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We are currently in the grips of the biggest

drug crisis in our country's history.

This crisis is taking lives,

it's destroying families,

it's shattering communities all across the country.

There is a growing epidemic of addiction,

and each day more than 40 people die from overdoses of these drugs.

This has been one of the great mistakes of modern medicine.

Since the year 2000,

half a million people have lost their lives

to prescription painkillers and opiates.

In 2015,

46,000 people died of prescription opioid, or opiate related drugs

due to overdose.

It's more than car crashes, more than homicides in our country.

Autopsy report for Prince revealed that he died of an opioid overdose.

Prince died from Fentanyl toxicity,

that it was self-administered, and his death was an accident.

Fentanyl is an opioid pain medication.

Doctors say it's 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin.

550,000 high schoolers last year

took a prescription painkiller without having a prescription.

25 years ago, 80 percent of people who were in treatment

were above the age of 38.

Today, 80 percent of people who are in treatment

are between the ages of 18 and 24.

It's because of prescription painkillers.

That's most of the problem.

And so, it's killing more young people and killing their dreams

and taking everything away from them,

and I don't ever want to see you guys touch it. Ever.

So I'm gonna tell you a little story really quick

about what happened to me with these darn painkillers.

My name is Todd Zalkins and I'm 48 years old.

I'm standing at the International Tower in Downtown, Long Beach.

This is my hometown, and this is where it all started for me.

Long Beach is a special place.

Long Beach is a much bigger city than people think.

I mean, we got more than half a million people here,

all sorts of different types of cultures here,

and this is a melting pot. That's what I love about this town.

It's got the port, bunch of people working the docks.

You've got Signal Hill and the offshore oil.

So it's blue collar from the beginning.

Growing up around Long Beach there was a definite edge.

We had a lot of characters in the area.

It was an amazing place.

Real beautiful, you're right on the beach.

There is just this crazy undercurrent of kids run amok.

Very, very liberal parenting,

and you know, we were like Lord of the Flies.

We chose our paths at a very young age.

Like, we were gonna be punkers,

and there wasn't anything that was gonna get in our way.

We surfed a lot.

The whole surf crowd started fracturing

in between the people who were going to Calvary Chapel.

"Oh, you gotta find God

and go to Calvary Chapel and be pure" and all this stuff.

And so the rest of sort of went the opposite direction,

started getting more into drugs,

and punk rock validated our poor behavior.

The freedom and the aggression and the anger

just sounded like everything I was feeling as a kid.

Vandalize things, and break stuff, play in bands

and not obeying any rules.

Long Beach had a great punk rock scene.

Bands like TSOL, and Secret Hate.

The Vandals, Tex & the Horseheads, one of my favorite bands.

The punk scene back then was thriving,

like it was just everybody came to Long Beach.

It was cheap. You could go out, pay five bucks, see five bands.

I mean, that's all we were doing, we'd hang out on Second Street,

find somebody to buy us some beer,

get our fucking gig on and beat it.

The scene was so small back then.

You had friends in all sorts of bands.

When I was like 13 or 14 years old,

some friends started a band called The Falling Idols,

one of the best bands that Long Beach has ever produced,

and I absolutely...

I don't know if I'd call it worship them, but I mean,

if they were playing on a Friday night,

I'd probably start partying on Tuesday looking forward to it.

By the time the gig hit I wasn't even really capable of showing up.

Falling Idols were the epitome of fast jamming punk rock music.

They played the coolest music, they surfed, they skated

and they always had really hot chicks.

It was like, "Man, I wanna be like them."

You know, for us, that was our weekend.

No matter what, it ended up at Mud's house

in his mom's garage with a bunch of egg crates pinned to the wall,

you know, Falling Idols party every single weekend.

For a lot of us it started with the Falling Idols.

I know for certain that the members of Sublime,

they all loved the Falling Idols.

Eric Wilson was the bass player for Sublime.

I lived for a number of years just about 80 yards from him in Belmont Shore.

Derek was kind of a little punk rock kid that was always cool.

We were the Lord of the Flies,

it was a whole another version of Lord of the Flies right behind us

and he was kind of the leader.

For that, everybody kind of accepted that

Eric was allowed to go anywhere he wanted to go within all of our parties.

I was, like, in junior high school.

My dad bought a place in Belmont Shores.

We were moving in and I heard these drums.

Happened to be Eric's house.

Eric rolls up on his bike, he's like, "Hey, you just moving in?

Far out. Let's go play."

We started little punk rock bands

and played with our friends from school,

and just had a blast doing it, you know?

Bud, the drummer, I was one of the first people he met.

when he went to our middle school, Rogers.

I liked him immediately.

Immediately, because the guy's crazy.

And I was crazy.

I sat right next to him in math class.

We just kicked it off famously. It was like, this guy's fucking funny.

Even in the early days, Todd's been bigger than life.

There'll be a theme throughout things, where

Todd is the center of attention.

He was sort of irresistible.

You know, he had this terrific personality.

And yet, there were just those times when I would have to question,

"What's he... Is he up to no good?"

Todd ran for junior high president.

He wanted to have beer come out of the drinking fountains and Quaalude in every class.

The students ate it up,

but it was also the type of thing that would obviously

not make the teachers or the administrators too happy.

Anything to get a reaction.

and to have his friends laugh.

He'd take a full beer and just smash it on his forehead.

And we would just be like, "What the... What's wrong with this guy?"

He was also one of these kids that also was kind of a social chameleon.

He could throw on a polo shirt and white shorts and show up at the country club

and the next thing you know, he's got his shirt tied around his head

and he's in the middle of a pit.

He would start popping up

along with Eric at these Falling Idols parties.

All their little buddies were stuck standing in the alley the rest of the night

and we'd actually give them beer.

He was the one that would talk when everyone's afraid,

or everyone's like too wasted.

Z-Man would lead the madness.

And there was no telling where it would go.

One minute, he'd be like

happy, talking, and then all of a sudden

he'd start tearing someone's ass open.

