebody who's going through that, most of the time, and they rightfully so.

Justin McMillen (1:11:08)

It's there's a selfishness to it because it's like, you want to fucking tell the person that you're hurting me. And that's how it works. And with healthy people, you say, you're hurting me, stop. And then they stop. But if you do that to somebody who already has a whole whole monologue in their head about how they're one of the worst people on planet Earth.

Vechi Mutum (1:11:26)

Yeah, all you're doing is putting gasoline just reinforcing it.

Justin McMillen (1:11:35)

Yeah, right. You're just reinforcing it.

Vechi Mutum (1:11:38)

And wanting to escape that. That reality constantly is. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. Yeah, I think that's that's. Yeah. Inside the mind. Inside of the addicted mind. Right. This is like, really what we're talking about. And maybe this this could be interesting to explore a little bit.

Justin McMillen (1:11:56)

We'll talk about a lot of different things, but. People don't know what it's like to be in that headspace.

Vechi Mutum (1:12:05)

No, no, there's a lot of, there's a lot of assumptions, you know? They just don't care. Which is true and not.

Justin McMillen (1:12:15)

Yeah, exactly. It's true. Yeah, it's true, but not in a way that you can't put that frame on it, like, as though they're healthy and don't care where I see this happening after the initialization, right after you start down the journey where I see it being the most complicated is in those first few weeks or months of sobriety, because here the addicted person comes out and they've been in there doing

Justin McMillen (1:12:36)

their thing and they've got blinders on, right? Their behaviors only affecting them and hurting anybody else. And it's the equivalent to walking out of a storm shelter after a tornado, looking around at all the devastation, and you're basically like, hey, tornado is gone, everything's cool, and there's just devastation everywhere. You're like, hey, what are you talking about? I'm great.

Vechi Mutum (1:12:55)

Like, you know, so good you come up with that. Your parents didn't see it. I mean, the holy shit, that's so good. You're.

Justin McMillen (1:13:00)

Well, it's it's true. Yeah, yeah. It's true.

Justin McMillen (1:13:05)

And now, now we've got to figure out a point, especially with the family and parents afterwards. Like, how do we measure their emotional response, which is valid? They've been put through hell.

Vechi Mutum (1:13:14)

I put my mom through hell. I put her through hell. I did a whole video on how I put my poor mother through every phone call. Is he dead? Is he in jail? Is he on the TV? What's going on?

Vechi Mutum (1:13:25)

So they are triggered by all these different things. So here they are. The person's come out that's getting well and they're showing, you know, progress families.

Vechi Mutum (1:13:34)

Now the one who's in the middle of a PTSD cycle, he's going to go out again. What happens again? You know, I talk with parents. I'm working with a family right now where it's a constant reminder to leave room for hope.

Justin McMillen (1:13:47)

I understand what they're going through, but you've got to leave a little bit of room for hope here. That's really important.

Vechi Mutum (1:13:55)

What you just said it is. You know, I actually I was on the phone the other day, and I actually engaged in I explained to him, you know, the whole right experiment, you know, you're really familiar with this, that there's double blind study, there's a group of rats.

Vechi Mutum (1:14:07)

It's the same rats, right? One group of scientists is told, hey, these rats are super intelligent. They're like, you know, we we mastered them in genetics at whatever, right? They're going to run faster than anybody or than any other subjects. So they put him in, they test them. Same group of rats, different scientists. These are the dumbest rats we've ever seen.

Vechi Mutum (1:14:26)

They're genetically defective. The way that they're treated dropping, kind of just the disgust and all the things like.

Justin McMillen (1:14:45)

That's fascinating, right? But what's crazy was they ran different times. How did the way those were perceived affect what they were doing?

Vechi Mutum (1:14:51)

There's something to that. And I've seen it like we've and I wanted so much of this from human. Picturing that person doing those things is such a key piece of it.

Vechi Mutum (1:15:05)

So when when families are stuck in that cycle again, rightfully so, because they've been put through hell yeah. They've almost locked it into their brain that this person, they've had to. Yeah. Yeah, they've had to. But for them understanding that there is hope and then understanding as well, the most, one of the most demotivating thing to somebody actually trying to change their life is getting pulled back to, oh, you're going to do it again.

