Budd Rodney used to work as a Corrections Officer, where his job was to uphold the law. Then, he descended into a gruesome, dark spiral of addiction in the largest open-air drug market in America: Kensington, Philadelphia.

What started as occasional trips to Philly to find cheaper drugs grew into Budd becoming a full-blown homeless addict on the streets of Kensington. Alongside Britiny, the love of his life, Budd navigated the depths of Kensington's underworld from the flesh-rotting realities of tranq to getting beaten to the brink of death in a Philly trap house to smoking crack out of a tracheostomy. Budd's decay unfolded before the world on livestream YouTube Kensington street cams. In that waking nightmare, he worked full-time as a “hitter,” earning drugs and cash by finding veins and injecting people who could no longer manage it themselves.

Then, one morning, Budd woke up in a hospital bed to his harshest realization yet: he was going to lose his feet. The unforgiving, frostbitten winters of the Philly Streets combined with the tranq ravaging Budd's body led to him losing both legs below the knee. Today, Budd has nearly 18 months of sobriety, walks on prosthetics, and is getting ready to be a father. Where so many have succumbed to the brutal nature of addiction, Budd has survived to build a life he once thought was impossible.

Top Takeaways

How DARE Backfired: When Drug Warnings Sparked Curiosity

Budd and I had very different reactions to the drug education we received growing up. While the warnings initially scared me away, hearing that drugs could make someone feel better than ever made him curious. He began researching substances in his school library, and his first experiences with marijuana didn’t resemble the immediate catastrophe he had been warned about. We discuss the problem with presenting all drugs and their consequences as interchangeable. Budd’s experience was a gradual progression, with each new boundary becoming easier to cross after the last.

Why Drugs Felt Like the Answer: Belonging, Relief, and Escalation

Budd describes growing up with friends and parents who provided for him, yet still feeling that he didn’t quite belong. Smoking marijuana gave him a sense of connection he had struggled to find elsewhere. Pain pills and heroin later offered increasingly powerful versions of that relief. His account challenges the assumption that someone must recognize a major problem in their life before becoming vulnerable to addiction. What initially felt like an answer became something he organized his life around, eventually sacrificing relationships, stability, and his health to keep using.

Thirty Rehabs and Nearly Five Years Sober: Why Recovery Didn’t Last

Budd describes repeated trips through detox and rehab, alongside substantial stretches of sobriety, including almost five years. He compares some detox stays to an “oil change”: a brief opportunity to rest and recover physically before returning to drugs. We explore why leaving treatment can mean confronting damaged relationships, legal trouble, housing insecurity, and ordinary responsibilities all at once. Budd also explains that his relapses often began before he used anything, through growing complacency and internal bargaining that convinced him this time would somehow be different.

The Corrections Officer Hiding a Fentanyl Addiction

After rebuilding his life, Budd became a corrections officer at the same institution where members of his family had worked. When he relapsed, he began using before shifts and experiencing withdrawal while on duty. He describes the shame of supervising people incarcerated for behavior he had engaged in just before arriving at work. Inmates noticed changes in him, and his coworkers eventually became suspicious. The conversation captures the strain of maintaining a professional identity while privately losing control, along with his later recognition that he had put colleagues at risk.

From Buying Cheaper Drugs to Living on Kensington’s Streets

Kensington initially offered Budd access to cheaper, stronger drugs. Occasional trips became increasingly frequent visits, overnight stays, and eventually homelessness that lasted across a period of almost six years. He describes working as a lookout and shoplifting to support his and his girlfriend’s habits. Daily decisions revolved around avoiding withdrawal, finding shelter, and getting through the next night. His account of Philadelphia winters makes the physical demands especially clear: staying dry, finding insulation, and protecting a few blankets could determine whether he had any chance of staying warm.

Tranq and Kensington’s Drug Economy: Getting Paid to Inject Other People

Budd describes how fentanyl mixed with xylazine, commonly called tranq, changed his experience of addiction and contributed to severe physical deterioration. As people struggled to find usable veins or could no longer inject themselves, he earned money and drugs by doing it for them. That role placed him inside a dangerous street economy where familiarity and kindness existed alongside threats and violence. He recounts being lured into a house and beaten after being wrongly accused of theft, illustrating how quickly an ordinary interaction could become a fight to survive.

Kensington’s YouTube Cameras: Exploitation and Proof of Life

Budd objects to people filming vulnerable strangers in Kensington without their consent, particularly when their suffering becomes entertainment. But returning home revealed another side of those videos: his mother had saved footage whenever she spotted him because it helped her know he was still alive. That discovery complicated his view without erasing his discomfort. We discuss the difference between voluntarily telling his story in an interview and having his worst moments recorded by strangers. The same footage could feel exploitative to him while offering his family a desperately needed sign of life.

Losing Both Feet: The Decision That Changed His Life

After serious health problems and a hospital stay, Budd returned to the streets and developed severe frostbite. When he sought treatment again, the damage worsened, and he describes doctors presenting a difficult choice: undergo months of procedures with no guarantee of saving his feet, or proceed with amputation and rehabilitation. He chose amputation. We discuss the initial difficulty of looking at his residual limbs, the unfamiliar sensations afterward, and the work of accepting what had happened. His account makes clear that surviving the surgery was only the beginning of recovery.

Staying Sober After Amputation: Responsibility Without Guarantees

Budd doesn’t claim that losing his feet permanently removed the possibility of relapse. He remembers believing in his recovery during earlier periods of sobriety, too. What he emphasizes now is recognizing complacency and continuing the practices that help him: meetings, helping others, prayer, medication-assisted treatment, and staying engaged in his life. Physical rehabilitation added another demanding layer. Throughout this discussion, he takes responsibility for his actions while acknowledging how difficult change can be. His recovery depends on continuing to participate in it, rather than assuming that suffering enough has cured him.

Helping People Recover: Treatment, Opportunity, and Basic Humanity

The closing conversation considers what meaningful help looks like, both within treatment systems and in an encounter on the street. Budd argues for addressing isolation, mental health, housing, and the barriers a criminal record creates when someone tries to rebuild. He also insists that accountability still matters. When I ask what would have helped him during his time in Kensington, his answer is simple: a coffee, warm clothing, or a small gesture of care. Those moments mattered because they reminded him he was still a person when he no longer felt treated like one.

Top Quotes

The First High: Finding Something He Didn’t Know Was Missing

“When I tried weed, it fixed something inside me that I didn’t know was broken.”

— Budd

How Addiction Progresses: A Thousand Bad Decisions

“Addiction for me anyway was a thousand bad decisions that led me down.”

— Budd

Wanting to Stop: Knowing the Consequences Wasn’t Enough

“There’s been times I thought about crashing my car on the way to get drugs.”

— Budd

The Corrections Officer’s Secret: Living on Both Sides of the Law

“There’s guys who are locked up right now on the block I work on for doing exactly what I did a half an hour ago.”

— Budd

Life in Kensington: Everything Revolved Around the Next Dose

“Everything I did, every move I made was about the next one, was about not being sick and having surplus if possible.”

— Budd

The Illusion of Freedom: The One Thing He Couldn’t Stop Doing

“You get to a point where you don’t want to do them anymore and you just can’t stop.”

— Budd

Kensington’s YouTube Videos: How His Family Knew He Was Alive

“I actually got a different perspective on that (Kensington Live Cams) when I got home from my parents because they said that’s how we knew you were alive.”

— Budd

After Amputation: Taking Responsibility for Getting Better

“This is my responsibility. It’s also my responsibility to get better.”

— Budd

Homelessness and Stigma: Becoming Part of the Scenery

“You almost become a landmark more than a person.”

— Budd

Seeing the Person Behind the Addiction

“At the end of the day, we’re all still people, and a lot of addicts want to do better. They just have forgotten how or don’t know how. Never had the chance.”

— Budd

Full Transcript

Budd: I went back out to the streets. The doctors told me I'm going to die. I told them I don't care, and I went out.

Zach: I'm Zach, host of The Zach Show, and today I'm having a conversation with Budd Rodney.

Budd: Addiction for me was a thousand bad decisions that led me down. There were turning points, like, you know, the first time doing crack or doing meth or doing heroin. They were turning points where I dropped a whole level, but then even from there, it was just getting a little bit lower each time.

Zach: Budd Rodney used to work as a corrections officer, where his job was to uphold the law. Then he descended into a gruesome, dark spiral of addiction in the largest open-air drug market in America: Kensington, Philadelphia. What started as occasional trips to Philly to find cheaper drugs grew into Budd becoming a full-blown homeless addict on the streets of Kensington. Alongside Britney, the love of his life, Budd navigated the depths of Kensington's underworld. From the flesh-rotting realities of tranq to nearly getting beaten to death in a trap house to smoking crack out of a tracheostomy, Budd's decay unfolded before the world on livestream YouTube Kensington street cams. In that waking nightmare, he worked as a hitter, earning drugs and cash by finding veins and injecting people who could no longer manage it themselves. Then one morning, Budd woke up in a hospital bed to his harshest realization yet. He was going to lose his feet. The unforgiving, frostbitten winters of the Philly streets, combined with tranq ravaging Budd's body, led to him losing both of his legs below the knee.

Budd: And then right after the surgeries, I couldn't really look down, right? Like, you know, I could see it in my peripheral vision that my feet aren't there, but to actually look at it and really accept it took me a couple of days, a week maybe, to be like, 'Okay, so this happened to me. This is real.'

Zach: Today, Budd has nearly 18 months of sobriety, walks on prosthetics, and is getting ready to be a father. Where so many have succumbed to the brutal nature of addiction, Budd has survived to build a life he once thought impossible. Here's my conversation with Budd Rodney. But first, a quick message. If you're not a premium subscriber, I have news for you. You can now subscribe to The Zach Show 2.0 for a few bucks a month for bonus episodes, the ability to get your questions on the show, early access, and more. Head to thezachshow.supercast.com to subscribe today. That's thezachshow.supercast.com. Okay, on to the episode.

Zach: Well, I think that could be an interesting place to start with the recovery from having both of your feet amputated.

Budd: Sure.

Zach: At the same time. And we're going to go back through your story and of course through the book Kensington Beach, which I had the pleasure of tearing through this past week, week and a half. But right before we started recording, we were talking about your actual rehab for getting back to it. And I was wondering like I was talking about having a friend who tore both his ACLs, but of course when you tear both your ACLs, you don't have any of like the ghost sensation because there's no amputation involved. Did you have those like ghost sensations in your or your feet? Did you have like those false nerve flares and stuff that everyone talks about? Yeah,

Budd: They they call it phantom pain. And you know, I've actually been blessed to not really have that. I know that a lot of amputees do and a lot of the time it's like severe pain or their legs will feel cold, the foot, but there's no foot there. What I what I did have it was a lot of it felt like electricity if I would just like touch touch the end of my residual limbs. You know stumps they call them. I kind of hate the word stump but you know that's that's the medical term. It's a word

Zach: It’s a word that sounds like what it is. I feel like when you say stump you just like envision a round cut off thing. Yeah.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah dude. So but yeah. No, on my stumps, it would be like electricity like static electricity is just like running through my legs there. When I would touch even just fabric or my fingers to it, so it was very sensitive, you know, cuz when they do the amputation, it cuts through a bunch of nerves and then, you know, they're going haywire for a long time after that. Yeah.

Zach: Yeah. So, it's almost like a like a tingle sensation, like shocking sensation that you felt, but not quite like the phantom. It's

Budd: Like when when you hit your funny bone, it's kind of like that, but a lot of the time, you know, so it was painful and uncomfortable and just like this nagging pain that was there. But I actually saw a guy online and what he suggested is you kind of try to make a fist with your feet that aren't there anymore. So you use those muscles to try to move those those foot muscles, I guess. And it worked. I did that like all day long for about a month, you know. Whenever I thought about it, I would just do it. Try to flex my feet closed and then backwards, you know, like try to fold them backwards and it worked really well actually.

Zach: So obviously the full muscles aren't there and the tendon structure so you felt like whatever was left you could you feel that tensing and then you think the other part was mental of like releasing it or like did they explain to you how that worked?

Budd: No, it was just another amputee who was you know and it worked for him. Yeah. He was like, "Hey, this worked for me." So, I was like, "Yeah, I'll try it." But I could, you know, I could feel my feet after they were cut off, you know, after the amputation. But it wasn't so much pain. It was it was more, I guess, sensation, right? So, like, and it would be annoying stuff, too, sometimes. So, it would be like it would feel like there's like a piece of cotton or something stuck under one of my toenails, but my toes aren't there, you know, or in between my toes or something pushing on the bottom of my foot. And it was like annoying, but there wasn't much I could do about it. Yeah.

Zach: Yeah. I mean that seems like such a small annoyance in the broad scope of amputation that I can only imagine, but I'm just imagining my own desire to like if I have something stuck or like a nail that I just want to go pick right away and then you realize that there's nothing there and you're just kind of like stuck with that phantom sensation. Yeah. Yeah,

Budd: That's what it was like. So it was, you know, an annoying Yeah. Yeah, it was annoying, but I don't know. That went away in I don't know, three or four months, I guess, after the amputations, and then it got a lot easier. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: I want to rewind a little bit and go back to a time towards the beginning of your story. And in your book, the one of the first things that jumped out at me was your reaction to the DARE drug program. Yeah. Because we had very different reactions to the DARE program. And for people that aren't familiar with DARE, I your experience sounded a lot like mine. You're not that much older than me. I'm I'm 32. You're 36. So imagine everyone around that age had a similar experience. Similar. Yeah. Where you had cops come in, they would use scare tactics to essentially tell you that no matter what drug you did, whether it was like alcohol, weed, harder shit, like your life is the moment you touch it, your life is over. And they passed around these replica drugs. Yeah. And you would get to see them and like there were boxes and stuff. And it was basically saying if you even dip your toe in this world, your world ends. Yeah. And for me, that worked. I was for a lack of a better word to describe it. I was definitely a pussy when it came to drugs early on where I was like, I don't even want to try smoking weed. My dad scared me out of it. I eventually smoked weed my sophomore year in college. But for you, you said that it ignited an intense, insatiable curiosity from the jump. Can you talk about that experience with DARE and your reaction to it?