I think we all loved him so much because he didn't give a fuck.

No limitations, I'm sure.

Heaven only knows what I don't know.

How many of you would agree that using drugs

kills your dreams?

What if I told you that when I was about your age,

and you asked me that question I wouldn't have agreed?

See, I did pretty well in school.

But when I started to drink and I started to use drugs,

especially in high school,

I thought to myself, "You know, I'll get to that life stuff later on."

I wanted to fit in so badly

that I started trying this stuff

and then it got its hooks in me.

Todd got into some hard drugs pretty young.

He and another friend went into a neighbor kid's house

because he had heard his dad had some coke in there.

They break into the house and steal a whole brick of coke.

This wasn't just some small baggie.

These guys acted like they were Al Pacino

and they'd have piles of coke in the middle of a coffee table

and think it was really funny.

There's not a lot good that's gonna come of that when you're 14, 15, 16 years old.

The time period that we grew up, in the 80s, coke was glamorized.

You know, you want to be cool, sort of California, successful, having fun.

Be like these coke tweeker dudes that are driving around in Porsches.

I was living for the moment.

I liked drinking, I liked getting high.

I liked blasting Long Beach punk rock.

It was kind of like that reckless abandon.

If you want to call it the crew as a whole on Long Beach,

they rode hard.

Drug use out here was just a level that I was totally baffled by.

You slowly slide into these kind of things.

You don't really start off like, "All right, I'm into punk rock, I better do heroin."

I remember, at any early age,

getting a hold of a copy of a book called the Physicians' Desk Reference.

And that told you what each and every pill did and looked like.

So, when you went to parties, the first thing you did

is to go up to the parents medicine cabinet

that had a picture of a guy with a fuzzy face and a steering wheel

that said, "Do not operate heave machinery."

You were chucking those things down your throat like no tomorrow.

If you're playing in local bands,

every idiot thinks they're gonna be the next Beatles.

They you have compulsive personalities,

risk takers, adrenaline junkies.

Who doesn't want to be a rock star?

I mean, that's what I wanted to be as a kid.

It was sex, drugs and rock and roll, then it was drugs and rock and roll.

And then it was just drugs.

It's not glamorous on the under belly,

but you know, when you get up on stage, man, you start playing right.

And everybody else is, you know, digging it,

I mean, it all seems fun, you know.

It all seems right. It all seems...

like I should be doing this. I should be doing dope, you know.

I mean, that's what your mind goes through.

You know, you think this is fucking work.

All my roommates, growing up, were doing heroin.

All my buddies that were in bands were doing heroin.

You know, all these guys in Long Beach were just full of it.

And yet, you know, that was the one thing that I, you know,

I just didn't do.

I'm scared to death of needles, man.

I'm absolutely petrified of needles.

Had I been a hardcore IV drug user,

we wouldn't be in this car talking right now.

It was the one drug that seemed like nobody ever got away from.

And it was the one drug where I had started seeing deaths at an early age.

It broke my heart when I knew the little kids in the neighborhood were doing it.

Their innocence was just gone, they were robbed of it.

You know, the surfing stopped,

and "just get loaded" started.

Well, Bradley Nowell is, of course, my only son.

Was my only son.

He was born here in Long Beach.

When we had family parties,

somebody would play the piano

and somebody would play the gut bucket which they used for bass.

And a lot of people would play their guitars, and there was singing.

Somewhere along the line, Brad said, "I'd like to learn how to do that, too."

So at eight years old we gave him a guitar and taught him three chords.

You know, the basic C, F, G.

Anyway, that's all it took.

Of course he surpassed everybody in his musical skills.

And he just loved to play.

He was writing the music and singing it.

He wanted to have people to perform to.

And that was the most important thing in his life.

Eric and I were convinced.

I mean, we weren't gonna do anything else.

We were gonna make it or bust.

Eric said, "Hey, I want you to meet this guy, Brad.

He plays guitar real good and he's got a great voice."

I think everybody had their own design or their own ideas,

but I mean, we all just kind of like went with the flow.

We just knew it, we didn't even have to say it to one another.

It was like, "This is what we're doing."

You know, ultimately, it turned out to be what it was supposed to be.

They weren't just playing reggae or they weren't just playing punk rock.

They were throwing in some hip-hop stuff,

and kind of being really diverse.

They became "our band",

the next generation of Falling Idols.

You know, I didn't know that Sublime was going to appeal to so many people.

Pretty soon, it got to the point where the music was more important than anything.

We were just barely, barely putting enough gas in the van

to get from gig to gig.

But we're doing it!

It was awesome. At that point I knew, it was like, "This is gonna work.

We're gonna make this work."

I got into trouble with drugs and alcohol,

and had to take a little hiatus from

the band for a little bit, get my head together.

Brad couldn't understand what it was about addiction,

you know, that, like, just grabs you.

You know, "We got this good thing going here.

Why don't you wanna be screwing off doing that?"

He was upset, just couldn't grasp, you know, that

this was something that was out of my control.

I don't know why I'm doing it.

I'm stuck in a rut and I can't get out.

I was basically homeless because I couldn't keep a job.

Trying to just, you know, get my life together and it just wasn't working.

So after I cleaned up,

I come back, and it was like Brad was starting to dabble

and get into heavier stuff.

I remember asking him, I said, "You know what?

Why are you doing this?"

"Everybody expects me to be larger than life" is what he said.

"And I have to be the leader. And if I'm the leader,

then I'm the one that has to try the most hardcore drugs."

And I think I can do it. I think I can handle it and I won't get hooked.

When Sublime would do their shows,

sometimes they got awful because they're all gooned up.

I took my first painkiller when I was... It was in 1990.

I had this really bad back injury down in San Diego.

I was going to San Diego State.

Rarely showing up to class, you know.

But in the hospital, they gave me Vicodin.

And this was way before the prescription painkiller epidemic.

I was prescribed a large amount of Vicodin.

I loved the way the drug delivered a sense of warmth and comfort,

and I liked taking it.