Vechi Mutum (1:15:24)

This is just how you do things. Okay. Here we go. Are you are you kidding me that say it again for people. Yeah. It's like everybody who's sort of come out of a bad place is familiar with that and how painful that is. Like, oh I see this is just what you do. Or this is like the fight in sobriety is to try to get as far away from that as possible.

Vechi Mutum (1:15:48)

And when anyone pins you back down there, it's like, oh yeah, well, you deserve it too.

Justin McMillen (1:16:01)

So well, I wouldn't so I'm going to change that a little bit. I don't think it's deserved. I think it's earned.

Vechi Mutum (1:16:05)

Earned. Yeah. That's fair enough.

Vechi Mutum (1:16:08)

And I you know, I said this to my guy who said well they're always like this. I said, okay. And again, asking questions that are telling, why are they like that? What experience have you shown them in the last few years that would make them think, oh, I've done it every time, sort of probably trying to protect their heart and their soul a little bit. And this is what we set them up for. Doesn't mean that we're going to stay this way, but there's an account that needs to be settled here with love and consistency over time.

Justin McMillen (1:16:25)

Yeah. And the family has a right to feel that way. They've been put through hell. Right? That the individual getting well has a right to it. Have hope and move forward. And together they need to find a balance in it.

Vechi Mutum (1:16:35)

They really do. Because if you keep pulling that person back and they're trying so hard, Justin, it's so hard to change those things, man.

Vechi Mutum (1:16:44)

It's so hard not to get high when that's been your freaking go to your entire existence. It's I lying I it took me three and a half months to go 24 hours without lying about weird shit.

Justin McMillen (1:16:55)

Did you go to, Taco Bell or Kentucky Fried Chicken and went to, you know, whatever for no reason? Because just conditioned response.

Justin McMillen (1:17:06)

How what where can people go to understand how to do this? So, like, just to paint the picture. You got a family. It's got all this wreckage because their son has just been a nightmare and he's sober.

Vechi Mutum (1:17:15)

Good for him. But guess what? He ruined our family. And now you've got parents pissed, like.

Justin McMillen (1:17:25)

And siblings and siblings.

Vechi Mutum (1:17:29)

Siblings? It. Dude, siblings are a big one. You know, I,

Vechi Mutum (1:17:35)

Can I say here there's one family where, you know, there's one sibling that really, really struggles and the other ones are amazing. Super successful, and everybody's happy because the guy who just got well was getting gotten well. Right? Well, the other two siblings who have never done anything wrong in the world are like, who cares? Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Justin McMillen (1:17:53)

Oh, you're going to thank him for being like, awesome. Great. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't he didn't get a DUI this year. Awesome. Great.

Vechi Mutum (1:18:00)

Wait. Where to go, where to go, where to go.

Justin McMillen (1:18:05)

But that's that's justified in their presence. Sure. Justified in that situation. And having to work through that is just is there books or is there any place that someone could go to learn more about how to navigate that there's it's okay if you don't have a specific suggestion.

Justin McMillen (1:18:19)

I'm just curious.

Vechi Mutum (1:18:25)

I, I refer to, well, there used to be a bunch of websites out there. Some of them are gone. The attics. Mom was out there forever. That's gone. Love in the trenches. You know, for parents. Listen to me. Get on line. Talk to other parents. You are not the only ones going through this. This is affected.

Vechi Mutum (1:18:43)

Millions of people talk to other parents. What feels right instinctually may not be the right thing to do. Talk to other parents. Get an idea from them. Look, you can call into a center. That's great. You know, Karen's one of the best there is. You know, I call her mom. You know, you just had her on. I learned from her so much, the talking to other parents, her being a parent, they have an internal aspect or view of what's going on that they can share with you.

Vechi Mutum (1:19:10)

They understand the stress and the pain from it. And a lot of it's counterintuitive, right?

Justin McMillen (1:19:20)

I think so too, is not you know, we're used to doing kind of what feels like the right move. But, as a parent, it's so the love of your child is so strong that, well, it's it can trick you. It can trick you.

Vechi Mutum (1:19:30)

I see a lot with. And this isn't always true. Sometimes these dynamics will switch, but the mom and dad very much have a different type of relationship, especially with an adolescent or somebody early on trying to get. Well, you know, the word turn back to mom. I mean, a mother's job is to keep an infant alive, right?