Budd: Yeah, I think I think DARE was very polarizing. A lot of people that I've talked to had a similar experience as me and a lot had a similar experience as you, you know. But for me, when they came in and said that drugs are going to make you feel better than you ever have, that didn't that didn't scare me. Well, and it came with a warning. That's why you can never do them. But that didn't scare me. It made me curious. It kind of introduced me to a world that I didn't really know anything about, which was substances. And you know at the at the time there were a lot of the movies on TV like you know Cheech and Chong and How High and Half Baked. Pineapple Express was a big one. Yeah. Yep. So those those movies being out I had this I had this curiosity already about the unknown you know and they're like oh you know they there's this whole weed culture and then they came in and they talked about the harder drugs. So, [sighs and gasps] I wasn't immediately interested in shooting heroin, you know, but I was already curious about pot. So, when they came in and they opened up this world of all kinds of different drugs, I became curious like what do they do? What are they like? And then at some point, I decided that I was going to get high. You know, I started to research all these drugs in the school library and I got all these there were these little thin books and each one was for like depressants and then there was an opiates and a stimulants one. Yeah. Yeah. Like a pamphlet. And I read through them cuz I don't know what it was about it, but I was curious and I wanted to know. So then eventually the time came where I was introduced to marijuana. You know, me and my friends, we all planned it out and we saved up our money. Yeah. And we went in and we bought like a little dime bag, you know. I think I was in eighth grade. And Yeah. I mean, we was great. It was an excellent time. I had a I had a blast. Yeah. Yeah. I had a blast. So I was like, "Oh, this wasn't that bad. Everything was funny." And I got really hungry. Like my world didn't come crashing down. Yeah. So, you know, it that slow progression that happens with addiction is I think something that they didn't really touch on in the DARE program. I think it was you know, like you said, they said you dip your toe in this water and the next thing you know you're going to be living homeless on the street. That wasn't my experience.

Zach: Yeah. There was there was no spectrum to the harm from the drug education that we got when we were younger. For the most part, it was like there was there was no reality to it. It was this is going this drug is it was kind of like what's the word for it? Almost like a monotony of drug effects that it's just this one big sphere and no matter what you reach into and take like insert X drug the effect will be the same. You're going to end up same and you're going to end up in a very very bad situation. And it sounds like this also happened to you a little bit with smoking weed. I had a more of a delayed reaction where I was scared out of it for a while and then eventually smoked weed in college, but I had the realization where I enjoyed it. Same thing. Yeah. And then it was kind of like the lied to effect where my parents said this about drugs and the DARE program said this about drugs and they said that my life was going to come crashing down. So what else were they lying about? Or were they lying about every sure single drug and it I was just wondering if it you felt that effect like the lied to effect of like well what else were they talking bullshit about?

Budd: No you know not that I like consciously remember but that makes a lot of sense. I wonder if it wasn't there in some way, you know, like u a mistrust of the system. You know, they're they're lying about this. So, you know, maybe cocaine's not really as bad as they say or whatever. And, you know, we had the pact when we were kids, like, you know, we're we're never going to do the hard drugs. We're never going to do that stuff, you know, alcohol and weed, and that's that's what we're going to do. But yeah, it just kind of I don't know, it kind of progressed into this curiosity. But I don't think that I had that experience where you know I consciously thought like you know officer friendly lied to me. Yeah.

Zach: I don't know if it was as direct where I was thinking this cop lied to me. It was it was more just like a general sense of I started to dip my toes into that world and then I did not have the crashing down effect that I was told I was going to have. And it's it's there if you continue, especially in like more serious aspects, which we'll get into. But I remember just like having that feeling of like, oh, like I feel like I kind of got tricked.

Budd: It's like a betrayal in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: Did you feel like your relationship with drugs was different than most kids at the beginning? Or when you started smoking weed, did you feel like, oh, like this is like I don't see this turning into anything else? Like I could just see myself smoking weed and drinking and like that's that.

Budd: I [clears throat] know that when I tried weed, it fixed something inside me that I didn't know was broken. If that makes sense. I had friends growing up, you know, I wasn't, you know, one of the weird kids or whatever in high school, but but I never quite felt like I belonged or that my friends were always better friends with each other than they were friends with me. And then when you know we all smoked this weed together, it was almost like a like a thing that we did that sealed us into this contract, you know, where where we were now, you know, those those kids who had that experience and like a camaraderie thing. Yeah. A camaraderie. Yeah. And it and it made me feel like I belonged more so really than I ever had. So, you know, being a kid who hadn't felt that way that now does and I could directly relate that experience to a substance, I chased it. Yeah.

Zach: When you say it fixed something inside you, what would you like what did you feel like needed fixing in the moment? Was it was there anything that you could point to specifically or was it just like an overall sensation of things coming together in a better way?

Budd: I would say it's an overall sensation. I mean, I still have trouble articulating it today, you know, like what was it that I didn't have that substances gave me? Because, you know, I grew up in a decent home, you know, we always had food on the table. You know, we had nice school clothes like we were provided for. My parents were providers. So it wasn't like I was neglected or anything like that. Like I said, I had friends, but I just knew that there was something in me that just didn't feel like I was equal to or a peer with the rest of the kids around me. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: So you were born in Germany, right? And then came over. Yeah. What would you say your upbringing was like? You said it was like pretty pretty normal.

Budd: Yeah. I mean, so I was born in Germany. We moved over here when I was like one year old. So when we got here, I mean, look where we are. We're in the middle of the woods, you know. I don't know if the cameras can see it, but we're we're in the country, you know. This is the sticks. Got a

Zach: Light rain going. Some ambiance. Yeah. Yeah.

Budd: It's It's nice out here. It's quiet. There's no crime. So yeah, I mean my upbringing was kind of I guess slow in a way like you know, country folk out here. Yeah. So we made our own fun and I think maybe that played a role too in the you know the drinking and the smoking weed is because there wasn't really much else to do around here. We didn't we didn't have rec centers. You know, I wasn't into sports. So the kids who also weren't into sports, you know, found other ways to have fun. And that was a lot of the time keggers in the woods.

Zach: Yeah. You know, no, like I remember the early days of drinking and smoking weed, it becomes an activity in itself. For sure. If I was lucky enough to have baseball growing up and like you know there were other things to do for sure, but I grew up in a town in Long Island, New York. It's it's not like there's a ton going on. So you one thing to do is ride your bike into the woods and you know smoke sigs if you could find them or some of my friends who started smoking weed earlier. I remember like not thinking there was anything weird about that. It's just like we're just kids fucking around and like all looking for something to do to not be bored as shit. Whereas today I feel like I would have just grabbed an iPad or something or an iPhone, laptop, whatever, right? And just and just, you know, scrolled or gamed on that. But at the time, there was really nothing else that you could do besides go be a degenerate on a bike and go look for something to do.

Budd: Be a bike, man. Yeah, that's what I mean. We would run around this area till 4 in the morning, you know, during the summer playing Manhunt and, you know, we did stuff like that, manhunt, but weed almost became an addition to every other thing we did, right? And that's like an enhancement, right? That's a progression of addiction in itself too, you know, and if you can't have fun without weed, then it's a problem, right? So that but that's kind of what it became. Or you know like you said just an activity in itself. I mean we would sit out on this front porch and just I had a steamroller a big ass pipe and we would sit out there and we smoke like you know

Zach: Is a steamroller like a bong or

Budd: It's a look like it's just an it's an air pipe. So it's it's kind of like a big cylinder with an open tube and a bowl on top and you just cover one end and light it. And when you let it off, the large end acts like a carb. So you get that whole rush of air that comes.

Zach: It almost sounds like a horizontal gra like a more elevated version of a gravity bong where you cover it up and suck it in. Except it's more horizontal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just had some panic attacks on those for sure.

Budd: [laughter] No doubt. No doubt, man.

Zach: So you started smoking weed at 11, you said around then?

Budd: No. No. 14 14 14 8th grade.

Zach: What when did things start to escalate beyond weed?

Budd: Probably around 16. So you know when I started smoking weed? I became the stoner kid, right? I was I was the guy who, you know, I was like, "Oh yeah, Buds." But I my name is Budd and I was born on 420, you know? So it's like I feel like I was dun from the start. Like thanks mom, you know. Perfect combination. [laughter] Yeah, I don't I don't blame my parents for that. I'm just kidding. But you know, they didn't know what that was. I was named after my grandfather and I happened to be born on 420. And once I found out what that was, I kind of became this like weed icon in my school, you know? I mean, I was I was that stoner kid and my friends were the stoner kids. And then, you know, the jocks made fun of us a little bit until like, you know, the next year or two when they started buying weed off me. Yeah. You know, as it does. But, you know, as I progressed into smoking more weed and having better access to it, I got introduced with more nefarious characters. You know, guys who sold weed were also usually involved with people who sold other drugs or did other drugs. So, the first time I tried Coke, I was 16. It was Alice in Chains coming back tour with their new singer and yeah I did some Coke at the concert and it was fun. But it wasn't like you know mind-blowing to come down was terrible. So I was like all right this is okay. But around that same time my grandmother moved in with us from Georgia. So she had gotten a bunch of back surgeries. She had back pain and she had pain pills. And I was hanging out with these these guys who sold weed and they were like, "Hey, if you can get any pills, we'll give you a bunch of weed for it." I was like, "Okay, perfect." Like grandma's got pills, so I went to Yeah. Steal some pills and I gave them like three or four. I think they were Percs or maybe methadone. I know she had some some methadone, too, for you know, she had serious back pain. And yeah, I gave them a couple of these pills and they gave me an eighth of wheat and I was like, "Oh, this is sweet." you know, free free good exchange rate. Yeah. Bunch of free weed for a couple of pills that I'm not interested in. But then I became interested in it because when I when I handed the pills to them, they ate them immediately. You know, there was two of these guys. They were older than me. They were selling weed and Yeah, they split them and ate them the second they got into their hand. I was like, what would make them like want to do it that fast that they couldn't for Yeah. So, I kind of became curious and that's when I started taking my grandma's pills and I would crush them up and sniff them, you know, and that's where that's where the opiate problem kind of started, I guess, was about age 16.

Zach: Yeah. Yeah. You wrote something that really made me think about my own experience when you talked about snorting Percocet for the first time and you said it was the first time I felt whole. Yeah. That ingrained in me like and you've spoke about this too in the book a lot with like the timing of things like especially with heroin like it in injecting it and like what would have happened if you didn't do it that night or like things coming together. Yeah. And it made me think back to when I had my first elbow surgery in college when I was playing baseball and I was prescribed a lot of pain kills. Painkillers, way more than I needed, which is part for the course for getting an elbow surgery. Yeah. Like here's you know 60 Percocets Vicodin with three refills that you could probably just take for a week,

Budd: Right? Those days are done.

Zach: Yeah. And I remember taking them orally like they told me to and I didn't really enjoy the feeling of it. It kind of just made me feel like a wet noodle. And then I found out this is like well after I had like either given them away or just like no longer needed them. This like a year two years after surgery that people would snort them. Yeah. And I remember thinking like I thank God I didn't know about that when I had the pills. Like it never crossed my mind to chop one up on my dorm room desk and just like see what it was like cuz I have a feeling that I would have fucking loved it and there's no telling where that would have led. But that's like a that's just like a pure like universal timing thing that I feel like most people don't think about with addicts. Like there's such like a moral judgment when it comes to addiction when so much of it is biology, its situation, its environment, its timing of like how these things come into your life. So like when you were talking about snorting the percoet and how it made you feel whole, I could have seen myself having a similar like in that moment having a similar reaction to it.

Budd: Yes. So, what I've noticed in my experience with drugs is as I tried them and I tried stronger ones, each one gave me a new layer of completeness, I guess you could say, right? So, weed immediately like fixed this emotional thing that was going on. And then I did the pills and it did that but even better. And then I did the heroin and that was way better than the pills, you know? And every one of them was this feeling that everything's going to be okay, you know, and this is the answer to your problems. Yeah. Not that I really even had problems, but you know, it fixed problems I didn't have as an opiate does. Yeah.

Zach: Did you stick to snorting the pills for a while? Did it go immediately to heroin or how did it kind of escalate to that next layer?

Budd: So that was for about two years. I snorted the pills and I would I would take them off my grandma every Sunday, right? Because she would go to play bingo and my mom worked the night shift and my dad worked from 2 to 10. So I had about an hour or two after you know totally alone at the house. So I would go in, I would get the pills, I would sniff them, and then I would like veg out and watch you know I put in the book Always Sunny in Philadelphia. That's right. Yeah. You know, that was Yeah, that was what I watched. You know, that was my shit. That's what I did. Perfect show for that for sure. Yeah. So, you know, I did all of it and watch this and chill and then they would bring home like Taco Bell, you know, Sunday nights. So, then the munchies, the dream. Yeah. Yeah. So, it was perfect, you know, and I didn't see anything wrong with it. I mean, I knew that stealing from my grandmother was wrong. I knew I knew that, but as far as the actual using

Zach: Yeah.

Budd: I didn't really see it as a problem.

Zach: Yeah. Like in the moment there like the extreme negative effects didn't hit yet. Right.

Budd: Right. I was just having fun. Yeah. I was having it made me feel good and I was having fun doing it. So then so then they started to catch on that the pills were going missing my family. So they kind of confronted me about it and I lied. I just I just lied straight to their faces. I said I don't know where they're going. And they had to have known. But it's like how do you how do you confront that? And what do you do about it? You know, as a parent, I don't know what I would do. Now, I recognized like, you know, that I would see addiction, but because it wasn't really in my family, they didn't recognize the warning signs, I don't think. Yeah. So that eventually led to a breaking point where they started to hide them or you know, my grandma would bring them with her to bingo. So I couldn't get them anymore and I wanted them badly. So, that's kind of when I started to realize like maybe maybe this isn't exactly as I don't know what's what's

Zach: Like efficient or like like continuable. Yeah. Constant. Yeah. Like your options were running out. The bingo going to bingo catching on.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. So I realized that but I was already kind of stuck in it by then. So I started to look other places for pills. So I got involved with you know some other friends in the area who were getting high and that led into you know oxies and you know stronger Percocets and stuff like that. And then yeah eventually one day I went to a friend's house. He's like, "Yeah, we're going to get high." And he pulled out a syringe with heroin in it, you know? And I was like, "Well, what are you doing, dude?" And he was like, he's like, "We're going to do dope." I was like, like we said we wouldn't, you know what I mean? It was like one of those like we said we'd never do this.