My connect for a long time was a guy in a lab coat that said his name on it.

I think there's that level of legitimacy

that sells you on, it's a legitimate back entry.

And if a doctor's willing to give it to you, then you're not a drug addict.

Despite what lot of people think,

I was not an everyday cocaine user.

But I often would use cocaine when I drank hard,

and that might have been eight to ten times a month.

So I guess that is a lot of cocaine when I think about it.

But at the time, in the early 90s I just had the Vicodin.

And so, I was taking a shitload of Vicodin to curb these

terrifying hangovers from being up all night,

you know, snorting ten-inch lines of cocaine,

and drinking vodka or rum,

or beer and bourbon all night.

Things started to get a little bit dark, I think, in 91 or 92.

We had a party entourage that basically showed up with us, you know.

Z-Man was pretty much the leader of that as far as...

Ring leader, mascot, master of ceremonies.

We'd have called him lion tamer if he'd let us.

"We're gonna do this! Yo! Get..."

You know, like, it was like director, you know.

"Okay, what do I do, Z-Man?"

Sweaty, with a huge stogie in his mouth.

And he was running around barking orders.

"I'm the director of all things Skunk Records!"

You just kind of go, "Oh, my God, this guy is freaking nuts."

He just reveled in the chaos.

Definitely was an influence

and a very strong influence on what the band was about.

Obviously, putting a lot of gasoline on a fire.

Z-Man was like Wavy Gravy.

Now if you don't know what Wavy Gravy is,

that was a clown that babysat all of Grateful Dead's kids.

Instead of on LSD, he was fueled by...

pills and cocaine probably.

The more entertained everybody was, the happier Todd was.

Generally, the more drug induced and alcohol induced you were

that, to him, translated to the better time you were having.

The perfect instigator.

'Cause one, he did love the music, he did love the guys.

He wanted to go party and they wanted him there.

They just knew if Todd was around

everything was gonna be all right.

And I'm watching it going, "Todd's around, this is gonna end up in a disaster."

Z-Man had this little bullet, right.

He's got this little... Yeah, right.

"Bought the farm" you know. And he hands it to Brad.

Brad takes the top thing off and goes...

You know, and Z-Man's like...

Straight from Long Beach, all these three individuals

quit their jobs to be with you.

Straight out of hell, Palm Beach, Sublime!

No show was ever announced

where Z-Man didn't have a big fat Cohiba.

He knew that there was about to be something special.

So he was just making sure that everybody who was lucky enough to be there

better appreciate it and live in that moment.

So what I'm saying is Sugar Ray and 311 are not key.

Sublime is key.

Sublime will always be key. They invented key!

"What are you guys doing?" "I don't know but it's gonna be key!"

All right?

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I knew all along what their destiny was

because there's just nothing like the way they sounded.

Success was eminent for them.

It just took a little while.

'Cause they didn't really land a big record deal for a number of years.

And I think they sold almost 200,000 units out of the back of the cars

of 40 Oz. To Freedom.

An intern level guy at KROQ

had a local radio show, a ska show.

He was beating KROQ like, "Here's some stuff that's working

in the ska scene in Orange County,"

and they heard "Date Rape". That is a song KROQ

decided to go and put on the air first.

The song "Date Rape" was one that Sublime rarely played.

But the song is a parody, it's not like about, "Hey, go out and

get a chick drunk and date rape her."

It's about the consequences.

It wasn't the first song that strategically put out their first for the band,

but it just happened organically.

KROQ starts playing the song,

once, twice, five times a day.

They're playing it 30 times a week.

Then Live 105 in San Francisco picks up on it and they start playing it.

And The End in Seattle, they pick up on it, they start playing it.

And all the taste maker stations around the country are playing this song.

Ron Jeremy and raping me, my God.

It was shot at a porno studio in Chatsworth.

We had to keep shooting the scene where he had to grab my scalp.

I said, "Ron, if you grab my head like that one more time

I'm gonna punch you in the throat.

My head hurts like a mug."

I think Ron was used to doing that.

So, in 1990 I took my first Vicodin, right.

And I have a brain that's wired addictively.

So, when I took that thing, my brain...

instantly wanted more of it.

So what I did was I found a new drug called Norco,

which is even more powerful than Vicodin.

I started taking that.

It was prescribed for me to take like four a day.

At my worst, I was taking anywhere from 30 to 40 a day.

All the things that I love in my life just, they started disappearing.

Because it all switched over to that one thing, which was...

either that next drink, or that next fix.

And my life changed forever.

Here you go. This is Brad's house.

-That's Louie.

That's Belmont Shore.

Straight killing it.

-Z-Man, say beaks are key. -Say pack beak.

Beaks are key.

Beaks make you great.

In room number one we have the lucky winner.

That was the first validation. The first part that was like, "Okay,

this is happening."

At this point, we've got to go out

and start capitalizing on this, and for the first time,

we are gonna book a nation wide tour, circle the country.

Pretty quickly, the Sublime circus is out there.

Whenever they provided the alcohol, it was a crazy night.

Bud was a fireplug, and when he would get intoxicated

it was me who had to settle him down and keep him from going to jail.

But a couple of times he got away, and they did go to jail.

KROQ invited Sublime on to the Weenie Roast.

They would give out the backstage passes for the bands in advance.

And the band got there and went to Kinkos,

made like 30 extra bootleg laminates

and gave them to all their friends.

And I just remember the guys going

and pulling the couches out of their trailer,

and pulling the tubs of beer and just creating...

a portable Long Beach.

Hey, Ron, get in here, would you?

No! No! Get him outta here! Call the cops!

This is the break in a loop. Ron Jeremy, please show yourself.

That's called a...

That's a college grade skill.

After the Weenie Roast,

the band went on the first ever Warped Tour.

That was going to be that time period where the band started playing in front of,

instead of hundreds of people, venues that had thousands of people.

The dog was not there at the first part of the tour

and Brad was so lonely without the dog

that finally, he made arrangements,

and Z-Man and Miguel flew out to the tour

and they met us in Asbury Park.