Justin McMillen (1:19:48)

Right.

Vechi Mutum (1:19:50)

Absolutely. And what's what's a dad job? Dad job is to teach him how to survive after we're gone, I'm sure, like, if we're lucky and it's the way it's supposed to be. Your children will long outlive you. As men, as fathers have. We taught them what they need to know to survive on their own. Does he understand?

Vechi Mutum (1:20:05)

He's not made of glass. He can fall and get back up again. And he has the things he needs to be able to do that even if I'm not here is dad or mom. Mom's whole world is. I have to feed this child literally from birth. I have to keep them safe. Like genetically it's wired into them. But that umbilical cord that saved the child will strangle the man.

Vechi Mutum (1:20:27)

And they get stuck in the cycle of I. I'm not. I'm not safe, I'm not safe, I'm not safe.

Justin McMillen (1:20:40)

Why do you think he doesn't think he's safe?

Vechi Mutum (1:20:43)

Because he thinks he has to depend on you for life. He's afraid to. I have learned more from feeling than I've ever learned from any success in my entire existence. It's taught me nearly everything of value.

Vechi Mutum (1:20:47)

Teaching someone to fail and go again and go again and go again, and that they've got the strength to do it is key. That's how we break through things like addiction or impossible things. You know, it's not it's not permanent. And unless you decide to stop trying, you keep trying. I don't care how bad the story got a year from now.

Vechi Mutum (1:21:06)

It's a part of your story. And when parents try to micro control that or like oh well you know he can't do it on his own or why do you, why doesn't he understand the consequences of his actions. He's never felt the consequences of his actions. Yeah. You're hiring attorneys. You're saving him from everything he does. What do you think he acts the way he does when you go to pull support?

Vechi Mutum (1:21:28)

He's not just being a jerk. It's the inner child and him being absolutely terrified. He can't because he knows or believes he can't survive without mom or dad.

Justin McMillen (1:21:39)

How do you. God, I get it. But how do you, If you're talking to a family, that's like a painful thing to bring up because you can't undo the past.

Vechi Mutum (1:21:46)

No, you can't, but you have to look at the way to move forward, right? Like we've we've got kids, right?

Justin McMillen (1:21:55)

Yeah. And you look at what works with some of them, and you work at what we look at what works with other ones. Like it's there comes a point where this didn't work. This person didn't respond that way.

Vechi Mutum (1:22:03)

You know, one sibling gets doted on and everything they want and they succeed. The other sibling gets doted on and everything they want, and they completely regress and become dependent instead of independent. That didn't work with the sibling.

Justin McMillen (1:22:20)

When you talk to parents about that kind of stuff, did they ever, ever get pissed?

Vechi Mutum (1:22:26)

Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Justin McMillen (1:22:28)

Have you ever had anyone just tell you to fuck off?

Vechi Mutum (1:22:30)

And yeah, I have, I've had people tell me that I have no idea what it's like. I don't know what I'm talking about. I have gotten the most frustrated. I'm on the phone all the time. You know, the, the two time. I'm not proud of this, but the two times I was ready to throw my phone was because of a parent who repeatedly enabled their child.

Vechi Mutum (1:22:49)

They would undo all the work we were doing. You know, when you're an addict, you were looking for the easiest, softest way to do anything. And if you lower that threshold into something softer or more comfortable, they'll go there. Don't make it comfortable for them. Don't make it acceptable for them to sit in their own shit, in misery and pain and exist there.

Justin McMillen (1:23:12)

Absolutely not. I refuse to accept this version of you.

Vechi Mutum (1:23:20)

Yeah, that's true. And I I've made it like my boys am so open with them, you know, they know their dad has a history down to being homeless and eating out of a garbage can and being able to raise my head in public to helping people and moving forward.

Vechi Mutum (1:23:32)

They know that those things happen. They know that they're going to be tested. They know that this is all part of that, that that growth that they got to have.

Justin McMillen (1:23:41)

That's a yeah, that's amazing. I think. Yeah. I was just thinking about you going from that place to where you are now. You know, the parent stuff is super fascinating.

Vechi Mutum (1:23:58)

I think that you're working against nature because nature says to protect. And you literally, especially for moms, they literally have to go against their genetics.

Justin McMillen (1:24:07)

Yeah. But if they don't, then it can be catastrophic.