Zach: And this was a friend that you originally smoked weed with.

Budd: No, no. I had smoked weed with him in the past, but not one of the originals, you know.

Zach: So it wasn't one of those like you said you made a pact with a few guys earlier on. Was he one of those guys or was he a different

Budd: He was he was in a different group. He hung out with us, you know, but yeah, he was a neighbor kid. He actually he lived right over the hill. I mean, in the book I talk about when we we burglarized a house at 14, you know what I mean? And that was with one of him. You know, there were two brothers and it was with one of him that we I did that heroin and you know, it really didn't do a lot for me when I did it and I wasn't impressed. And he was like, well, he's like, maybe I didn't give you enough. He's like, come back tomorrow and you know, I'll give you more and you can actually feel it. And I went back the next day and you know I want to say now that there was something inside me that was like screaming like don't do this, you know, don't don't do it. But I did it. I did it anyway. And yeah, when I did it that second day, that's when you know, I like I fell in love and you hear a lot of people say that about the opiates especially heroin because I mean it stimulates the love chemical in your brain. Yeah.

Zach: Yeah. Do do you think heroin was inevitable for you to progress to or do you think that maybe let's say if you didn't do it then and like you just kept snorting pills for a while and never injected heroin that maybe you would have thought twice about it if it was like two years down the line or five years down the line?

Budd: Realistically, I think it was inevitable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I think the path that I was on was was kind of set in stone, you know, and maybe some kind of drastic decision could have changed it like if I had like joined the military or something, you know, maybe. But staying in this area, having access to it and having access to it the way that I did, yeah, it was it was just an inevitability.

Zach: Did your parents have any idea that you were doing drugs that serious at that young of an age? Or were they just like, "Oh, maybe he's like smoking weed or drinking, but we don't think he's shooting heroin or snorting pills."

Budd: They knew I was smoking weed for sure. You know, my dad at some point took my car off me. He searched my room and he was a corrections officer. So he searched my room and found all my stuff. Yeah. You know I mean I had it hidden like a 15-year-old. So not great. And he and

Zach: Like a sock or something underneath

Budd: Bong was under my bed in the back corner. It looked like a towel, you know.

Zach: And if he's a co he's used to searching cell blocks all the time and like guys putting it in walls or like places

Budd: In pipes. I mean, I had a key to his car that I would I would use it to take cigarettes from. And I would go in his car and steal packs of cigarettes. And I had the key in between two pieces of wood on the top of like this little wooden dresser like clothes hanger thing I had in my room and it was in between two things of wood and I had like something over the top of it and he found that, you know. [laughter] So, I mean, that was the best hiding

Zach: Spot. Said thousands of repetitions. I'm sure of guys trying to hide stuff from him. Yep. Yep. So, he found it. And I wonder if he looks in a room and just like sees hiding spots at this point that I'm sure he does. Like he's like, "Oh, yeah, that panel. It's like a false panel. There's something behind that or something."

Budd: Yeah, I'm I'm sure he does. You know, and I mean I did the corrections officer thing for a while, too. And you know, we'll get into that. But yeah, like you kind of you start to look the world in a different way. Yeah. Almost with suspicion, I guess you could say. Yeah. You know.

Zach: Yeah. No, I can see that for sure. If you're constantly having a barrage of people that are trying to get over on you as a corrections officer, like this game of cat and mouse, it makes sense that you're going to develop that instinct of, you know, even if it's my own son hiding shit from me, I'm going to try to find

Budd: It. You're gonna find it. Yeah. Yeah. So, he found it. And then he confronted me and he took my car keys and car keys were my access to pills, right? And I was smoking weed at the time as well, but you know, I was more concerned about about the pills at that time. That was like around age 16, you know, 16 or 17. So, he he took the keys and he told me you're not getting these back until you can pass a drug test. So I was I was grounded from my car for like two months and then he was like if you can pass you can have your keys back. And you know that was almost like a turning point for me in a way I guess because like [clears throat] I lied to his face right because he he gave me the test and I had gotten clean pee from a friend of mine who didn't smoke like earlier that week. Yeah. And

Zach: That's an athlete trick as well in college getting the I don't know how he did it, but guys would get the pee in the prescription bottle and then put it in their compression shorts to keep it warm and then pour it into the test test cup.

Budd: Yep. Yep. Standard trick, you know. And yeah, I g I gave him the fake pee and he was like he's like, "You passed. I'm proud of you." You know what I mean? And it was like, oh man, like, you know, is my father wasn't big on words, you know what I mean? So for him to say he's proud of me, like he meant it, you know, and it was like, oh man, like it was like a knife in the heart, you know? But I said, you know, thanks, Dad. And got my keys back and I got back into it because that's that's what I cared about. And in the meantime, I had, you know, friends bring it to me or went out with friends and got high that way. But, you know, my freedom was gone for a little while.

Zach: From that point on of passing the test and then getting the keys back, what did that next phase for you look like? Cuz you said this was around 16, 17.

Budd: Yeah. So, that was doing pills. Okay. You know, weed was still a given, but you know, seeking pills, finding ways to get pills, making money to get pills. You know, asking my mom for money, you know what I mean? I sold a little bit of weed on the side. I worked at a tree farm, a Christmas tree farm that was local here for a while, you know, and all my money went either into into weed, gas, and pills, you know. So, that's that's what it was. So, it was that progression just getting deeper step by step. And you know, I think that's that's something and you know, we touched on it with the DARE presentation is they make it look like it's, you know, one step and then you're in it.

Zach: Yeah. A cliff and that's just like there's no progression to it, no reality to it.

Budd: This is your brain. This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs. Yeah. But no, it like addiction for me anyway was a thousand bad decisions that led me down, you know. Yeah. And you know, then there were there were turning points like, you know, the first time doing crack or doing meth or doing heroin, they were they were turning points where, you know, I dropped a whole level, but then even from there, it was just getting a little bit lower each time.

Zach: So after high school, what were did you go right into working after high school? Was it at college? What were your what did your day-to-day look like after

Budd: That? So I graduated high school stayed at home and I was experimenting with heroin at that point.

Zach: Was it like a daily thing or just whenever you could get

Budd: I wasn't like a full-on heroin addict yet. It was more recreational. Okay. But one night I came home and my dad was waiting up for me when I came home and he told me that if I'm that if I'm high when he comes over there that it's going to be like a problem. And he called it vampire eyes. I remember that. He would always he would always say if you know you got fucking vampire eyes you know

Zach: Like the what do they call it pins like when you get like the pinned

Budd: Pinned and peoples yeah yeah so that's that's what he called them and that's what he said to me that night he said if you have vampire eyes when I come over there it's going to be a problem and I did you know it was like 2:30 in the morning I just came back from getting high and we got into a fight you know not physically We were just screaming at each other and he told me you know to get out. Yeah. Yeah. And I did you know I was like glad I would you know I can't wait to get the Yeah. You're like fuck this shit I'm out of here. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz by then, you know, my parents were just limiting my access to drugs. Yeah, I moved in with a friend a couple towns away and then got deeper. That's where like I essentially stopped doing like you know Vicodin and stuff and got really into like oxies or heroin. Yeah. And I got a job at a furniture store and you know that paid my rent and got me high. Yeah. That's that's what my money went.

Zach: You said vampire. I literally wrote down a quote that you wrote in the book and next to it I wrote sounds like a vampire craving blood. Yeah. You wrote, "I had this invisible hunger that gnawed at me for something more, something different, as if I were perpetually waiting for my life to begin. And I was like, I could like when I hear the perpetual hunger, I think of like blade day-walking for blood, like someone waiting for tasting, you know, the thing that's going to make them feel whole again." Sure.

Budd: Yeah. It's it's there's a lot of parallels to that. Zombies, vampires, zombies, that insatiable craving for more and you can never seem to get enough. You know, they say like in the 12step rooms, you one is too many and a thousand is never enough. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's true. It's true. Like it sets you off into this, you know, unbelievable craving. Like I can't even It's so hard to put it into words because it's it's strictly a feeling, you know? It's it's emotion. It's it's hard to put into words, but it's you're willing to sacrifice everything for it. I mean, I've walked I' I've been to like 30 rehabs and I've walked out of probably 25 of them. Yeah. To go get high. You know, it's this draw, this pool that you can't escape. Yeah. Until you get it.

Zach: And it's like we'll we'll get into down the line in Kensington, but I remember at one point in the book you talking about crying in front of a cop because you wanted to stop getting high. Yeah. And it just like how out of control it was where you know it's going to eventually kill you if you don't stop. But you're literally like brought to tears at the thought of having to do this over and over again multiple times a day.

Budd: There's been times I thought about crashing my car on the way to get drugs. You know, like I'm I'm driving it and I'm crying and I'm screaming, you know, into the mirror like what is wrong with you? And you go and you do it anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Zach: The you mentioned getting into meth. Yeah. And you call it the dark arts in your book, which I thought was a perfect title for that cuz when I think of meth, like a lot of people, I think of Breaking Bad. Yeah. Was the meth underworld like that? Like the depiction in Breaking Bad? I'm curious like if there was any crossover between the fictionalization of it and the actual meth.

Budd: So, you know, Hollywood did its thing with Breaking Bad, but I also wasn't involved in making like super batches in a, you know, Mexican lab underground. Yeah. I was doing shake and bake in like a bottle, a water bottle, you know.

Zach: So like what Walter White would have gotten started with, like the starter kit for eventually going into it, but not like the full-fledged Yeah. Thing.

Budd: Yeah. Pretty. Yeah. That was, you know, that's that's beginner's meth-making. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I never really progressed beyond that, but Yeah. Yeah. So, the meth seedier Mhm. Than the heroin world. You know, they're both bad and they overlap in a lot of ways.

Zach: Why do you think that is that why the meth world is seedier than the heroin world?

Budd: Because stimulants are unpredictable. People on stimulants are unpredictable a lot of the time. So you know like they show in Breaking Bad when they're in with who's it I forget his name but the Spanish guy and they try to give him the chili laced meth. Yeah. Yeah. Chuka or something.

Zach: And he takes the hit off the key and it like fucks with him.

Budd: Well he No. So

Zach: Or I might be thinking about a different scene

Budd: Possibly if I remember correctly. Jesse's trying to get him to do this meth because it's laced with rice in it. Yeah. Yeah. So they're trying to kill him, but Jesse tells him it's got chili powder in it. And he and he's about to do it. He's about to do it and he tells him it's got chili powder and he's like, "I'm allergic to chili." So he doesn't do the math and they're like,

Zach: "Fuck." Yeah. Yeah.

Budd: It's coming back to me. He's got a secret ingredient. What secret ingredient? Chili powder. Yeah, but the way that guy is, absolute nut, monster. He's out of his mind all the time. I've seen people like that on meth often. So, so you're dealing with people who are unpredictable. Meth's worth a lot of money, so there's often guns involved. So, you know, guys who are up for four or five days carrying around weapons and they're jumping out of a shadow is sketchy. Sketchy. Yeah.

Zach: Being armed to the teeth and sleep deprivation is not a great combination. Right. Right. For sure. Yeah. For sure. You've described u going through detox as oil changes. Yeah. For people who are not familiar with that term or just like what being in a detox is like, what made you describe it as like going through an oil change?

Budd: An oil change. So, you know, a detox is usually 5 to 7 days and you check in, they give you your detox meds, they make you comfortable, you have food and, you know, juice machines and all this stuff and you hang out with the other guys who are detoxing and watch TV and it's like a little mini vacation and then you go right back out to the street and start getting high again. I mean, that's my experience most of the time with you know, rehabs.

Zach: It's kind of just like in and out, like it takes you in and spits you back out.

Budd: Yeah. So, you know, oil gets dirty, you know, you go in, you put a couple pounds on you know, clean up a little bit and then and then you're good to go again.

Zach: Would people try to get like picked up by a detox or rehab just to have a place to rest before they get spit back out? But the rehab like and you get into this too where it's like the industry is kind of not all rehabs are created equal but there's a part of it where there it's statistics where you want people to come in and stay clean for a certain amount of time and then that allows them to have a better percentage check a box and then send people back out and there's little to no follow-up after.

Budd: Yeah, that's true. You know, and you I can't put it all on the rehabs because addicts do what they do and they're, you know, you can't really wrangle in an addict. So it's like you go to this rehab and they'll try to do what they can for you. They'll try to set you up with housing or maybe an IOP, like an intensive outpatient rehab, but [sighs] all it takes is for you to pick up once once you get out of that rehab and you're off to the races. So, you might show up at this IOP for like, you know, a couple of days or whatever, and then something happens, whatever, and you get high, and then you're gone. So, you know, that gives them a bad statistic when really it's it's the addict who's going out and doing what they want to do. I think that the problem is that it's not long enough. 28 days isn't long enough to get somebody off of a multiple year run, you know, living like an animal. Yeah. And then and then get them adjusted back to real life and have them start paying taxes again. You know, I just don't think it's enough time to do it.

Zach: I also I couldn't imagine being in that position and then on day 27 you have to stay clean knowing you're going back out into the world and then also, you know, pay taxes, hold down a job, take care of kids, take care of people in your family who are sick or just like all the responsibilities. These 20 28 days with no follow-up is crazy.

Budd: And not even that, like that's part of it. But, you know, being an addiction, you create a lot of wreckage. So, all of your bridges are probably burned. You know what I mean? Or most of them. So, where are you going to go? You've probably got a record, so you know, a decent job is like probably off the table. Yeah. Most likely have some kind of warrants for crimes that you committed and never showed up to court because you just ran to go get high. Yeah. There's there's so many things, you know, you might not have custody of your kids, whatever you want to get. So, there's all this stuff that's weighing on you that is messed up because of addiction, plus normal life stuff like paying rent and, you know, having a place to stay, having a job and showing up for your family. Like there's that too. So there's this pressure from all these different angles and on day 27 realizing you're about to walk out into that is it's I mean for me it was fuck it. I Yeah, Fuck it. I don't care.

Zach: Yeah. Do do most rehabs and detoxes do they have a zero tolerance policy for relapse? Like if you say I relapsed and I still want to be here, will they take you back in or are they just like no you can't be here?

Budd: So if you relapse, if you're getting high while you're at the facility, they're going to kick you out. They'll kick you out. Okay. If you relapse while you're there and say, "Hey, I fucked up and I want to like, you know, I screwed up, but I want to stay." They'll probably work with you. Okay. Once you're out the door though, you're not their problem anymore. Yeah. You know, truthfully,

Zach: How did you how did you end up in jail for the first time?