Louie hated skateboards.

When he heard the sound of an ollie

he was ready to bite whatever was closest to him.

Bringing him to a skateboard festival was kind of not the best place.

It was stealing people's meal tickets,

doing drugs in the bus that they were sharing with Orange 9mm.

The dog had bit several people by then,

it was just... We were becoming a liability.

Waiting for day four after tonight.

And Josh, if Eric and I aren't admitted at Betty Ford,

we're going to go to New Beginnings.

If that doesn't work, we're going to Charter Hospital

because at Charter Hospital if you don't get help with this,

you can help someone, please.

So, I figured I'll get help, I don't know, at my dealer's house after that.

And go to a bar and drink about 67 skinners,

and chew my lips for about three weeks,

fucking lose about 47 pounds.

The drugs and the drinking was what really controlled my life.

I gotta tell you something.

After about five years of this I hated myself.

Here's the difference between someone who is an alcoholic and a drug addict like me...

and someone who just has a bad day of drinking,

is that I can't choose when I get to stop.

So when I hurt my knee playing some basketball,

they said, "You know what? You got a bowed leg, and so,

your surgery's gonna be more successful if we straighten out your leg first."

They said that this is an elective surgery.

It's gonna be really hard to recover from,

most people wouldn't dream of doing it.

I said, "Absolutely. How long will I be on painkillers?"

They said, "For at least a year, maybe a year and a half."

So, for me to get an extra year and a half of painkillers,

that's the only reason I did the surgery.

Let me tell you what's scary about this, you guys.

Is that during the surgery they severed an artery.

You see that scar on the back of my leg?

The surgeon made a mistake and I almost bled to death on the table.

And when I came out of it all,

the doctor said you're gonna have this ten, 12 inch scar on your leg.

I just said, "No problem."

They'd go to a venue that might have three, or four or five different bands.

And they were the last band to play.

So that meant that they had to get there, say at 6 o'clock

in the evening and do a sound check,

and then they may not go on till 11 o'clock.

What do you do from 6:00 to 11:00?

Well, you sit in this room.

What happens in that room, all these people who want to party with you come in

and bring everything you need to party with.

As long as he was in that scene I didn't have any hope for him surviving.

And I couldn't talk him out of it.

And he said, "If those people didn't pay to come watch me sing

I'd pay them to come watch me sing."

That's when we thought that all hope was lost.

It's hard for people to save you if you don't want to save yourself.

It really got bad when he started sticking needles in his arm.

It's just like, one day I grabbed a hold of him

and he could not get out.

We tried to get him to clean up.

You know, he would, and then he would

you know, fall back into his addiction.

It was weird. It just became this weird fascination

being open with it, like right in front of you.

"Look at me, I'm cool" you know, "No, you're not, dude. You're not cool."

It was tough.

When I heard some tracks of the self-titled album, I just said, "It's over."

It is over. The world is gonna know.

It was so fresh and so fucking good.

Oh, my God. This is fucking incredible.

This is like The Police on fucking acid or something.

You know, this is like next level.

I saw a different Brad that I'd never seen before.

Even though he was still wild he had like this gleam about him.

A new start I thought. He was going to change

because Jacob was in the world now, you know.

He was getting happy.

That was one of his biggest complaints is that he could not find happiness.

You know, when he was loaded he wasn't depressed.

So he thought. He was high, he was depressed

'cause he was doing a depressant, he was doing a painkiller, a downer.

He was finally ready to clean up on his own.

I think it was because of Jake that he really wanted to clean up.

It was his son, and he was in love with that boy, you know.

That night, at the show in Petaluma,

we were just having a blast, you know.

We had a lot of friends that were up there at the show.

You know, Z-Man was there.

A bunch of our friends from Long Beach were there.

After the show, you know,

we're all just hanging out at this point.

The guys are loading all the equipment out.

As loaded as I was, I was in my rental car.

I hear the engine start

and I look over and I see Todd put it into gear

and instead of going backwards,

he goes forward and smashes into the side of the building.

I said, "I'm driving us back."

In the back seat, it was myself and Brad,

and there was Eric and Bud. We were all squeezed in the back.

There was that Everclear song that was the big hit at the time

and had the radio playing it.

That song came on the radio.

Brad said something to the extent of,

"This is mine and Troy's favorite song.

God, I miss my wife."

And I, uh... I remember how

Brad was saying that he just missed his kid and he missed his wife.

And that was the last I talked to him.

You know, it got late that night.

I was kinda beat after playing the drums

for three hours.

I was ready to sack out.

He's like, "Man, I just wanna party one more time. Come on, Bud!

Let's go party one more time, man. Come on!

Let's go have a good time!

Let's fucking have a good time, man!

I just want to party one more time. Come on!"

You know, and I fought it. I fought it.

As hard as I could.

He wanted me to go for a walk with him, and I didn't.

I was tired. It was like two, three, four o'clock in the morning.

I don't know what time it was.

Man, I really wanted to get high.

Well, fuck, his bag's right there.

Maybe, you know, just do a little piece.

I opened up his bag, found his dope,

took a little piece off.

I got loaded that night, and I hadn't been loaded in like a year.

Every time I relapsed with heroin,

maybe four times, but all four of those times was with Brad.

And you know, I had...

issues with that, you know, 'cause I feel like I let my friend down.

I wasn't there for him, you know, to stand up,

and lead by example, you know.

It was such a fruitful time for them, you know.

They're just dropping in on the biggest wave they've probably ever rode.

They're playing our music on the radio, we signed this deal.

We're on this magic carpet, we're taking off.

We've made it, you know. We've arrived, here we are.

Boom! Ta-da!

I woke up that next morning, and, uh,

I see Lou dog on the bed,

the bed was still made. You know, the pillows were up there.

And brad was laying naked on the bed with his feet hanging off the end.

Just like this on his back.

And I looked at him, and he was...

He was just stiff and pale.