Vechi Mutum (1:24:10)

Don't give your kid a place to die.

Justin McMillen (1:24:15)

Yeah. Don't do it was interesting too. Like from a father perspective. I was talking to a guy recently about this who knew his son was a drug addict.

Justin McMillen (1:24:23)

Knew he was he was working with him. He was working at a job, and the dad was supporting him and allowing him to live in his house and, and it was like, I'm just trying to make sure he doesn't kill himself and all this. And I was like, you know, it's there's so much more to this. I said, you as a father, him, him seeing you be okay with this is basically you're sending him a message that you can't do better than this, and this is who you are.

Justin McMillen (1:24:53)

I'm accepting this. Yeah, I'm accepting this. And if you accept it, he's going to believe that you don't believe in him.

Vechi Mutum (1:25:00)

Yeah. He's like, I'm like, I'm serious. Like in his mind, it's like, oh, dad doesn't think I could do any better than this anyway. Yeah, he's okay with me being like this. This is the top of it.

Vechi Mutum (1:25:10)

Yeah. He's just annoyed by me or whatever. And but yeah, not not like I think it's important that parents know, like, don't be able to fight your kids for your kids. Don't be able to fight. Don't be afraid to fight your kids. Like I told my guys all the time, I will fight you for you. And I told my boys this as well.

Vechi Mutum (1:25:28)

When I see a maladaptive behavior, when I see a defect or something that's hurting them, like I'm not.

Vechi Mutum (1:25:37)

It's on us to really teach them that they got to be able to work through this, and it's possible pain is always going to occur. We are built as human beings to take immense amounts of pain and stress, and we don't have to fold. Or if we do, we can get up again. It's part of it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong or that's just where you're at in it.

Vechi Mutum (1:25:59)

And I think that through trying to save their kids from pain, a lot of times they're for one, they're stealing from them the dignity of failure. Number one. Right. You get a guy who's or a girl who's been through some shit and made their way back. That's a call that you're not taking away ever. But if you fix it for them, they don't know that.

Vechi Mutum (1:26:21)

They think they're finished. They think they're gone. So keeping that cycle going it's not helping them in any way shape or form. I liken it to they're basically running around with a gun in their hand called addiction. And they're asking for bullets whether that's a place to use, whether it's money and you're caving because your kids running around with a gun to their head going, well if you don't do this and I get like I'm like I got help, I got, I hope I got I hope what you're giving them, they're putting into that gun and they're playing Russian roulette with their life.

Vechi Mutum (1:26:52)

If you are so dead set on destroying yourself, I will not cosign. I will not be a part of this in any way, shape or form. I will fight you every step of the way because my kids in there.

Justin McMillen (1:27:05)

What should they do if the kid decides that he doesn't want to? Like, how is it? Just get them to a detox and well, if he doesn't, it's going to some.

Justin McMillen (1:27:10)

If you force someone before they're ready and ready is a big question. I want to talk about that in a minute.

Vechi Mutum (1:27:17)

They will leave. They will leave. If you can bring someone to be open to the idea that things will be better when they're not, they'll stay.

Vechi Mutum (1:27:25)

You know, if kidnapings illegal in the US, if it if it was legal, it would probably make, you know, parents jobs a lot easier.

Vechi Mutum (1:27:44)

And there's places that did that. They would kidnap kittens at the middle of the night and send them off to these wilderness places and all these horrible stories about it. It didn't work. There was no buy in. There was no acceptance of this needs to be. I need to change my life. It was forced upon them. Like everything else that went on.

Vechi Mutum (1:27:58)

There needs to be a separation between your child's choices, right? We support the positive ones. We don't support the negative ones. And if there's consequences that come with the negative ones, do not save them from those. That's how they learn. If every time you touched a hot stove it didn't burn. Unit was cool and comfortable, you'd keep touching a hot stove like it's that simple.

Justin McMillen (1:28:18)

What is the change? His behavior. Why would he, You keep giving them soup, you keep giving it.

Vechi Mutum (1:28:25)

Yeah, exactly.

Justin McMillen (1:28:30)

Yeah. No, I think that's, it's important subject. And I think one of the hardest things for people to deal with is trying to understand how it is the opposite of what you want to do instinctually, you know, like so here, case in point, we've had this discussion and I've had this discussion with a bunch of different people, all levels.