Budd: So, I, you know, going back a little bit, I had gotten kicked out by my dad, moved up town. I was, I was there for, I don't know, about a year, maybe year and a half, two years, so some somewhere in there. It's kind of foggy, but a period of time when eventually I lost my job. So I was like dope sick and just couldn't work or something. So, I lost my job. Then I couldn't pay rent. And even though I was staying with a friend and his parents, they were charging me cheap rent. I still had to pay something and I no longer could. So, I had to go. So, I called my family. It had been, you know, I had spoken to my mother probably a little bit in that time. My father, not at all. But, but I called and I said, "Hey, I got nowhere to stay. I'm going to be homeless. I lost my job. Can I come home? Mhm. So, I did. You know, he was like, "Yeah, the you know, the lights always on, the door's always open." So he had me come home and during that transition home, so I was moving out and my brother came to pick me up and when when I went in the house to get the rest of my stuff, I had already brought some out and he went through my stuff and I don't know if he was suspicious of me, if he thought something was off, but he searched through my things and he found my needles and a bunch of like empty dope bags. And he was like, "What the buck is this?" And like I couldn't lie to him. So I just told him like, "I'm a junkie, bro." You know, like I'm addicted to heroin. And you know, that hurt, too.

Zach: How did your dad react to it in that moment?

Budd: So my dad didn't know yet. So that was, you know, just with your brother. Just with my brother. So he didn't know. He didn't know yet, but you know, it was it was a long ride home. And like I looked up to my brother. He was like he was a jock, you know what I mean? He had girls, you know, he threw parties at the house. He was like he wrestled for another school and played football for ours. Like he was cool. Then he went into the Air Force, which is what I wanted to do before I started doing too many drugs and, you know, my ambitions were set to the wayside. So like telling him that was like I let him down, you know, and so like I let myself down the same way like telling him that it was like wow this is real like that. It was one of the first times I think that I've ever said it out loud was like I'm a junkie you know. So it was a long ride home and he was pissed pissed at me.

Zach: Did your brother just kind of stay quiet in the car like your

Budd: Other brother would? Yeah. Yeah, he did. He was he was quiet and then when we got closer to home, he said, you know, you can tell mom or I will. So we went in the house and I told her what happened. And I told her that I've I've been using drugs for years, that I don't know anything else beyond that really, except that I use drugs and I [clears throat] like I have never really even tried to stop at this point. So, I'm at I'm at the house and I convinced them that I'm going to try to detox on the couch, right? So, it's going to be a week of hell, whatever, and then we'll get through it. I didn't think I needed rehab. Truly, I didn't think I needed it yet, but I was still very naive to addiction. Yeah. So, I'm there at the house and then the cravings start. Couple days in, I'm getting sick. I can't sleep. And I go looking for grandma's pills cuz I knew that they were there somewhere. And instead, I found my mom's jewelry. [gasps] So, I stole her jewelry. I left like one ring. It was like her 10y year anniversary ring or something. And I stole everything else. It was like, I don't know, like $20,000 worth of jewelry. It was It was a lot. I didn't get that much for it, you know, like if you were to buy it, it was it was a lot of jewelry, you know, and it was a really shitty thing to do. And I knew it was shitty to do, but in the moment I couldn't care because I was sick, you know. I was sick. And you'll do anything that you can to avoid that sickness. So, I stole it and pawned it. And once once I did that, I knew that I had to leave or that my dad would probably actually kill me if I was there and he found out. So, I moved in with this some girl a couple towns over. I told her what was going on and I was like, "Yeah, I need a place to stay." She was getting high. So, we made it work. And that's actually where I learned to cook the meth was, you know, at that time. But my parents pressed charges on me once once they found out. So my mom called me the one day and she was like she just said, "What did you do?" and I said, "I'm sorry. Like I needed to get high." and I got I gotta go. And I just hung up because I couldn't face that. You know what I mean? Even being high, I couldn't face that. So, Yeah. Yeah. So, they press charges. Couple of months goes by. I'm still staying at that place and a cop comes up to the door and this was during bath salts. So, I don't know if you know what bow salts are, but they're

Zach: Never tried them, but I remember the stories well making it in making it into the media around where I was from in Long Island because they were sold in gas stations like I'm sure they were around here. Yeah. And I would hear, you know, like only the worst stories get into the news. So I'd hear the stories of a guy on bath salts chewing a guy's face off or you know running through cars in the middle of a highway like all the typical crazy bath salt stories but that's that's the extent of my knowledge like the hyperfification of it.

Budd: Yeah. I mean that's good enough you know. It's [laughter] pretty accurate. Yeah it's pretty accurate. Yeah. No, bath salts are they're a stimulant, but they have a very short period of activation and a very long comedown, and it's [clears throat] brutal. Brutal. It's the worst comedown I've experienced of any drug.

Zach: Did you smoke bath salts, right? Like

Budd: You could smoke them, shoot them, sniff them, eat them. How, you know, dealer's choice essentially. Yeah. Any route of ingestion. So yeah, so I was shooting bath salts for like I don't know three or four days this time. So one of the symptoms of it is compulsive redosing because the comedown is so bad and the actual high is so short. You just keep doing it, you know, over and over and over for days and days. So people stay up a really really long time on bath salts more so than meth or cocaine, you know.

Zach: And you're redosing way off way more often than something like meth with bath salts.

Budd: Yeah. Like on like every 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. It is crazy. And then you get diminishing returns, right? So as your neurotransmitters burn out from being, you know, so active for the past however long. Yeah. That every time you do it, you get a little bit less than the last time. So, you just keep chasing that buzz that

Zach: So, you're you're shooting up for half an always sunny episode of High essentially at that point for 10 minutes if that. If that. Yeah. That's crazy.

Budd: Yeah. Just to get the next one in. Yep. So, I'm out of my mind. I'm up for three or four days and there's a knock on the door and it's a cop. And the girl I was staying with answered it and she was like, "There's there's a cop here to see you." And I'm like, "You got to be kidding me." You know, and when you're on stimulants, you're paranoid and jumping at shadows and people are out to get you and it's just this mess. So, the fact that there was actually a cop there, I was like freaking out. But, I didn't I didn't like act like a nut or anything. I just went and talked to him and he was like, "You're bud." I was like, "Yeah, excuse me." And he's like, "" he's like, "Your parents sent me over here to talk to you." they pressed charges on you for stealing their jewelry. But before he was like, he was like, "Do you want to talk inside or outside?" And there was like paraphernalia everywhere in the house. I was like, "We'll talk outside." So, I went out and I'm talking to him and he's, you know, going going over this with me. And he tells me they press charges that the warrant hasn't gone through yet and that he's there just to like talk to me like a person and find out what's going on. Yeah. So like good on that

Zach: Cop understanding in the moment. Yeah. He more empathetic than he needed to be. For

Budd: Sure. For sure. I mean I was out of my mind. He could have arrested me probably for being under the influence, you know, but he he talked to me like a person and he asked me what was going on and I told him I'm a drug addict and that I don't know what to do that I'm stuck. And he he was like, "Well, have you ever gone to detox?" And I was like, "No, I haven't. Like I've heard of it, but I don't know anything about it." I think I was like 20 at this time, like 20 years old. So, he he called an ambulance and got me a ride to detox in Wilkes-Barre and Wilkes-Barre General Hospital. They used to have a dedicated detox wing which they shut down, which I don't I don't like the idea, you know what I mean? There's so much addiction that think really people could use that. But that's where I went and I went in for a week and I remember the nurses told me that I have like a long hard road ahead of me and I didn't understand what they meant at the time cuz I thought you went to detox or rehab and you were just better that once you went in it fixed whatever was wrong with you and you get your life back. So, I got out of the detox and I picked up like 2 hours later. And that's that's the thing about it is like I didn't need to, right? Because I wasn't sick anymore. It's just the mental thing. It's this mental craving that's like you can't overcome it. I mean, you can you can people do it every day, but it's difficult. And when you're very fresh without any knowledge of recovery at all, I mean, your chances are slim to none to actually saying no. So, yeah, I got high and my girl that I was staying with, she she walked in, she saw me getting high, and she was like, "What the fuck are you doing?" I was like, "It's cool. Like, I went to detox. Like, I'm good." Yeah. And she was like, "That's not how it works. Like, what are you talking about?" She's like, "If you're going to get high, you got to go." So, from there, I moved up with the friend initially moved in with that I was like doing the oxy's with. Moved back in with them for a little bit. Couldn't get a job. I was in too deep. So, they like kicked us out the one night, me and this other guy, Nate, they were like, "You got to you guys got to go. You got to figure something out." All right. So, it was like winter like I think it was like late October, early November. So, it was cold but not like kill you cold yet, you know? And we were out there. We were walking and we were actually looking to steal a car and an old school teacher pulled in and he offered us a ride to the town we were trying to get to, which was where Nate's cousin was staying, and he was supposed to let us stay. So, he took us to this town, dropped us off, and essentially wished us good luck. And we went to go to the cousin and turns out we weren't allowed to stay there. So now we're an hour and a half away. Nowhere to stay and it's like starting to sleep in freezing rain. So we're staying in this we went to this little smoke shack shelter outside of a Walmart and we were just sitting in there and the employees came out and they're like, "You guys can't be here. Like we don't have anywhere to go. We're just trying to stay out of the weather." They were like, "Okay, well, we'll we'll call for help or something." So, they called the cops. The cops came and they ran my name. And by that time, the warrant that my parents put on me for the jewelry had gone through. That was the first time I got arrested. And you know, I was kind of scared of the idea of jail. Like, who isn't the first time they go in, right? But when I got there, it was just a bunch of people like me, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was just guys who had substance use problems or did something stupid while under the influence for the most part. So, I fit in, you know, I played cards and played cards, played chess. The Walking Dead was big at that time, so we would all tune in and watch that together, you know, like some like twisted little social club, I guess. Yeah. And then I got out 60 days later. And they I got put on to a day reporting center for Luzerne County. So that's where you have to check in every day, do like counseling, give give urines, stuff like that. And I mean it was okay, but I failed out of it eventually. They got sick of me giving them the runaround. So I ran and then [sighs and gasps] this part's always a little bit confusing for me. Like I don't really remember the exact order of how things went. And like in the book I tried to get it as clear as I could. I even put a little disclaimer like you know I try to remember but I did a lot of drugs and it was like fucks with your memory and it really does recall. Yeah. And it was like a very hectic period of like checking in here and like running and then checking back in and then a rehab and check. So it was a lot of like running around. But I checked into a rehab somewhere in that point and that was the first rehab that I had like actively chosen to go to. Mhm. And I stayed clean for like 2 months out of there, which was the longest clean time I ever had at that point. And then I ended up using I used with a girl. It was actually my friend's girl. Was this

Zach: The stretch for 5 years or was this a different time? You were almost 5 years at one point,

Budd: Right? This was leading up to that. Okay. Yep. So, this is right before that 5 year period. So, I used with a friend of mine's girl and we hooked up and that was a problem because he was like a cool guy in AA. So, he was friends with everybody. So, I was like kind of new to AA. So, it kind of like painted me as like this outcast, untrustworthy, you know what I mean? Whatever. Whatever it is. And so, I went and stayed in the trap house. I'm on the run again after I relapsed because I had checked back into the program the DRC. Yeah. But I'm on the run again and I'm in this trap house and the money runs out and they're like you can't stay here if you don't have money. It was a crack house. Yeah. You know, you could live there as long as you got the money to be there. You know, as long as you're buying product, you can stay there as long as you want, but if it runs out, you got to go. And I had to go. That was like this recurring thing is like you gotta go. Everybody's telling me like, you know, like you gotta go, dude. Like we're we're not doing this.

Zach: Yeah. You know, seems like a common common theme.

Budd: It really was. It really was. Like I think about it still to this day. It's like everybody's telling me to get the fuck out of here, you know?

Zach: And it's tiring, I'm sure, for you to be settled in a place and feel like, okay, you're finally catching your breath. Yeah. Maybe you're there for a week or two on the couch at most and you have access to drugs and then a short time later some guy says get the fuck out and then you're living like that on the run essentially

Budd: Right all the time. All the time. All the and even during the good times like those two months sober that I had. Yeah. I mean that was a fantastic time in my life. I'm finally not dependent on drugs and I'm making friends and I'm like going to do stuff with people and like I'm having a great time and then one day just bam my brain says you should say fuck all this and go get high and I'm like yeah I should do that and it's like where does it

Zach: And it's like a voice voice in the back of your head.

Budd: It is it is it's like a voice man. I don't know. It, you know, it kind of maybe even touches on like some spiritual stuff with that in a way. You know, maybe we'll talk about that a little bit, but it's like it's like an intrusive thought that's not your own that tells you to go just destroy everything.

Zach: So, that I wanted to zoom in on that for a sec cuz you had a stretch after this that was you were sober for five years or three days shy of five years. 5 years and then you used walk me through what goes on in your head at that moment where you decide to relapse after 5 years like whether it's the voices or feeling like what does it feel like the moments leading up to a relapse and the moments right after where you realize the gravity of the decision?

Budd: Yeah. So relapse for me often happens a while before I actually put a drug into my body. There's there's some part of me that rationalizes and justifies me using in a way that it really doesn't even make sense in your head when you think back on it. It's like cuz like right now sitting here sober, I know that if I go pick up drugs, it's going to be terrible. I'm not going to have a good time. It but my brain will lie to me and it will tell me it's going to be a good time. It'll say, "This is the best one you've ever had. We're only going to do it once. You deserve it. You can do this. It'll be different this time." Any kind of justification, no one will know. Anything. Well, it's this voice in your head that and it and it's really like a voice. So, this is going on in my head. My head's noisy for a couple of weeks, you know, maybe longer before this happens. And then one day I was I was just sitting there and I was like, "Fuck it." is the famous last words. I said I said, "Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. And I called my buddy. And

Zach: Did you say it out loud or did you think it or both?