And then there was all this bile,

dried up bile crusted around his mouth. He was all blue.

He was cold.

Cold. I freaked out.

I tried to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation.

You know, I was like, "Dude, breathe, breathe!"

Grabbed the phone, the phone wasn't turned on.

Threw it out the window, ran downstairs,

yelling and screaming, "Call 911!

I need an ambulance!" Crying.

Falling down the street, fucking...

I think it was either Miguel or my brother, I can't even remember.

I was in shock. Completely, that's where, you know,

after seeing him with that shit on his face,

cold and blue and dead,

I don't... Everything's fuzzy and hazy after that point.

I remember crying and running down the street, just flailing.

Couldn't believe it.

I look at it, first, like we lost someone that we love.

We lost a friend.

Um, a brother.

He was newly married, he was a husband.

And most importantly, he was a father.

I think we were all just trying to not believe,

you know, what it was,

and we were all drinking heavily.

And it was fucked.

It was a very sad day.

It was like the bluest moment in my life ever.

We just lost our best friend. You know.

It was over.

Nothing I could do about it. Just that fast. It was...

Just gone. Wake up, and he's gone.

It's definitely affected my life.

And taken a lot of joy out of it.

And I think, you know, how many people have to go down the street

getting emotional, you know. It's...

And you always think, "Well, it's been 20 years now, and it'lll...

It'll fade."

And people say, "Oh, you got to have closure" and all those kind of things.

There's no such thing as closure.

No such thing.

And it's something that's gonna be with me till the day I die, you know.

That morning, at about 4:00 AM, from what I understand,

Brad tried calling to speak to me.

Blaine said he tried to wake me up, and I was, uh...

I couldn't wake up.

"Z-Man. Brad's on the phone.

"Z-Man, Brad, he wants to talk to you."

And I might've gone a little bit of this

but for the most part, he, you know,

he was semi unresponsive. He wasn't moving.

What was Brad gonna say to Z-Man?

Who knows, you know.

Maybe things would have been different, maybe they wouldn't.

Maybe he just wanted to see me, maybe just wanted to be with someone.

You start to run that stuff through your head.

I don't blame myself for his passing.

But I sure beat the shit out of myself.

I beat myself up for a long time over it.

In fact, um...

You know, for a lot of years,

you know...

Yeah, for a lot of years, you know, that I think about it.

Todd was...

inconsolable.

He was...

Todd was buried in sorrow over that.

It's still, to this day, numbing

to think about that day,

and that moment, and all the things,

the tiny things we could have done differently that might've changed things, but...

You can't change history, you can't change reality.

And it's 20 years now and it still hurts just as much.

I think people who are looking to do drugs need to consider

is the effect they have not only on themselves,

but to everybody who loves them.

- Yeah. - So what do you got there?

Some loose trash, cigarette butts,

the occasional roach or two.

Okay. And you're probably wondering where Lou Dog is.

Lou Dog is right where your foot was.

Him and I came here on a surreptitious evening.

-Did you? -And dug a little hole here with a spade.

And put Lou's ashes in there.

- Really? -How about that, huh?

Perfect spot for it.

I remember everything. That was your mother's idea.

I guess that was something between the two of them.

They'd always say whatever and the other would say "everything".

-That's sweet. -Yeah.

Well, it's an interesting thing.

You know, my mom always tried to tell me the whole

"Your dad is in your heart". That made sense to me as a little kid.

Because he was gone by the time I was one, so,

finding out about him was like doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Everybody in Long Beach or elsewhere has a piece of this puzzle.

And it really paints an interesting picture that

above all things, he seemed like a really intelligent, thoughtful, unique person.

I think traveling was tough. Often really tough for him.

-I can see that. -And he missed, uh...

He missed you and he missed his wife, and, uh...

Well, that day, Janie and I were in her church over on the west side of Long Beach.

And they were having a wedding.

So we're sitting in the pew and I picked up the hymnal.

And I started reading "Amazing Grace".

You know, to memorize it.

Came in handy, you know.

-Yeah. -You never know.

I remember you

sang that quite well at his service.

Yeah, I couldn't believe I had it memorized.

- Yeah. - All ready to go.

People in the world grow up without dads all the time,

but you know, at the same time I was fortunate enough to have my dad's presence be

a waking part in every aspect of my life.

Well, it sure is nice to come and visit.

-Yeah. -Yeah, it is.

-We did it, guys. -We're doing okay, buddy.

Love you, too, man. Love you, too.

Oh, well.

We're doing okay, buddy. We're doing all right.

I'll always cherish the moments that

my brothers shared with me, you know.

Because...

those moments I hold dearly,

and like I say, spiritual things happen, you know.

When Brad passed away,

I wasn't really capable of processing grief,

or loss or that kind of hurt, and so,

I was about six years into my pill addiction at that time. And, um,

I spiraled, like, significantly further down.

We tried to heal. You know, everybody tried to heal in their own way.

Lot of people unraveled, for sure.

Lot of people unraveled.

When Brad died, I thought that would've been a wake up call.

It was the exact opposite. It was game on.

We're just gonna stuff ourselves with whatever fucking substances we can

to numb the pain and act like we're still having fun.

It's amazing that any of them are still alive, really.

The winner of Modern Rock Artist of the Year...

Sublime.

I think it was more like a spiritual mission

for Eric and Bud and the rest of the crew

to see if we could do this.

We're jamming for Brad, you know, we're jamming out of therapy.

Bud needs it, everybody needs it, you know?

Lot of nights, man. After you play at freaking places,

5,000 people, 7,000 people, 3,000 whatever.

It's the craziest party, everyone's having a good time.

They're hearing the songs they want to hear.

Go back to the tour bus and drink and cry.

Why aren't you here doing this, man? This is your shit.

I was smoking pot and drinking a lot.

And there was a lot of situations I wish that

I hadn't caused because of my drinking,

but I was out of control.

I was robbed, you know. I was robbed of my friend,

I was robbed of my dreams,

I was robbed, you know.