Justin McMillen (1:28:45)

I grew up very poor. Right. I had to work for everything I have hard because I screwed up my life really bad. But for my boys, for my kids, I want them to have everything.

Justin McMillen (1:28:55)

I want them to have the new Jordans. I want to have these new things. Right. The thing is, if I just give it to them, they won't know the value of it.

Vechi Mutum (1:29:07)

And the grit, the part that got their dad there. I will starve them for, It's a trick. Yeah, it is a trick. You want it? Like.

Justin McMillen (1:29:15)

I totally get it. In fact, I just went through this. So remember the water rower? Yeah, the so that that water rower is nothing like. So fins on a team of people that I mean they win nationals and stuff.

Justin McMillen (1:29:29)

It's a very good crew team. They all spent a ton of time on our ergs. ERG is the water rower. It's a rower, right? Yeah. So when he said he wanted to do this, I was like, I don't, you know, I don't know if he's going to stick with it or whatever. We get the water rower, he and I rebuild it, we sand it down and do all this stuff, and he's just happy to have something.

Justin McMillen (1:29:50)

But then as he's now rowing alongside all these kids, it's like very clear that and they all have them at home, you know as well. And they have to do all this extra stuff. And so the for the entire season, he's coming home. The computer doesn't work on the water rower. So he can't log as his things. All the other kids can.

Justin McMillen (1:30:10)

And and then he spent a year and there were several times like the band broke and he was supposed to get a workout done in the evening, and he had to log in with his team and, I watched him. I mean, we we kept rebuilding it, rebuilding all through the season. And I go upstairs and say, hi there.

Justin McMillen (1:30:28)

Like, I just want to buy him a rower, you know? But I'm not going to do it. Yeah, I'm not going to do it. Yeah. I just just bought him one, kid that actually came to where we were when we were traveling. He said, dad, I want to buy my own rower. Like, I figured out how I can do it.

Justin McMillen (1:30:45)

I want to, and I started laughing. He was like, kind of like, what the heck? And then I said, you know, your mom and I've been talking about this and we're going to get you on because you didn't miss practice. You've been there nonstop, all this whole thing. So you don't have to buy it. But I wonder, had he not came up with his own solution even to buy it, had I would I how much longer I would have gone with him on this?

Vechi Mutum (1:31:08)

When you see them put forth the effort to close it. Yeah.

Justin McMillen (1:31:15)

My and even in. Is that even enough? You know, I mean, I don't know like I think about this all the time because, you know, I, I'm grateful for my upbringing, like amazing parents. Things were definitely not always easy. I probably created a lot of the problems myself.

Justin McMillen (1:31:28)

I know I did, but, but, the things that I've been through, I'm in my 20s and the things that I put myself into, you know, created enough opportunities for me to have to climb out of shitty places that I don't want that I don't want that for my children, but I also want them to have the same depth and grit that I have.

Vechi Mutum (1:31:55)

Yeah. And this is the battle. This is the challenge of all.

Justin McMillen (1:32:05)

Yeah, yeah. I don't want you to put yourself there, but you need to know you can get out.

Vechi Mutum (1:32:10)

Yeah. It's in you. Trust me. Generationally, I think this is a huge issue.

Justin McMillen (1:32:19)

Like, for example, here's an interesting one. So I know your life and, you know, you drive decent cars and nice cars, and you go on trips and your kids, they go with you.

Justin McMillen (1:32:29)

There's you have these things at 18, you know, they're used to living a certain way. All right. So what do you do at 18? Do you say you're 18? You move out. And now you you and I both know that the probability of them getting a job where they're going to have even close to the same life as they have right now, right.

Justin McMillen (1:32:42)

What do we do about that?

Vechi Mutum (1:32:50)

Yeah. Do you give them money to pay for them? You know, it really depends. And right now, like I got to say, I don't know the answers yet. Right. Yeah. We don't. They're young. But I definitely got to brag on my boys. Like, the both of them are on a roll. Students, you know, my oldest is full ROTC.

Vechi Mutum (1:33:01)

My, my younger son is starting ROTC. They might go different ways. Writers a lot like me. I joke all the time and say it's got my brain and my blue eyes, and both are going to get you in trouble, bro. But he he loves working on stuff. And I told him, I go, look, dude, if it's not about school for you, we'll send you to.