Budd: It might have been both. I mean there's been times where I've said it. There's been times where I've thought it. That instance I don't remember. But that point of relapse that I get to is always the two words in my head is fuck it. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck it. I don't care. I And that's like this thing too. You get so like jammed up internally and emotionally like you don't care cuz you know that the relief that substance is going to give you even if it's only for 10 minutes or whatever that it's going to be better than dealing with the way that you feel right now. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: It's it's funny you say that cuz I spoke to someone else on the podcast. His name is Michael Clune. He's a professor. He wrote a book about suffering from addiction. Heroin was his drug of choice. Okay. And he described it as a memory disease where when he has his cravings that ended up with him relapsing in the past, he described it as almost like you have the memory of that first hit and like the good times and your brain kind of just like Men in Black like erases all the bad shit Yeah. And it's like a like a disease rotting out your memories of all the bad things. And you he I don't want to put the exact words in his mouth, but the way that I took it was that the memory disease to him was like the wipe out of the negative consequences. And then in that moment right before the relapse, it was just I'm only thinking about the next 10 minutes or 10 hours, right? Whatever. It's

Budd: True, right? So, so your brain addiction lives in a different part of your brain than your rational thought, right? It lives in the part that tells you to have sex, to procreate, to eat, to drink water, to breathe air. That's where addiction lives. So when you're thinking about addiction and you're having a severe craving, it's on the same level as if you're starving or you're underwater and need to come up and take a breath. So it's it's in that same kind of sense of urgency to your body. So it overrides your rational thought, right? So it's it's hard to compete with that like rationally sitting here not having a craving. I can tell you that anytime I do drugs, nothing good ever comes of it. But when I'm in a craving, all I can think about is how good I'm going to feel for, you know, the next couple of hours. And you can't override that because it's the survival part of your brain. You know, biologically speaking, drugs are the best thing that ever happened to you. You know, that's what your brain re recognizes it as. It says this is better than this is better than seafood, you know. This is better than than sex. This is better than water. This is better than way better than shelter. Yeah. Yeah. So, go do it. It just kind of takes over everything else and Yeah. And do it as much moment at least. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's that's where it lies and that's that's the hard part about it is trying to overcome that. Yeah.

Zach: So you said your dad was a CO. Yeah. How did what was your path like to becoming a corrections officer out of the turmoil of the lead-up to what we were just talking about going through that series of relapse getting sober? How did how did you become a corrections officer yourself?

Budd: So I had initially gone to that first rehab of choice. Stayed sober for a couple months. Got out, relapsed. I'm in this crack house. I got to go. So, I check into rehab again. That was for a little bit longer term. That was, I was, it was supposed to be 90 days. Funding paid for 60. So, I was there for 60 something days. And when I got out, I actually came to stay here at Nana's. I called Nana. I knew I couldn't go to my parents. Yeah. I called Nana and I said, "Hey, I'm clean, but I have to leave rehab. I'm not kicked out. It's just time to go." I said, "I don't want to go back to the street or using drugs, so can I like please come stay with you?" She was like, "Yeah, sure." She's like, "But you're going to be on a short leash." So, I went to Understandable. I went [snorts] to church with her, you know, I went to church with her every Sunday. If we ever went anywhere, she was with me, at least in the beginning. She would give me an allowance for like cigarettes. I didn't have like my own cash. And right at that time, right as I had gotten out of that rehab and came to stay here from when I committed that crime when I was 14 with that house, I got a check in the mail for $5,000 from Kids for Cash. So that was with Judge Ciavarella and Judge I don't want to say I think it's Conahan, but I'm not sure. But another judge and judge Ciavarella who had sentenced me to time in a bad kid camp, Camp Adams, they had gotten busted for locking up kids for money. Yeah. Like kickbacks. Yeah. [clears throat] They were getting kickbacks. So I got a lawsuit from that. I got five five grand here literally like a week after I got out of rehab. So I gave it to my nana. I said, "I can't have this. I'll be out the door tonight." Yeah. Yeah. So I gave her that money to hold on to and [gasps] I stayed clean. I started going to meetings and I started trying to help other addicts and I went through like the 12 steps and that worked for me. What you know, whatever it was about it, it worked for me. And helping other people really really worked for me, too. Doing what I could and I stayed clean. I got a couple different jobs. I worked at another furniture store for a while. Then I was an exterminator for like four years, something like that. Yeah. And then then I started working at Dallas as a corrections officer, SEI Dallas. So I applied, took the civil service test and I got denied the first time. Because during this time, so for those charges, where I stole from my parents, I got sentenced to drug court. So the deal with drug court is it's a very intense program, but if you complete it, they drop your charges.

Zach: Okay. Right. How long was it? Was it like like 18 months? 18

Budd: Months. Okay. Yeah. I think I was on it for 20 months cuz they go off like a graduation schedule that's every so often. So, it was just a hair longer. But I went through that. I graduated no problem. Because I was clean and I did what they told me to do. It wasn't that hard, you know. That's that's the thing about it is it makes you make it difficult as an addict getting high cuz you can't show up. You can't get clean urine. Yeah. You know, so yeah. So I graduated. So, the first time I applied, my record still hadn't gotten expunged. The second time I did, it had, so I was finally able to work there. So I got hired, I went to the academy, and I started a career as a corrections officer. And I was sober.

Zach: And how long did the good period last as a corrections officer? How long did you manage to stay sober before things went downhill?

Budd: It was right around 16 months, I think. 16 months, 18 months. It was like right near the end of the training period. It's an 18-month training period that that I started like really fucking up bad. But I had relapsed a couple of months before that, but I was kind of just dabbling. Yeah. But it always progresses

Zach: Because you were you were shooting fentanyl while you were a CO. What was your routine like during the day? How were you keeping that up as a CO? Staying out of the watchful eye of being on prison grounds high at work. Imagine that comes with like a routine of doing it and before work, after work, kind of like staying away from the prying eyes of other COs.

Budd: Yeah, it was terrible. I mean, first of all, I felt like the biggest fraud in the world, right? Because there's guys who are locked up right now in that jail on the on the block I work on for doing exactly what I did a half an hour ago. You know what I mean? So it was like this impostor syndrome. I felt like a clown. You know what I mean? I felt like I'm wearing like a like this suit doesn't belong. It's like a costume. You know what I mean? It's like a feeling of guilt like Yeah. Like I don't this what am I doing here? But it started it started with a relapse the same way it always does. I got comfortable in my sobriety, in my recovery, and I stopped going to meetings and I stopped trying to help people, and the next thing I know, I'm using. So, now I'm going to work high because I have to support this habit. Yeah. So, I would use drugs before I went in down the street from the jail, and I would hide them in a field because they could search your property at any time while you're on the jail. At the jail. So, I didn't want them anyone to get suspicious and then go search my car and find my stuff and then, you know, that whole mess. So, I would do it and then hide it down the street and then I would start to get sick. I mean, my shift started at 2:00 p.m. I would get onto the block at about 1:45 to get the rundown of the earlier shift and figure out everything that happened. So, I would do my shot around 1:00, give or take. So, I would do it down the street or at the house so that it was even longer. So then my shift starts and I didn't bring the drugs in with me, but I would I would start to get sick by like 5 or 6 p.m. Because fentanyl doesn't last very long in your system. Doesn't give you a long, you know, period of activation. So, I would start like four or five hours. Four or five hours is all you get. So I would start I would start, you know, I'm sweating through my uniform and my eyes are pinned when I come in and I got away with it for a while and then eventually as it got worse and I start to look more unhealthy cuz I started doing speedballs too. Which is shooting cocaine and an opiate. Yeah. So I started doing speedball. So I'd get lit all weekend and then go to work sometimes still up from the night before and I looked like a mess. Yeah. So inmates started to catch on. They knew that I was doing some kind of drugs.

Zach: So the inmates realized first before the COs. Mhm. That's interesting.

Budd: Yeah. We recognize our own, you know, addicts. Yeah.

Zach: Did was it like the Did they see the eyes or like was it the sweating or just everything? Probably everything.

Budd: Everything. Yeah. I was I was sweating kind of shaky. Eyes are pinned. Avoidant. You know, I don't want to really talk to anyone. I'm trying to stay by myself. That kind of thing. Cuz, you know, being a corrections officer isn't all just yelling at inmates all day. You know, you have to coexist with them. You know, you're you're in their house for that period of time that you're on shift. Yeah. See, I mean, most of them, you talk to them like they're people, you know, for the most part. I didn't like I don't know. I didn't like pedophiles, you know what I mean? I didn't I'm with you. Yeah. Yeah. I think most people Yeah. You shouldn't like pedophile. Pedophiles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I didn't fuck with them on the block. Didn't do anything for them. But like guys who were in for drugs or robbery or whatever, as long as you didn't hurt kids, like I don't really give a fuck what you did. You know, it's not really my business. I'm there to make sure you don't climb over the fence. That's it. Yeah. So yeah, you talk to them and you know, my dad being a career corrections officer, he retired from there. Gave me the best advice that probably anyone has for that kind of career, which is treat the inmates how they act, which means if you act like a dickhead, I'm going to treat you like a dickhead. If you act cool, I'm going to treat you cool. You know, there's there's no reason not to. So, yeah. Yeah, they started to catch on cuz I my personality changed. And then jail's kind of like high school. So, everybody talks, inmates talk to staff, staff talk to inmates. Then I'm start hearing rumors, you know, Rodney's on drugs. Then I could tell that my co-workers are kind of suspicious of me, and you could see like the side eye and stuff, and it's like, well, this isn't going to last much longer. Yeah. You know, but they had a a hand scanner that they would run sometimes randomly and I was scared to death of this thing because I was handling drugs. And what they do is they scrape your hands and then they take this little piece of cotton or whatever and they run it through like a spectrometer and they can detect the chemical signature. Yeah. Of whatever you touched like nicotine, coffee, doesn't matter. They can see it. So I would like try to wash my hands with soap and water and then alcohol to like try

Zach: To get it get the residue off. Residue

Budd: Off. Yeah. I never got caught for it. Yeah.

Zach: Did it ever go as far as look like inmates looking to exchange drugs or like bringing anything into the prison or did it never really get to that point?

Budd: Yeah. One one time that I remember clearly which was I was doing my night rounds one time and there was this inmate on the block and I think he probably died by now. He had cancer. But he had a lot of money from his cancer but no access to it really. He's in state prison for life. And he called me over to his cell as I'm making the rounds and he kind of approached me quietly and he was like, "Yo, Rodney, you know that I can get you shit for cheaper than what you're I'm like, "What are you talking about, dude?" He's like, "You know what I mean? Like the shit you're doing." And I stopped him right there. I said, "Don't ever ask me something like that again." I said, "The answer is no." So, no. And then I kept going and I was I was, you know, proud of myself for that honestly because it allowed me to keep like some integrity, right? At least a little bit. I mean, I'm still going in to this state prison facility every day under the influence of drugs. And like I think about that now and it's like, you know, you got to be on point in there. Shit happens sometimes. You know, stuff goes down like you got to respond to fights and sometimes staff assaults. I responded to a staff assault once. So, like I wasn't my best self while I was there, you know? So, I was like putting my co-workers in danger just by me not being present in that way. And I didn't like realize it at the time, but I thought about it later and it was like, man, it was kind of shitty, you know, like being like, you know, I didn't serve in the military or anything, but imagine you're in a unit. You want the guy to be to know he's not body and mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't but yeah. No. The guy he offered me I turned him down and I was like I was I was proud of that. One I didn't want to bring that onto our family. I mean my brother works there. My father retired from there. My grandmother was an accountant there. So like you know it was like a family thing. I didn't want to put that on our name that I was, you know, that guy who was bringing stuff into a facility acting like a mule for inmates. You know, you don't want to you don't want to be that. Yeah.

Zach: So, what drew you to Kensington for the first time?

Budd: So, yeah, Kensington. I started hanging out with a girl that I was friends with for a long time. And [clears throat] she had been familiar with Philly and Kensington in the past. And we started hanging out because she knew I was getting high and she asked me if I could get drugs for her because she was staying up here after her grandmother died. So her her grandmother died, she relapsed. She was living in Philly. She came up here, got a hold of me because I had connections up here. And I started getting drugs for her. I used to like deliver drugs to her in my uniform, you know, before I would go to work, you know. It was like crazy to think about. Crazy to think about now. But yeah, so I was I was dealing for her and we were getting high together and then the one day she was like, you know, these are kind of expensive. I could get cheaper stuff in Philly. So she introduced me to Kensington and it sounded like a great idea to me. Cheaper, stronger drugs in active addiction is ideal. Yeah. So,

Zach: And she had been down there before and kind of showed you the ropes of Kensington.

Budd: Yeah. She showed me how to how to do it. So, when I first went down there, I was like blown away by what Kensington actually was. I mean, there was I would ask her like, "Do you think those people have drugs? Do you think those people have drugs?" She's like, "Yes, yes, yes, yes." You know, they all have drugs and they're all selling and they're all, you know, there's addicts everywhere and just like hordes of homeless people. It's it's insane. It's like this zone of Philadelphia that's just cordoned off to contain this problem of addiction that lives there.

[Inserted audio]

It's obvious to the naked eye that Kensington is horrifying, but few ask the question, how did it get like this? Unlike San Francisco's Tenderloin, which is mainly a result of neglect, and progressive policy, Kensington is a story of police corruption, deep-rooted segregation, and now is the face of a blatant scheme by property developers associated with Temple University, who've laid out a 5-year plan to revitalize the Kensington corridor. Six blocks down the street from the open air drug market [music] across Lehi Avenue, developers have already began mass buyouts of property, both residential and commercial, and the police in turn are helping them to displace homeless people and push them further up the street toward the open air drug market. With this in mind, it's quite obvious that the city is allowing the open air drug market to flourish in order to lower property values and drive out local residents and businesses. That way they can buy it up at a low cost, then begin enforcing drug laws, push addicts further away, and turn Kensington into a full-blown gentrified corridor complete with juice bars, yoga studios, and so forth.

Zach: So it you mentioned the word zombies, too earlier, and you say in the book, and it's based on what you've described about the situation and just some of the ways that tranq makes you act, which we'll get into. Zombie sounds like an accurate description.

Budd: It is. You're You're not all there mentally. You're you're bent over and shuffling. You're passed out on the street until someone kicks you awake and then you come alive, you know? It's like it's crazy.

Zach: Do you remember like some of the first thoughts that crossed your mind when you pulled up to Kensington? Was there like a person or a block or like something that stood out to you where kind of like cemented that first impression in your mind?