I felt justified in all this.

You know, I have a right to be loaded.

I got a heavy burden I got to fucking hide back here, you don't see that.

How fucking dare you fucking look at that.

But you know what, it...

Where'd it get me? Where'd it get me?

Lost friends over it,

you know, I was a complete asshole to, I don't know, how many girlfriends.

You know, how many of my good friends.

The band broke up. I didn't want to be around other people

that were more fucked up than me

who were able to deal with my fucked-upness.

"Pussy, you can't fucking party? You can't keep up with the big boy?

Fuck you." You know? That was my attitude.

A fucking piss poor attitude that is.

I'm fucking raining all over your parade

and I'm telling you, "Fuck you 'cause you can't fucking deal with it."

That's selfish, man.

That's what I was, a selfish fucking bastard.

Corn Dog is more than just a band.

It's an entity, you know.

It's just this Long Beach thing, it's very fluid.

You know, everybody in Long Beach that plays an instrument

at one point or another has probably played in Corn Dog, at least one show.

And the great thing about Corn Dog is yeah, they have a few original songs,

but most of it is cover songs that Long Beach punk bands

have been covering since the 80s.

Or old Falling Idols songs.

I used to think that the only way I could entertain or have fun on stage

was if I was, you know, drinking or using drugs.

And believe it or not, I actually had a successful business.

Wearing a suit during the week,

and baggy shorts on the weekends.

I had this double life.

Well, how does a guy who's addicted to drugs have a successful business?

That's because for a while

I functioned pretty well on the drugs and alcohol.

But then there came a time when it all shifted.

I was pretty lost, and I was looking still

to grow more with my erratic behavior.

Wanting to have a normal life over here

but really, really having this insatiable desire

to be completely crazy when I was away from home.

I moved to San Clemente in 1996.

Todd's like, "Gosh, I like that scene."

He had other friends that liked San Clemente, so he came down.

He was a very, very competent insurance salesman

and ended up having his own firm.

And Todd set up his office directly across the street from my restaurant.

And I started giving him my insurance business,

and Todd is smart. When he's focused and on it

he would be as sharp and precise of a guy as you could ever believe.

This was a guy who would go to doctor's offices with bouquets of flowers.

"Sally, how you doing today? Nice to see you. How's your husband Jim?

Fantastic. Look, I need to get a refill on this."

And then he'd go up the street. "Evelyn, how you doing?"

When the weekend was coming and I was running out of pills,

and the prescription couldn't be filled with, say for, seven to ten days later,

and they're pretty strict about it,

but I was able to, you know, be like, "Oh, Tracy, come on.

I'm going out of town for a couple of weeks.

They can't fill this in Europe."

I wasn't going to Europe.

And every time that the nurses or the assistant staff

would be like, "Okay, Todd, we'll do this for you this time,

but be careful, you know, this stuff's really addictive."

I don't care if he's impaired or not.

Todd makes you want to be with him.

Todd makes you want to go do things you wouldn't otherwise do.

And frankly, that's the ideal for a salesperson.

Todd was very successful when I met him.

When I would see him in a suit and a tie

it just was so out of character for him.

It wasn't him. He liked to bump around in board shorts,

and a t-shirt and flip flops like most of us do.

I was never a hard alcohol drinker when I was younger,

but taking clients out for dinner and bullshit like that.

You know, I discovered vodka, and bourbon and stuff like that.

And this is how I drink.

When you bring me that vodka tonic triple

I'm gonna need another one in about three to five minutes.

You know, Todd and I seemingly were

able to, along with Mud and a few others,

kind of be that semi-functioning, you know, drug addict, alcoholic.

And at the time, all of us were making it look okay.

We were making it look like it worked.

I think it was usually something professionally would set Todd off,

and that's why he'd end up at the bar at 9:00 in the morning.

Few shots of Jack and some Redbull,

and whatever the freaking else we could get into him.

And then, next thing you know, he's loudly announcing he's going to Long Beach.

And he'd come back,

maybe that night, or maybe three days later.

But always with a massive amount of coke.

And Todd seemed to have his insurance agency open at midnight on a Tuesday.

And my staff would go over and pay a visit to Todd and come back,

and they wouldn't be quite in the same mood.

I don't know what it was that was going on, and...

You know, I knew damn well.

But they were alternately horrified and in love with him.

And they were looking to me like, "This is your buddy and our insurance guy."

And yet, he's freaking giving out coke like it's freaking candy.

Here, the biggest liability that I had in my bar

was my insurance agent.

It was like partying with James Bond, this guy.

You have no clue that you're riding around in his car

and there's a half pound of blow in it.

"Hey, do me a favor. Hand me a can of 7 Up."

"Give me your hand."

We're like, "Hey, Todd, you got any coke?" And he's like, "What?

What do you guys think I'm always on coke?

I wake up in the morning, I put it on my cereal or something?"

He was like having this big rant.

He was like, "Oh, yeah, I got some."

And he goes into a jar of peanut butter, and opens it up.

And he pulls out an eight ball of coke

out of the damn peanut butter.

I'm like, "Dude, did you just smuggle coke into Mexico?"

I was walking across my floor and it seemed hollow.

I pulled up, like, the floorboard,

and there was a bunch of coke there.

Like, the whole thing was always the premise, like,

"I don't really do much. I don't know why you guys think I do so much."

Yeah I just found this eight ball in my golf bag.

Damned if we wouldn't be out on the golf course

and Todd would pull out a freaking sack of coke on a golf course.

Who does coke and golfs?

Todd did that.

Sometimes, it was like, "Man, I can't do anymore."

I'm just... I'm done.

'Cause he wasn't stopping.

If Todd was going, you're on, you better hop on the train.

And you all gotta go.

Otherwise, you're not really welcome.

Todd would get in fights... Todd would get in fights with friends.

I watched him hit friends of ours.

He's squared up on me several times.

He was driving around in a convertible Porsche

with his Wu-Tang cars and shit.