Vechi Mutum (1:33:23)

We'll send you to learn how to work on airplane engines. What you need. Just fascinated. Like, I just feeding that all the time. But he's been very he's been deep into ROTC for like 2 or 3 years now. He may go military I don't know. He really likes it. A mind like that thrives in structure where all that, all those skill sets instead of weaponry at inner Destruction, can be focused on a goal.

Justin McMillen (1:33:46)

Could be great for it. Yeah, I could see it.

Vechi Mutum (1:33:55)

You know, Timmy's just. Timmy's very, Timmy's very much the softer side. Timmy's the heart. Timmy. Yeah, he's just different. Brilliant. Very much in touch with people's emotions. One of the most. You know, I'll never. I went through a lot with those boys. And, I remember not knowing a guy just wasn't around.

Vechi Mutum (1:34:14)

And when he was around, he sucked, man. To give me an idea, you know?

Justin McMillen (1:34:25)

Yeah.

Vechi Mutum (1:34:27)

My dad, you know this. They don't like. My dad was six foot 11, 375 pounds, sober, alcoholic, violent temper, physically mentally abusive. Beat the hell out of my mom and me. This was not the only thing he was an example of to me was what not to do.

Vechi Mutum (1:34:43)

Even in the short pieces of my life he was in. I wanted nothing to do with that. So when I really got an opportunity to be a father and participate, I was completely aware of what I didn't want to do. And I knew I didn't know what the hell I was doing, so I, I call you, I'd call Neil all.

Vechi Mutum (1:35:01)

I call my brother Mike like, hey, what do I do here? I don't there's things I don't want to repeat in this. And I remember stress and, you know, my wife Adele, I am like, I don't know if I'm doing this right and and what's going on. And the first, I'm very careful with Self-Praise. Still a little bit of that imposter syndrome, but I had just picked up Tim.

Vechi Mutum (1:35:22)

He's in the backseat of my car and we're talking like, how's your day? What's going on? Did it, and we see a plane fly over and I'm like, oh, we think, man, you want to pilot, you grow up because, I don't know, maybe I go, what do you want to what do you think you want to be, man?

Vechi Mutum (1:35:38)

And he goes, I want to be a dad. I go, I go. Why? He goes, you make it look really cool.

Justin McMillen (1:35:46)

It's so good.

Vechi Mutum (1:35:50)

And, I said, oh, good. My girls always say I want to be a mama, which makes me super happy. I'm like, okay, maybe I'm on the right track. At least I'm not repeating some of those mistakes.

Vechi Mutum (1:35:59)

Yeah, and it's hard. I don't know what I'm doing. And I ask people, I bug you. I, my older brother Mike, I bug all the time and ask him, I just don't ever want my children if I have the power to do so. I don't want, ever, ever want my children to feel the way I felt.

Vechi Mutum (1:36:19)

It was such a driving force in everything. Okay, Justin. So dad wasn't there. I had no idea what a man was supposed to be. His example for how he was treating my mom was off, so my whole pallet was completely fucked. Man. Yeah, dad threw his mom across the room by her throat. That's normal. That's not. And then I'm supposed to exist in the normie society and and get things done with a brain like mine was two years ahead.

Vechi Mutum (1:36:45)

Me, I I'd been breeding since it's since a super young age. I could make sense of things logically, but emotionally I was completely inept. I didn't have it. So being able to to teach them that and you know, dad went through the same thing and my brother went through the same. My older brother went through the same thing with him.

Vechi Mutum (1:37:04)

Being able to break that cycle is critical. I know that I am the walking, talking example there watching, you know, when they're watching how how I, how I talk to my wife, they're watching how I talk to my mother in law there. And here's the other part about it. Family had no concept of family. No, my dad's family was never around.

Vechi Mutum (1:37:27)

My mom was. So, you know, we were so afraid of someone coming to take us away. No one was ever allowed at the house. That guy. So I gratefully live with my mother in law. My father in law. We all live in this house together. They help take care of that. Like I've got an entire family. I didn't have that man.

Vechi Mutum (1:37:46)

But to my children, that's normal. Yeah, that's the way it should be. And that's. I. I feel like I changed the things you did, and if I could change anything for them, it would be that they know that it's okay to fail and come back. They know what families like. They know.