Budd: Yeah. And it scared me too. We were going to cop on a block and I think we were on the way back and there was this kid sitting on the sidewalk and he was like all dirty and covered up with like a dirty blanket just sitting there. And I was like, "Wow, that's so sad." And Brit like looked at him and she was like, "You know, that was me, too." She's like, "I was down here like this before." I was like, "Wow, I didn't know that." And then I made a joke and I said, like, imagine I go from being a corrections officer to like a corner kid selling drugs in Philly. And then like as I said it, she like shot me a look and she's like, you know, don't don't say that. And it was like one of those things that's too close to true that you push it away. Yeah. And I remember that specifically that I did that

Zach: Kind of just block it

Budd: Out. It was like, "Oh man, like that might that might happen." Yeah. Yeah. And it did. It did happen. But that was like just seeing that kid there. There were needles everywhere, you know, addicts everywhere, people selling drugs everywhere, people selling needles.

Zach: It's like a whole ecosystem that's allowed to function out in the open.

Budd: Yeah. I call it a junky wonderland. And you know, that's not like a term of endearment because it's really a terrible place. Yeah. But that's for someone in active addiction, that's what it is. Yeah, that's what it becomes for you.

Zach: And it started so you were working as a CO and then you would go down there every so often to get tranq and then go back to work and you would have phases of just like going in and out of Kensington.

Budd: Yeah. So, we started going down once a week, maybe twice, and then that became every couple of days. And then it just kind of progressed until eventually I called out of work long-term for medical leave because I couldn't keep up the act anymore. And that's that kind of gave me more freedom to go down there. So, we would go down there and then we would like stay the night in my car and do it. I actually I remember one time really we had I think we'd been going to Kensington a little bit by that point, but I'm not I'm not sure. But I was still working at the jail and I wanted to quit doing drugs. I wanted to stop and I took Suboxone which I take today as you know medication assisted treatment and that works really well for me. But I took it because I knew that it works for opiate addiction and for detox, but I'd only ever taken it with heroin. So I took it with fentanyl and fentanyl acts differently in your system. And I ended up going into something called precipitated withdrawal. Yeah. Which was here at this house actually.

Zach: Cuz it like it instantly takes the drug off your receptors. Yeah. Right. If you do it at the wrong time, it'll fuck you up.

Budd: Yep. So when you're doing drugs, you have a baseline of drug in your system that you know has your neurotransmitters at say this level. But Suboxone can only ever get you to this level and this level is normal baseline, right? So, I took the subs and what it does is it rips the neurotransmitters off down to that level. Yeah. So, in between that period of time before you level out, it's terrible, awful dope sickness, withdrawal, it was like vomiting and puking and diarrhea and stomach cramps and seizures and writhing on the floor and like, you know, the like the gnashing of the teeth, you

Zach: I think you said it in the book it was like six days of withdrawal packed into six hours.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. That's that's pretty accurate for what it feels like. Yeah.

Zach: So you're you're going back and forth to Kensington. You're shooting primarily tranq at this point. Yeah. What is tranq and how is it different from just heroin or fentanyl for people that may not be familiar with it?

Budd: So heroin is a standard opiate. So is fentanyl. Fentanyl synthetic heroin is made out of a plant. Tranq is a synthetic tranquilizer which they primarily use for veterinarian purposes. It's for animals, horses mostly, and it's actual name is called xylazine.

[Inserted audio]

Governor Shapiro is taking aggressive action to stop the spread of xylazine, also known as tranq, [music] directing the state department of health, to list it as a schedule 3 narcotic. The tranq brothers [music] agreed to meet with me, but wouldn't give me an exact address. They first told me to go to the parking [music] lot of Max's Cheesesteaks in North Philly. From there, they gave me walking directions to the stash house where the door was left wide open for me to enter. And there I was with the Walter White and Jesse Pinkman of tranq. This

Is the Kensington finest. They love it. There's a lot going on. A little bit of dope, a little bit of tr

Budd: And tranq introduces an entire other addiction into opiate addiction. So you have a dual addiction and it doesn't last very long but it lasts longer than fentanyl. So the case is that you do this fentanyl which really the high the euphoric high that you get from fentanyl is really only an hour or two then you come down for an hour or two and you're sick by like hour five or six. Now, what tranq does is it kind of extends that initial one or two hours into four hours, right? So, you feel like you're higher for longer through the tren. So, that's getting cut involuntarily for the addicts into every dope batch in Philly almost. And now I'm sure the surrounding areas like you know Jersey and Baltimore and New York and Ohio you know and it's like spread into spreading to Yeah. Yeah. So it's I describe tranq as a chemical shutdown. I see so you can you can taste it when you inject it. And I remember one time I did a shot of it and I could taste the tranq and if you could taste it, it's going to be a potent shot. Mhm. And I just said, "Okay, see you later." And I woke up four or five hours later. But I remember that specific like I tasted it. I was like, "Oh, this isn't going to be good." Like Brit's going to be pissed. Yeah. Cuz she hated when I would get all all fucked up to the point where I couldn't even function. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember it's a chemical shutdown. I've I've injected people with tranq where I don't even get the needle out of their neck before they're snoring. The they instant that fast. That fast. Holy shit Yeah. Yeah. It's It's really crazy how potent it can be in some cases. So yeah, that's that's tranq. That's xylazine. Now that's been scheduled. So that's a scheduled substance now. I believe or at least it was temporarily scheduled.

Zach: And so you're on medical leave at this point from being the CO. Is during the medical leave, is that when you got into the car chase with the state trooper? Is that can you can you tell the story of how that happened? Because [snorts] it's a one of the wildest darkest moments from the book and I think it's it's worth retelling that experience.

Budd: Yeah. So I had gone to Kensington by myself. Yeah. Copped a bunch of drugs and I sat in a parking lot and did cocaine all night. I was on my way home and I was speeding and a cop saw that I was speeding and lit me up. So, he turns his his flashers on and he's coming down and I was like, "not today. I'm not I'm going to try it. So, I tried to speed up. So, I step on the gas pedal and [clears throat] I was in a Ford Focus. He's driving a you know V8 state police cruiser like a SUV. So, I didn't stand a chance, but I tried and he caught up to me in like I don't know 10 seconds and he was on my ass. So, I'm like I got to get away somehow. So, the idea was I'm going to run about 10 miles down Route 11, which is a long stretch of straight highway. So, I'm going like as fast as my car will go. 120, 125. Yeah. And I'm weaving around cars and he's chasing me the whole time. And then I get into Shickshinny and there's this turnoff that's really sharp as soon as you get into town. And I'm like, I'm going to make that turn. And he's going to go past me and I'm going to get away. Yeah. And it almost worked. I made the turn. He went past me and I'm going up this hill and there's a giant oak tree down in the road that was blocking my path completely. And I knew at that point I was caught. So, a couple seconds later, you know, he manages to turn around, come up the road, gets up behind me, and I had gotten out of the car, down on my knees, put my hands on my head, and he came over and he kicked me in the head because he was pissed at me for taking him on this police chase, and threw me into cuffs. And then he he looked in the backseat of my car, and he was like, "What's up with this duty belt back here?" And a duty belt is something that you wear as you know police officer or corrections officer like law enforcement. Yeah. Holds your your pepper spray and your keys, flashlight, radio, that kind of stuff. Handcuffs. So I was like, I'm a CO. And he's like where? And I didn't want to tell him. But he was like, listen, man, we're going to make one phone call and find out where so you might as well just tell us right now. Yeah. So, I told him, it's at Dallas. And he was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm I'm addicted. I was like, I'm an addict, man. Like, I relapsed and I'm hooked on stuff. He's like, yeah, but like I can see that. He's like, but what the hell? He's like, you didn't try to get help. He tried to talk to me, you know, like kind of like a peer, you know, played for the same team. And I was like, yeah, I've tried. I'm just stuck bad. And they see it all the time, you know. So, yeah, they took me down to booking, gave me a blood test, and I went I went to they put me in the county. I bailed out later that day with my bike title. I had a Gixxer street bike, Gixxer 600. I bailed out with that. And at that point I knew like now now I have a charge so my career is gone. You know you can't have a felony charge be a CO and be a CO. So [cough] he or so I know my career's gone. So I'm I'm here at the house and I know eventually the jail's going to call. They do. Two days later they tell me I need to come in and give them a urine. So I do that. Then they schedule a meeting with all the higher-ups to figure out what the hell's going on. So I'm talking with the warden and bunch of you know other white shirts captain's lieutenants. Major was there and it's like I just told him like I'm addicted to drugs and I can't stop. So they were like well do you want to save your job? I was like yeah. They're like all right well you're going to go to treatment then. I like yeah sure I'll go. And [sighs] I don't know if I had tried to check into treatment at that point yet or not. I don't I might have once. So, this would have been the second try. Mhm. Where I went in and I walked out like two days later, you know. I just couldn't like the pull for the drugs was so strong. Yeah. That I just couldn't say no to it at the time. Yeah. The jail had offered me a probationary period, which is, you know, go to go to complete this treatment and then a year of probation where they can drug test me or search me at any time. Random drug tests every couple months or whatever. And I agreed, but I just, you know, I couldn't do the rehab.

Zach: So, how did you get to fully homeless living in Kensington full-time from that point?

Budd: So once I walked out of that treatment again, I knew that like the end was in sight. As far as like any kind of stability. Things were bad. Like I couldn't stay here anymore. I couldn't stay at my parents anymore. So I my nana actually had told me like I got to leave here. Because I was just, you know, running the muck and acting like a terror and just, you know, not doing what I was supposed to do. So, I moved into my parents for maybe a month. My dad was not okay with me actively using drugs, but he knew that I was. And it was like, what do we even do about this? Yeah. Yeah. So, I got into a fight with my dad again. He told me to kick rocks, so I did. Brit was with me and we went to Philly to stay and that's like that's where I kind of ended up stuck for almost six years.

Zach: So what's the day in the life of someone who's addicted to tranq that's living in Kensington full time? Like how are you going about surviving in a situation like that? You're pretty much cut off from your parents. You don't have a job at that point. What were you doing to survive on the streets of Philly?

Budd: So, I would wake up and initially, this is what I did to make money is I was a lookout on a block. So, I would go look out for drug dealers who were selling to make sure cops weren't coming. So that's what I would do for like, you know, from the morning till the night and they'd give me, I don't know, 100 bucks, 120 bucks maybe to do that. It was a cut of what all the dealers made that day. If you did a good job and, you know, called out all the cops, they c they paid you well. If you were shitty, like if you were high and like, you know, messed up, sometimes you didn't get paid at all. It was totally up to them. It's not like a you know, there's no worker protection. Yeah. Yeah. You might get paid, you might not. Yeah. So I did that at first and then that was risky. So I started shoplifting which was also risky but it seemed to be less so because I'm not directly next to drug dealers all day. So I started stealing from stores. And I would like I got bold with it because I was supporting my habit and Brits. So, I would take like a garbage bag, black garbage bag, and I would go into a Target and because they had a policy at the time because of COVID that you couldn't put your hands on anyone. It was essentially there for the taking. You just had to walk in and put it in. So, I would go in with a black garbage bag and fill it up with white beers, white t-shirts, boxers, and socks. Mhm. And that's what the dealers on the block loved, you know, fresh fresh white tees all the time. They ate it up. So I would go and sell it for five or 10 bucks a pack when normally it's, you know, 15 or 20 or 10 at least. So they got a deal and I got cash and

Zach: And it was just about like surviving getting to that next hit, whatever exchange or money you could get

Budd: That day. Yeah. Everything I did, every move I made was about the next one was about not being sick and having surplus if possible. Yeah. Yeah. So, the bottom line was always have dope, right? You need to have dope. Anything extra was for things like crack or coke, maybe meth. And they were just for fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So,

Zach: I think something I didn't really think about in detail the way that you describe it is surviving a Philly winter on the streets multiple times. Yeah. Just like the scheming and preparation and everything you need to do to survive a homeless winter in a northeast city is sucks. I mean, And that doesn't even begin to describe it. For someone who hasn't read about what you've had to say or someone who's who's never been in that position themselves, which is most people, what is it like getting through a Philadelphia winner in a fucking tent on the streets in Kensington?

Budd: Traumatic to say the least. It's very, very traumatic in a lot of different ways, right? I mean, the whole Philly thing is, but it's it's trying to prepare to be ready for whatever comes. I mean, you hear that the storm's coming [cough and clears throat] and in some cases they would try to offer shelters. They would call it code blue, which means it's going to be below freezing. And they would try to offer shelters locally where people were. But it's terrible. I mean, the first one was really bad and that was the learning process. How do you stay warm? What like what do we do? And it was layers, emergency blankets, finding firewood to build fires, having a tent. And more layers. Yeah, it was it was lots of layers. Yeah. So, what we would do initially I didn't have a tent, so we weren't even really sheltered. We would just try to find a big enough awning or something. So, what I would do is lay down cardboard for insulation and then I'd put like two blankets down over that. And then I would put a layer of Mylar Mylar emergency blankets. Yeah, the silver shiny ones. I would put that in between the bottom two layers. I would put a blanket down, then a Mylar blanket on top of that, and then another blanket or two on top. So like five blankets I would keep in a bed roll that I would roll up in the morning when we got up. And that's that's

Zach: And that was with like the cardboard and the Mylar mixed in.

Budd: And if it was going to snow or something, we would put Mylar over the top layer as well because it's waterproof. Yeah. To try to keep the and moisture out.

Zach: When would most people just leave their tents there during the day or like what was the relationship like between the people who were living on Kensington and the cops? Like would they try to incentivize you guys to leave or like shoe you guys away or was it just like an accepted?

Budd: It was accepted for a long time. It was accepted. It's it's less so now. But we'll we'll get into that. But for the most of the time that I was there, it was just daily reality. Yeah. You had people who would warn you if the cops were coming like you tell your buddy, "Hey, I'm about to get high. Like keep a keep an eye out." And you know, the lookout with your initial job. Yeah. Yeah. And in Philly, there's there's code words, right? Which is rollers. Those are cops driving through. There's walkers, which is walking cops, you know, beat cops, cops, bikes, of course. I mean, it's not really code words. I guess it's just call outs, but you know, bikers or, and then there was like a catch-all phrase, which was bahando, which means coming down in Spanish. So you know if you look out there and you see cops coming you bondo bahando and then everybody

Zach: That meant like get the fuck out of Yeah.

