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Jersey!

The dawn! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I think it was a great interview. It was a long interview. I think it was about 40 minutes, right?

Yeah, we need more of those. Yeah, we need more of those for sure. But great guy all around. I wanted to start switching it up a little bit. We've been hot with the celebrity guests, I guess you can say. So I said, let's give somebody else a chance share their story that you know might not be as famous as you know Brennan said let's let's give somebody else a chance to share their story that, you know, might not be as famous as, you know, Brandon Novak, Tracy Morgan. So, uh, Matt's here with us today. Matt has a page on Instagram that I started to follow. It's called a Life for Covered and pretty much essentially what it is. And I'll let Matt do some explaining as well. It's these before and after pictures and these people submit them to Matt and they share their story and Matt posted on their Instagram. Matt's here with us right now. Matt, what's going on brother? Hey, are you doing things to happen? Yeah, for sure. So first, how did you find us? So kind of funny. I'm out in San Diego, but I'm originally from Connecticut. And so, you know, living out here since 2014, I miss a lot of stuff on the East Coast. So, I would follow Barstool. I watched some of the pizza reviews, you know, because we don't have good pizza out here. And from there, from watching Barstool stuff, I actually saw a video one day and you were flipping out over this football game, dude, and it was funny, man. And so I found your tag through that. It was Jerry the Kid, right? Yeah, yeah. And then I, from there, I saw, friend of Jerry. Okay. And I saw the triangle and I was like, oh, you know, it was new. For sure. Yeah, when you followed me, I clicked a page and, you know,

obviously we didn't know each other and I was like, wow, this is a really interesting page. And hey, I got to, you know, you offered me to share my story on there. We got to get that done, you know, sooner rather than later. But yeah, the page is excellent. So want you tell us like how you started the page,

what's it called?

I think it's a life recovered, right?

Yep, yep.

So a life recovered.

So I started it in 2020. We had hit the pandemic in March. And I saw a lot of people relapsing or dealing with domestic violence. There was suicide. I'm a veteran. So I dealt with a a couple military friends killing themselves and I was like, man, this is rough, you know? And honestly, I was pretty bored myself, you know? And I had on my personal Instagram, I was sharing videos of sobriety and some little motivational stuff. And my brother runs, he runs an Instagram page called Hans Team Heroes, it's catches stuff like that. And he was dude make your own Instagram He's like get that stuff off your personal one some people don't want to see it. I was like all right fair enough So so I started a life recovered. I created the page and you know my my mission was to set out and share stories of Whatever people are going with struggles, you know recovery mental health anything like that. And basically to let other people know that they're not alone. Because you know, you see all over social media, stigma, stigma, stigma. I just wanted to share these stories and see where it went. So it was hard to get stories at first though. Because you know, you didn't have a lot of followers. Probably people are like, oh, who the hell is this?

Yeah.

Well, so my brother told me he was like,

hey, try to build the followers at first. So at least when you start stories, you don't have three people, because no one was gonna trust me. Who is this guy asking me for my personal story? You know? So originally I had to do friends at first. stories of people that I knew that knew me, you know, and then from there, people saw it and it's just it's just gone from there, you know, and it's not a huge community, but I built it organically and I did that because I want people to connect with people, you know. Yeah. So and it's a lot of work, I mean, you know the deal, it's a lot of work to build something that you're passionate about. And I'll tell you what, like some of the stories on there are just incredible.

You know, any- know the deal it's a lot of work to build something that you're passionate about and i'll tell you what like um... some of the stories on their are are just incredible you know it even like some of the before and after pictures are just unbelievable and uh... i want also thank you for your service man that's that's great that's great so um... i want to get into you know your your story um... you know your your troubles in the past and whatnot. I know you're coming off of a relapse in 2020, right? So how did it, how did you start like as far as like your story? Where does it start at? So I was adopted from Texas. parents who are from Connecticut came to Texas to adopt me. I have two brothers and sisters who are from my parents. So I was the only one adopted. You know, and I grew up with it. I had a great childhood. I had every opportunity to succeed. I am literally the only addicts alcoholic in my family. But yeah, I mean, I had a great upbringing in Connecticut. And as I got older, they always try to pinpoint what happened in your childhood or what was that turning point where you became dependent and you know I don't really know you know

I went I went through public school elementary high school and then you know eventually I I started

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