You know, out of his mind, and I'm just going like,

"Well, that's just Z-Man, you know."

In the back of my mind, I was just going, "Oh, no" you know, like,

"This could go bad" you know.

The more he ingested the happier he seemed.

And he just seemed to have it together.

So, I'm like, "I don't think he'll ever OD,

and I don't think he'll ever quit."

At that time I really was enjoying it

while the night was going.

But the following days were always terrifying for me.

I fucking hated,

the way that I felt after these days. Just so...

And I would just have to do it again.

I'd recover a couple of days and bam,

it's just, "Gotta go again."

But it got fucking scary laying in bed with my heart starting to skip beats.

And I'm like, "I'll never do it again.

I'll never do it again."

Just gonna give my heart a rest and not do that stuff again.

Then a week later, I'd buy an ounce of cocaine and put it in my safe.

He was starting to be different, really different.

Erratic behavior, driving out here in brand new cars

and smoking cigars...

A wild man.

I just thought, "God, he's just getting carried away with

all of his success."

Some of it, I must say, I almost felt like I had a reputation to live up to.

But the fact is, you know,

left alone after a big night, after entertaining people,

I wasn't happy with who I was, at all.

His energy wasn't in a place where he had things to look forward to.

And when they were, they were a quick fix.

He would buy something for me, or he'd buy something for a stranger.

He would do something to uplift his own spirits

to distract from, really, what he wasn't doing.

And that was finding his own health and happiness.

He offered to buy me a home in Las Vegas.

"I want to buy you this house, Mom.

And you don't have to worry any more at all.

This is something I can do."

And he went to a lot of trouble to make it all happen.

And I was so grateful

because I had nothing.

And, uh...

But I had him.

You know, so I thought...

I would still... I'd go over and I'd meet him in his office

and I'd party with him a little bit,

and then he kinda started handing...

pills to me every now and then,

and I realized that they were giant jars of pills,

and he'd kind of reach through his office drawers in his desk,

and there were different bottles of shit all over the place.

I started to realize, "Wow, Todd has kind of shifted.

There's something, something more going on here."

We didn't really realize yet what all this Oxy

bullshit was gonna become,

and how addicting it really is.

OxyCotin is something that I didn't take, I think, until 1998.

And really, OxyCotin is meant for the most terrible type of injuries

or people going through cancer treatment.

Or people even in hospice.

I told myself I would never touch that drug.

I saw an article in Time magazine

about this terrible epidemic in the East Coast,

where even grandmothers were selling the drugs out of the trunks of their cars

and pharmacies were being robbed,

and I'm like, "OxyCotin? I'll never take that."

In fact, I read that article in the doctor's office,

and that very same day I walked out with a prescription for OxyCotin.

Our pursuit of pleasure,

and our demand to just have pleasure and no pain,

I think that's what's causing a lot of unhappiness.

These opiates that you make, weight for weight, are stronger than pure heroin.

They work by pretending to look like your own endorphins.

At first, that works.

But the more and more you take of the opiate,

if you continue to keep taking it,

your brain senses that

and it feels like it doesn't need to work.

So, the more and more you take of the substitute,

the less and less you make of your own.

I was never an IV drug user,

but when you shoot something like heroin,

it's immediate, and the feeling is beyond intense,

and certainly, very euphoric.

And I captured that feeling time and time again when I was chewing the OxyCotin

and snorting it, and of course popping it.

Probably from 98 to 2000,

you know, Todd and I were...

We were in deep, you know, I mean, it was...

You're passing the OxyCotin around parties like Chiclets.

I had one doctor down in San Diego

That was what we call a legitimate doctor.

And then I had what we call a cash and carry doctor in Santa Ana.

I would pay him cash for the visit

and then I would pay for the prescription in cash.

So what I was prescribed monthly had a street value of close to $23,000.

I don't wanna sell you what I've got because I need it.

And the lengths that I would go to became a full time job.

Any day I didn't have anything, Todd had it.

Any day he didn't have anything, I had it.

And if worse came to worse,

you substitute that OxyCotin with 15 Vicodin and eight Soma.

And to offset that you're unfortunately doing,

you know, blow to go up and pills to go down

and never hitting... The mark's always missed.

The synthetic nature of these opiates

tend to bind themselves in our systems quite radically.

And when the user stops taking them

the detoxification period is even longer than the straight heroin user.

You literally start shaking,

your bones start hurting.

You're sure that your back is just crumbling underneath you.

And being stuck without it you're willing to do anything.

You get to that point of absolute desperosity

where if somebody told me, "Do anything for this"

that anything wouldn't have been too much.

It hit a point after an overdose that my wife said,

"Look, if you want me then you're going to rehab."

That was the moment of clarity that I needed.

The morning of August 15th, 2000 is when I was...

When I was actually, you know, checked in and knock on fake wood,

um, I haven't had to get loaded since.

So that one worked.

We hope.

You know, I was on the painkillers for almost 17 years.

At about year nine or ten

it really shifted.

The drug started taking more than it was giving.

I wasn't really feeling the effects as strongly as I once was.

I was having to take much, much more.

And I was taking a lot of them.

You know, 16 to 18 OxyCotins a day

on top of 12 to 16 Norcos,

two to three Fentanyl sticks,

and those things are like for burn victims and people dying of cancer.

So, if you racked up the equivalent, I was probably taking,

strength wise, over 100 Vicodin a day.

Which would normally have killed

99 percent of the regular population.

He could be up for, easily, two or three days.

And he could fall asleep in about four seconds.

There are probably a couple of times where he was so out of it

that I wasn't sure he was still living.

There was a lot of times where I would be driving one of my vehicles,

sweating profusely,

and shutting my eyes because I'm so high off the OxyCotin

and I can't keep my eyes focused on the road.

I'm so... I'm thankful to this day that I never hurt anybody.

'Cause there could have been so many times I could've just run into a family

or people like you guys, just minding your own business.

It was awful, and you could tell the difference when Todd was on coke or something

or when he was on this Oxy stuff.