Budd: Disappear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's more for like the blocks like the drug dealing blocks. But as an addict like living at your spot on the sidewalk, we would set up semi-permanent shelter which would be like a tarp. We would string across the grates on top and then set it up with sticks and then underneath that we would have sometimes you would have tents, sometimes you would just have I would do umbrellas a lot. So like layer umbrellas to create like a shelter and either like tie them together or set them up so they stacked on you. Sometimes you had a tent, sometimes it would just be cardboard underneath like a blanket layer. It all depended on the weather, you know, but rain was terrible, you know. Cuz it just it ruined your stuff and it ruins it pretty fast. You know, your blanket gets wet. It's useless.

Zach: I was going to I was going to say there's not many materials that can stay wet and warm. It's you're usually fucked if you're you're wet.

Budd: Yeah. Just wool. And I knew that I actually did a senior project on wilderness survival. So I think came in handy down the line for sure. Yeah, it came in handy. Yeah, so wool will keep you warm when it's wet. You don't want it to be soaked. So if you can ring it out, ring it out. But wool blankets, wool socks, if you're in any kind of survival situation, that's that's what you want. Stays warm.

Zach: So, one throughline of Kensington that stood out to me through your writing is the moral extremes because you would have characters in the book that you described like Shai who was a humane Yeah. Yeah. Dealer. And even though he was a he was a dealer, he was like in that dope world, he would go out of his way to make sure things were good. A lot of people. Great guy, man. And then you also had guys on the block that were just straight up killers that would just fucking put a bullet in your head and not think past lunch about it.

Budd: Yeah. No, no respect for human life, man. Can you

Zach: Talk about what it was like to live in a place like that had such an intimacy to it but also extreme danger at the same time like being in the middle of those moral highs and lows.

Budd: So people are resilient, right? And both mentally and physically. And I think that you make the best of whatever situation you're in and you make it work. So for me that was I think a lot of compartmentalization. It was like okay so you know this guy just slapped me and threatened to kill me and I can't do anything about it because he's a block boss, right? So it's like what do I do? I put that somewhere for later because I can't deal with that now and I got to make sure we're well. Compartmentalize it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You deal with it. But there were there were a lot of characters of that caliber there. I don't know. [sighs] I mean, we could talk about Weymouth Street, you know, they got busted last no last October, last November, I think. And I dealt with Weymouth Street often. I was a hitter on that block for a while. So, for people who don't know, a hitter is in Philly, is a person who injects other people who can't do it themselves anymore or who choose not to. Yeah. So, I got paid a fee to do that for people. Yeah. And We Street had me come in for one of their houses to hit their people occasionally. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: Yeah. And when you say We Street, is it are you talking about the actual block or was it a gang that also called themselves We Street?

Budd: It's a block. Block. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's a block.

Zach: Yeah. And so that you were asked to be a hitter for them which is trying to find the veins for people who can't do it themselves or just don't want to.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it's both, you know. Yeah. They don't even want to try anymore. Yeah. So they just have someone do it for them because So tranq is very caustic as a substance. So it eats through your veins. It destroys your veins and your body. I mean, I have scars all over my body, my hands, you know. It's all It's all scarred up. Yeah. And that's all from tranq. My legs are covered in it because once you use a vein, it's usually kaput after that. It's dead.

Zach: Oh, so it's like once per vein

Budd: Depending on the vein. Yeah. Like big neck veins, they'll last a while, but eventually even they go too, but smaller ones. Yeah. You get like Yeah.

Zach: I didn't know that. I was picturing like people going back to the same vein and then eventually it would collapse. But I didn't know it was as soon as like one time or two times and it's over. Yeah,

Budd: Those were like the heroin days. Yeah. It's not really like that anymore. Well, at least not with tranq

Zach: Cuz of like the shit that's cut in it and Yeah. The type of chemical.

Budd: So, from what I've heard is they use a filler which is like a kind of citric acid base. So it's acidic. So once you do that, it kind of eats away at that area and it shuts that vein down or it causes scar tissue and because of it also tranq causes your circulation to get messed up, right? It messes with your circulation and because it's acidic and it lowers your circulation, you get these wounds, terrible tranq wounds all over your body. On the backs of my calves. I had wounds that were this big around for like three years. Yeah, they were still there when I got the amputation. They were just starting to heal a little bit when I got the amputation done because the tranq is so caustic that your body can't heal from it.

Zach: Yeah. It's like a necrotic thing, right? You said like your skin and tissues literally being killed by the tranq.

Budd: Yeah. It's it's more like a chemical burn. Okay. And then but then it becomes necrotic once it gets infected and it starts to get eaten away.

Zach: Something crazy about the injection part was the hot veins. I didn't know that was a thing. Like my, you know, dumb ignorant brain, I'm just assuming like anything you see on your body is injectable. And like the difference between an artery and a vein and you can't hit an artery because it will just fuck up whatever limb or god forbid doing it in your neck. But the hot veins thing was nuts.

Budd: Yeah, hot veins. I didn't know about it either. Until I actually I hit my girlfriend hot once and she went down in a seizure and I was like, "What the hell is going on here?" Like I know I hit the vein, but it was an artery. Yeah. So arterial injection sends all those drugs directly to your brain like past the blood brain barrier. So, it's like essentially an immediate overdose in your [clears throat] brain as well as tiny particulate matter that doesn't get filtered out or broken down. It just goes directly into your system. Yeah. So, if that happens in a limb, what happens is it kind of clogs up these tiny little capillaries that feed blood to your limbs. So, I've seen people lose fingers. I've seen I mean people have lost entire arms to tranq overall, but yeah.

Zach: You seemed like at that time that you described even though you were in such depths of addiction and just like fucked up situations on a daily basis, you never truly lost your total sense of moral character. Like there was something I don't know what you want to call it if it's like spiritual but you never seem to like go to the dark side completely like and you describe people who did do that and just like let the addiction take over. Did you ever have a moment where you thought that you could become, you know, a mon more monstrous person or just like say fuck it, like I'm not gonna give a fuck about anyone or anything anymore besides getting high?

Budd: I've I've gotten to that point before and like, you know, I tried to be as good of a guy as I could be in those situations, but I've done monstrous things. You know what I mean? Violent robbery like you know robbery like and it's not something that I'm proud of but it is something that in the situation I was in I had to do to survive but even doing those acts I there was still a part of me that says I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the one who does these things or you know makes sticking people up as part of the person that I am. Yeah.

Zach: Was there ever a point that you thought you were going to die? Like not just from the gradual decline of addiction, but like in this moment I might get killed or might die for whatever reason.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. So [sighs] the one time Britney and I were kidnapped and locked into a trap house and beaten. So there was this girl who came to me to get hit and I hit her the one day and she went around the corner, but while she was on the block with me, she had I noticed she had guns in her purse and I was like, "You got to like get that shit out of here cuz you know you like you don't know what's what's going to happen, right? We're out here." And I hit her. She went around the block, passed out, and got robbed for two guns, like two bundles of dope, a couple hundred dollar, and a bottle of Xanax. So that I found her and woke her up and was like, "Yo, like what are you doing? Where's your stuff?" And she's like, "Oh my god." She starts freaking out and tries to find it. Never does. Yeah. So later that day, her boyfriend, who I'd met once or twice, comes through and he's like, he's like, "Hey, I need you to come down to the house. Girl needs to get hit. She'll pay you good." Like, "Okay, sure, whatever." I didn't think anything of it. I was maybe naive to it, to the whole situation. So, I go to the house and they lure me in, sit me down. He calls her on video call, sets up the phone on the step, and I'm watching him and I'm like, "That's weird. Like, what's he doing?" Yeah. And he's like, "Can you see?" She was like, "Yeah, I can see." And the three people started beating the hell out of me. And he's like, "You think you're going to fucking rob me and get away with it?" You know what I mean? Going off.

Zach: He thought you stole the guns and the Xanax.

Budd: He thought I stole everything from them. Yeah. Yeah. When I didn't. And I'm like, "Dude, why would I why would I still be there if I had stolen from you?" And I'm like, "You literally saw me making money when you came to get me." It's like, "I don't have my I would if I did that, I'd be gone at least for a while." Yeah. So, they accused me of that. I denied it. [sighs] eventually they're like, "Well, maybe his girl has it. Go get his girl." So, they got Brit to come to the house. They told her that there was going to be a free sample at the house and that is something that they do in Philly so it's not like that far-fetched out of the ordinary. Yeah. Yeah. So they told her there's a sample at the house. She came in and you know they the they had a girl there. She attacked her threw her on the ground, started choking her and Brit's like what the fuck? You know. So, we're talking to them and eventually our stories lined up, Brits and mine.

Zach: Mhm.

Budd: And then he took her into the back room and was talking to her in like the side room and I could like kind of hear it but not really. And they came out and he was like, "Okay, here's what's going to happen." He's like, "I'm going to let you go and you're going to try to find out who took this." Yeah. And I'm gonna be watching you. So if you try to run, whatever, he's like, I'm gonna get you. He's like, but for whatever reason, I believe you. He's like, I believe your girl

Zach: Cuz your story is lined up. Yeah.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. So he let us go and then I guess eventually they found the guys. But what's interesting with that and you know, I called it the gypsy curse. I was friends down there with a gypsy. She was an actual like Romani Romani Gypsy. And [snorts] she was like, "Fuck that. You guys are my friends. I'm going to curse him." She goes, "Yeah." And you're like, "I'll take it." Yeah. Like, "Okay, sure." Like, "Go ahead." And then within I think it was two months, that guy had gotten locked up for like 10 or 15 years on different charges. The one guy who was in the house who helped him beat me up had gotten beaten bloody and ended up in like an intensive care unit for like a long time. Like he had like major damage. And the girl that attacked Britt smoked crack and overdosed off of fentanyl that was in the pipe. She only smoked crack. So the fentanyl in the pipe caused her to overdose. She died in that house.

Zach: So don't fuck with people who have gypsy friends. Moral of the story, pretty much. Moral of the story, did they ever find the original guys who stole the like who actually stole the guns in the Xanax or was just a mystery?

Budd: I think so. I figured out who did it eventually because I knew a guy who had Xanax. He paid me in Xanax earlier that day before they locked us in the house and then they ended up finding it on me. So I told them I was like, "Yeah, like it was probably these guys." Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if they ever found out anything about them. Now I went down to Philly to do some outreach in November and I saw my friend so he was still alive. You know the he you know you do what you got to do to survive and walking up on a girl who's passed out with a whole score in her purse wouldn't be unheard of for someone to take it. It was just the wrong people to fuck with.

Zach: Do you So when you're going back to Kensington now sober doing outreach, do you feel at risk at all for relapse? Do you feel pulled back into that world when you're walking around in it now as a sober guy?

Budd: I won't say not at all because there's always going to be that part of me that was there for so long in that world and it and it has a sort of a lure to it. But when I went there, I went there with a purpose to help other people who are still stuck there, not to get high myself. So, I wouldn't say that it couldn't happen. Of course, you know, I could make a bad decision and end up picking up. But when I went there that time, I knew why I was there and I was with people who supported me in sobriety, you know, to help me.

Zach: When you were in Kensington getting high still, were was this when they had the live cameras, like the Kensington cameras? Yeah, I think they still do. So like now that they because I looked it up this week to like just see if they were still rolling. They saw five cameras on YouTube on the block in Kensington. I just didn't know how far back it went. Yeah. Now being sober and looking back on it. What are your thoughts on having those cameras rolling 247 in an area like Kensington with, you know, it's a lot of despair, a lot of poverty, vulnerable population.

Budd: I think it's gross. I think it's gross. I think it's exploiting people's trauma for views and likes. And I think and I can't say that everyone who watches those has bad intentions. I don't think that's the case. But I don't like the idea of it. I don't think that it's helping anyone. Maybe the parents in some cases. And you know, I'll say that.

Zach: Did your parents ever see you on the camera?

Budd: All the time. My mom has a whole video playlist in her phone on YouTube saved of all the times she watched people who would drive around or go do interviews every time she saw me. And you know what I was going to say is I actually got a different perspective on that when I got home from my parents because they said that's how we knew you were alive. You know, that was yeah, one one way that they knew I was okay was to see these people who are going and filming and sometimes they would see me. So, yeah, my mom has like a hundred 100 videos saved every time I showed up. So, I was like, "Wow, that's a different perspective to, you know, maybe show show that your loved ones are okay." yeah. You know, but personally, I don't like the idea of exploiting people against their will. Yeah. Right. Because these people aren't consenting. You know, we're talking about my past and my history here. You know, you contacted me and said, "Hey, ma'am, can we talk about this?" Sure, that's consent. You know, it's agreed upon. Whereas in Kensington, often that's not the case.

Zach: Yeah. There were a lot of people who would like secretly film or like walk up and wouldn't say anything or people that just drove by and filmed like live streaming or influencers, shit like that.

Budd: All the time. All the time. Yeah.

Zach: Do you know why they put up the cameras initially? Like was that a city thing or like

Budd: I think it has to be a city thing. Yeah, I think it has to be. But I don't know who's the mods on that. Like who moderates the cameras or what? Because they steer them, you know? They can go on and zoom in and look around and stuff. So somebody's in control of it. I just don't know who.

Zach: Are there any parts of Kensington that you miss?

Budd: I think the total freedom of responsibility. You can do whatever you want whenever you want. There's nobody telling you what to do ever. You don't have to show up for anyone. There's a certain allure to that kind of freedom that's attractive to not have to ever do anything you don't want to do. Except the drugs which you always have to do and most of the time you get to a point where you don't want to do them anymore and you just can't stop. Yeah.

Zach: But that like I can imagine that freedom of having the one-track mind of this is my short-term goal and nothing else matters. Like as long as I fucking get this at some point during the day, I'm good. I have no other responsibility. Yeah. To myself or other people. Right.

Budd: Right. That's I think always going to have its certain kind of attract attractiveness to it. I mean that's that's what vacation is, right? Yeah. It's just like vacation but for a really long time. Yeah. Twisted vacation. Not a lot of fun. You know

Zach: What? So when did you realize that your feet were messed up?

Budd: Yeah. So that was the end of 2024. So, my kidneys had slowly been getting damaged this whole time to the point now where they were starting to lose function. So, my face was swelling up, my legs were swelling up. That I think reduced circulation along with the tranq damage. And it was winter of 2024 in December when I checked into the hospital because I was I was sick. I wasn't feeling good. And I knew something I knew I had to do something. So, I went in and while I was in the hospital, my face swelled up and I got a they had to put a tracheostomy in. So, that's what this scar is here. Yeah. And [clears throat and cough] cuz my face had swollen so much, my throat was starting to swell shut as well. So, they did that. I woke up and I AMA from the hospital

Zach: Or against or against medical

Budd: Advice. Against medical advice, AMA. So, I did that. I went back out to the streets. The doctors told me I'm going to die. I told them I don't care. And I went out. And I think it was just a everything alto together. The tranq, the swelling, the deterioration of my body, my organs beginning to fail. I had hep C, cirrhosis. So that was, you know, another factor. My body was weak. Yeah. So, when I was faced with that cold night, I think what happened is my feet got uncovered while I was asleep and I just couldn't compensate. My body wasn't strong enough and I got severe frostbite. So, I went to a shelter that night. The next night we stayed in the shelter and when I got up in the morning, my feet were still cold. So they hadn't like warmed up overnight and they were swollen. I could hardly fit my shoes on and I was wearing like a size 14 shoe at the time because of the swelling. So I could barely get them on and I went back out to the street after the shelter. I was there for like another day and my tra had started to get affected. So this was like Oh,

Zach: You had the tra on you when you left the hospital and it was just sticking out of your neck on the street.

Budd: I smoked the crack out of it. That's fucking gnarly. It's crazy. But you know what? And maybe I'm fucked up like this, but I was like, how many times am I going to be a be able to say I did? You the

Zach: Most deranged yolo I've ever heard.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I'm fucked up, I guess.

Zach: No, no. I guess it is a pipe in your neck, so you're like, "Why why put it in my mouth when I have one sticking right into my esophagus?" Yeah.

Budd: So, I tried it. Yeah. How'd it go? It worked. It worked. I had to have somebody light it for me because I couldn't see. But

Zach: So, you needed a trach partner to light it up. Yeah. T [snorts] But it wasn't It wasn't a long-lived method. No. No. I just tried that one time. Yeah.

Budd: Yeah. Just tried it once to see if I could. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so anyway, so I have this trach in. It's like two weeks since I left the, well, probably about 10 days since I left the hospital with the trach in. It's now infected. There's yellow phlegm coming out of it and it and I know it's going to get bad soon. I know that my feet are messed up because I can't walk and they hurt. So, I flag down the cops and I tell them I need to go to the hospital. And the one copy was like, "Well, didn't didn't we just ask you if you wanted to help yesterday? You said no. You like gave me a hard time about it." I'm like, "Well, dude, like I'm asking you now. Like, what you know?" And his partner shined a flashlight on my throat and he was like, "I'm sending him." He's like, "This is bad." So, he sent he called the ambulance. They came and got me. I went in and I said, "My they asked me what's up at the hospital." I said, "My trach's infected and I think there's something wrong with my feet." And they took off my shoes and socks at the hospital and my feet were covered in gigantic frostbite blisters, fluid-filled, you know, and they were just leaking fluid and the skin was all loose and it was really just a mess and it hurt really bad and they were like frozen. That was probably the most painful thing was them like thawing out. Yeah. Yeah. Getting the feeling getting feeling back was excruciating. I was begging them for pain meds, you know, like I'm like, "You're not giving me enough." Because I had a serious habit. Yeah. So, I'm like, "You're not giving me enough. Like, I'm not I'm not trying to get meds." Like, and I'm like crying. That's how much pain I was in. And they're like, "Okay, okay." And they finally upped it. Because Yeah. I mean, the doses that you end up on are are insane. Like the times I detoxed in the hospital down there, they had me on Dilaudid six milligrams of Dilaudid like every four hours, 60 milligrams of Oxy instant release every 6 hours and 160 mg of Oxy extended release every 8 hours. So something around 700 milligrams or more a day of oxy and opiates into my system and that was to keep me at ba baseline comfort.

Zach: Your tolerance was so high.

Budd: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's I mean that's how strong the drugs are down there.

Zach: So was there any chance of saving your feet or were they right away where they're like we're chopping your feet off?

Budd: So, so they came in and they told me that I essentially I have a decision to make and that it's going to be six or seven months of extreme surgeries to see if they can save them because when you get frostbite so what it does is it freezes tiny little icicles through all the cells in your feet and it goes deep sometimes. So to see how far that depth is and how much damage is actually done, they have to wait for it to die off and then heal a little bit and then more will die. It's called demarcation. So they were waiting to see and it just kept getting worse and then started to get gangrene as well from the dead tissue that was there. Like they would come in and clean it off, but even still they couldn't get it under control. So they were like, "We're going to have to go in and do like major surgery to remove this and it's going to be follow-up surgeries or you can get amputation of both your feet and get you into prosthetics and start to walk again." And I they gave me like a day or two to think about it and I said, "Yeah, you know what? Let's just do it cuz I don't I don't want to have dead feet and nerve damage and I don't want to I don't I want to be able to walk as best I can. And I know a friend who had nerve damage in his feet and he has some trouble like lifting his foot to walk.

Zach: So, and there's no guarantee if they if you keep your feet that it's going to work out

Budd: That it's going to work out or even if they'll actually be able to save them when it's all said and done anyway. So,

Zach: What was it like the days and weeks waking up with no feet? I mean, that's got to be fucking like a the most jarring experience or up there top five that someone can have is waking up with for sure a significant part of their body missing.

Budd: Yeah, it was I mean it was I didn't want to believe it at first, so there was denial, you know, like this isn't really happening. But and then right after the surgeries, I couldn't really look down, right? Like, you know, I could see it in my peripheral vision that my feet aren't there, but like to actually look at it and really like accept it took [clears throat] me a couple of days, a week maybe to be like, "Okay, so this happened to me. This is real." And yeah. Yeah. But the thing is like I don't I don't blame anyone but myself. Like you know all of these things that happened to me and all of this action and these these choices that I made I chose to make in that moment. You know it's not my parents' fault. You know it's not my friend's fault. It's not the city's fault for not doing their job. It's not the mayor's fault for running Cleanup Kensington. You know, which is her little her plan to clean up Kenzie. It doesn't work. They clean up the they clean up the streets for a couple of hours when she's going to come through and then it's right back to Yeah. They just kind of like bounce you around. Yeah, they do. Yeah. But all of all of these things that happened to me happened because of actions that I took. So in facing the recovery part of this like I had to own that and say like okay so this is my responsibility it's also my responsibility to get better. Yeah and it wasn't exactly easy but it was responsibility sometimes isn't. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: You write about having this moment after the amputation of going from I should get clean to I will get clean. Yeah. What do you think is different about this period of sobriety that you're currently in versus the ones in the past that have ended up with relapse?

Budd: You know, I don't know that anything is different, honestly. Because when I was clean in the past, my recovery was strong. I did everything that I was supposed to do to help other people and go through the steps and, you know, find a God that I understand and that I can rely on in my life. So I did that in the past and that's how I got, you know, five years clean and two years clean and a year and a half clean and, you know, now I'm I'm like 14 or 15 months clean now. So, nothing's really different. But what's happened in the past that I'm aware of now is complacency, which is where I get comfortable in my sobriety and I stop doing things that help me stay sober, which is helping other people. You know, praying, you know, reading some literature, going to meetings, that kind of stuff. It does help me. And staying busy helps too. And I am busy and I had a lot to focus on this time around as well. Like you always do coming coming off of a relapse, you have things you need to repair, but this for me was a lot of physical stuff. I had a lot of doctor's appointments and physical therapy and I had to really like buckle down and say I want to be different. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach: As we end off, I wanted to talk about things a little bit like zooming out from a systemic standpoint, and you're the perfect person to talk about homelessness and addiction as someone who's lived through the throes of both of those things that often go hand in hand. We mentioned the rehab system in America at the beginning of the conversation where it's kind of like this pass fail dynamic where if you relapse, you fail, you get kicked out. Having been through this 20 25 times, what do you think needs to change about the way that the system treats addicts in America in order to help them not just flourish in the rehab, but start to build a semblance of a life that is without drugs as a meaningful part of society?

Budd: I think a lot of addiction stems from some form of isolation either internal like feeling like you don't belong like I did as a kid or or maybe even physical you know you might not be near things where there's you know group activities or whatever the case is and I think someone coming out of addiction I think they need to the whole system I think needs a reform. I think I think they need to focus on treatment first, not criminalization. Right. So, right now as an addict, just the very act of being an addict, you are a criminal because you're chasing this drug that you can't stop doing.

Zach: Yeah. The fix is the crime.

Budd: Exactly. Exactly. So, it's like, can you really say that guy's a criminal or is he just doing what he knows how to do in survival mode? And I think that's more the case.

Zach: And you use the term get well in the book a lot. Not get high like I'm trying to get myself well

Budd: Point of function. Yeah. Yeah. Just to just to function. Often you don't really get that high that you used to. It's never the same as the first one, but even prolonged use it just you feel normal more than anything.

Zach: So you think more like we need a fundamental change to not treat relapse in America like a rules violation but like something that is a part of the process of addiction that happens to almost everyone who goes through it.

Budd: Yeah. I think I think we kind of need to attack it from all angles, you know. Is it is it mental health? Is it trauma? Is it isolation? Is it some kind of And then once you get into it, it's the guilt and the shame and the fear of discovery and you're hiding it and you're sneaky and you're letting your loved ones down. I think you need to come to a point where you can address all of these things individually with people needing because a lot of the time it's individual cases and to address these things individually and come up with a recovery and treatment plan that works both in a broad spectrum but also zooming into someone's individual life and how can they make their situation work the best for them based off of what they have. And I look at I use Portugal's ideology a lot when talking about addiction because it worked for a long time. And essentially what they did is they decriminalized across the board, which meant you it wasn't legal, but you weren't automatically treated like a criminal for having a possession amount of drugs. Yeah. And then they would put treatment first and housing first. And they gave these people the opportunity to build connections, give them something to live for, something to get out of bed for in the morning, a stable place to stay, jobs, and then if they wanted to and they were stable enough and, you know, they proved their recovery is going well, they give them small business loans to start businesses. And this worked, but it took a lot of money and they used the money they were using to criminalize people and used it for treatment. Yeah. [clears throat] But right now, our system is built on addiction. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 65% of people who are in jail right now have a substance use disorder. Another 20% on top of that didn't classify for substance use disorder, but were under the influence of a substance at the time of their arrest. So, I mean, that's [clears throat] a strong 70% of people in jail right now are addicts. Yeah, that's intertwined in the system. Yeah, that's they're not criminals. That's mental health. And don't get me wrong, addicts commit crimes. They do. And I'm not saying everyone should just get a free pass. You have to be responsible for your actions and there has to be justice, but there has to be a better way to approach the issue as a whole than what we're doing right now, which is Yeah.

Zach: I feel I feel like stigma has a lot to do with it too because in America compared to other countries my wife is from France so I've I've spent a good amount of time over there and you get a feel for the way that they treat certain problems and in America we associate addiction with low moral character and low status much more than a lot of other countries. And certainly if you think that someone is addicted to a substance because of the fiber of their moral being and not a biological mechanism or an environmental trigger that triggered that biological mechanism that their body and mind reacted to that drug the way it did. Yeah. Like, you know, why person A can try cocaine and person B does cocaine and they both react to it totally differently and it leads them down two totally different paths that has nothing to do with moral character. When you associate addiction with that and the people who control the systems associate addiction with moral character, you can see how it starts to trickle down and like the effects of it go all the way to the rehab centers to the streets where people trickle out too. For

Budd: Sure. I think a big problem with it is the permanent criminalization of a person who was an addict, right? Like for instance, I ran from the police. I recently handled that case and got put on probation. Now, for the rest of my life, I'm going to have a felony on my record that says I ran from police. And any employer that asked me that, I have to explain it if they're even willing to entertain hiring a felon at all in the first place. Right. And I think that because that follows you for so long based off of the past history. I think it really closes down a lot of opportunities, it often leaves you stuck in the same circumstances that you were in the first place that might have led you to addiction and it kind of keeps you in this rut. It makes it hard to escape from. Yeah. So maybe and I don't know but a forgiveness kind of protocol, right? Where if you know you don't commit crimes for five years or 10 years, not just does your record get sealed, but expunged so that you can look into better opportunities. You know, so it's not a permanent mark against you that says you're a bad person.

Zach: The last thing I wanted to ask you, and I wanted to make sure of this because I thought about this a lot as I was reading Kensington Beach is I being from or not from Long Island, New York, but I moved into Brooklyn. I've been there the last six years. There's a lot of homelessness in New York. A lot of addictions that make its way out into the streets. Not as severe and open air as Kensington. There are parts of New York like that, but sure. But I pass people and I genuinely wonder what like what would be something that would meaningfully help this person in the moment. And if I got in a time machine right now and I walked past Budd Rodney in Kensington in the heights of your addiction, what would be something like just walking past like quick that someone can do to like meaningfully help an addict in that situation?

Budd: Buy him a coffee. If you smoke cigarettes, give him a smoke. He'll probably take it. You know, just a small gesture goes a long way. In Philadelphia, there's a lot of outreach. So, people come down to help. Yeah. And I always remembered, you know, the people that would come down and give out clothing, you know, buy you a hot chocolate, whatever the case was, just a small gesture to remind you that you're still a human. Yeah. You know, because you don't feel like you are. And you're you're ostracized by society in that way. And in places where addiction is bad, the residents of those towns and areas, they get used to it. Yeah. So you almost become a landmark more than a person. So when you walk over on your way to work or whatever. Yeah. And you know, it's it's not fair to them to also have that kind of problem in their neighborhood. But at the end of the day, we're we're all still people, you know, and a lot of addicts want to do better. They just have [snorts] forgotten how or don't know how. Never had the chance.

Zach: For anyone listening or watching, if this conversation spoke to you in any way, please go check out Kensington Beach by Budd Rodney. I'm going to put this in the intro as well, and everything will be linked to the podcast on YouTube and Spotify for people checking in. Where's the best place, Budd, for people to buy the book and keep up with all things Budd Rodney?

Budd: Facebook.com/budrodney. And you can get the book on Amazon. It's available there in ebook, paperback, and audiobook.

Zach: Budd Rodney, thank you so much.

Budd: Thank you. Cool.

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