And his skin, his eyes,

his sweat, his demeanor,

his mood, everything was totally different.

Sweaty, crazy, weird, like not funny.

Not funny. "You're not funny, dude.

Fucking bum out.

You're the bum out now. Sorry."

I, very slowly, but surely became antisocial,

I stopped showing up to my office.

I wasn't even returning phone calls to my mom.

I was avoiding everybody who loved me.

He would cancel dates,

and seclude himself in the house, or not go to work.

The lights were on,

like no one was home.

There was just that look

that was scary to me.

He wasn't there anymore. It wasn't Z-Man.

You know, it was his body,

you know, it was his voice.

But it wasn't him, you know, wasn't my bro.

I knew I had to let Todd go as my insurance agent.

Which I knew meant letting go of Todd as my friend.

As crazy as Todd and I's relationship was,

I absolutely wanted to spend my life with him.

And it stopped as fast as it started.

My legit doctor found out that I was

getting a prescription from that gentleman up in Santa Ana.

He gave me one warning to stop

and of course, I couldn't stop, so about a month or two later,

he was notified again, and so he cut me off.

So right off the bat, there's 240 Oxys that are out of my world.

And now, the other doctor's being notified, too.

Everything was crashing, man.

So I was having to buy big balls of tar heroin to smoke,

I was trying to find new doctors to prescribe me morphine pills

and whatever the hell it is I could get.

And the chase was just...

I was always chasing,

but it was like in panic mode on a level ten now.

And I was spending $8,000 to $12,000 a month.

The crash down moment for me was when he started writing me letters.

I was gonna have to start doing this and that and the other thing

if I wanted to keep the house. Threatening kind of letters.

Broke my heart.

He was a sick young man.

And I lost my mind, too.

I couldn't speak clearly.

And, um, something was...

Was broken up here.

He could barely even speak, you know, it was like chimp.

And The Three Stooges, you know...

Just all gacked that you couldn't...

You couldn't even understand him, you know.

This ain't even fun anymore, dude.

And I wasn't functioning as a human being.

And that was like the end of the line for me.

Addiction is truly a deadly disease.

I got 34 dead people in my phone right now,

two of which died sober.

The other 32 died loaded.

I really believed that I was gonna get that call about Todd.

I don't know how many funerals I've been to.

I would estimate about three a year since 1982.

It looked like that's where he was going.

Putting somebody in rehab is difficult enough to watch.

Knowing they don't want to get better yet is worse.

I made two prior attempts just to detox. You see,

I had this feeling that I just needed to be off of the pills,

and I could still, you know, resume drinking occasionally

and doing cocaine occasionally.

He had just gone through blood transfusions to get off drugs.

He was doing the whole Keith Richards thing.

And he like breaks out coke.

I'm like, "Dude, I thought you just had a blood transfusion two days ago."

He goes, "Ah, that's for a whole different thing.

That was for the pills." I'm like, "You know...

I don't know.

I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure it's for all the shit you've been on."

Large parts of his brain were just sitting there doing nothing.

And then the brain tries to learn how to get around that.

It was just so much chaos. Maybe if you have one spot that would be bad,

but he had several areas that were just sitting there doing nothing.

The real brain is more like pudding.

It's very fluid, there's billions of cells in there.

And each cell is talking to 40 or 50,000 other cells.

We don't have a chemical that actually perfectly wakes up and heals a brain.

All we're trying to do is feed it nutrition and sobriety and exercise.

And praying and meditating and let the brain heal itself.

And somehow, it remembers pretty closely where it was

before you started messing with it with the drugs.

We've seen so many miracles, in a way.

I mean, really, if you work in the healing profession,

you're gonna see a lot of miracles. Things that you can't explain

that they never taught you in med school.

The first time I'd actually seen him where he was desperate enough to get sober

and he was surrounding himself with other guys

that were sober, had sobriety

and that you could tell for the first time there was some clarity.

Maybe Todd was gonna do it.

Maybe he was gonna get sober.

And maybe I wouldn't have to go to his funeral.

Someone told me this, and I'm just gonna repeat it.

It takes more of a man to walk in

and say, "I'm defeated, I'm deflated,"

than it does for that man to turn around and walk away.

"I don't need that help. I'm a man."

Bro, trust me. Trust me.

It takes more of a man to have the freaking stones

to step up and say, "Help me."

In the last 28 years I've detoxed over 17,000

drug addicts and alcoholics.

It is hard to imagine somebody being more difficult than Todd was.

It looked like there was a lot more brain healing to do than almost anybody.

I think that really is the worst case that I've seen.

It kind of baffled them that I was, first off, still alive,

and I checked in all these jars of pills that I still had,

and just said, "Just take them. This is what I've been taking."

I gave them my history.

His brain just was gonna take a lot more healing than the average.

Everybody agreed on the whole staff, all levels,

we needed to watch him.

And we gave him a lot of medicines to try to calm that down.

Uh, nothing worked, really.

Especially sleep. He just couldn't sleep.

Dr. Headrick ultimately prescribed

ten times the actual dose of a sleep medication called Seroquel.

It's an antipsychotic.

So, I was given 800 milligrams of Seroquel

and that's enough to put a horse out.

And I would just bounce off the walls in the hospital

and just slobber and just cry.

And I was so freaking uncomfortable.

I just could not get to sleep.

I didn't sleep for 44 days.

I didn't sleep for the whole month of March, 2007.

Because that's what the synthetic drug will do to you

when it gets into your system. When you stop taking it,

your head goes crazy.

And your skin becomes so uncomfortable,

you think that there's like these spiders and bugs,

and ants crawling all over you like they're eating you alive.

You constantly tell somebody tomorrow's gonna be better,

hoping it's better.

Because often times, tomorrow isn't better.

Tomorrow hurts just as much or even maybe more.

I made a deal with myself that if I didn't get sleep by Day 50,

I was going to buy a gun and blow my brains out.

Almost every day, we had a discussion whether,

"Is this a psychiatric problem

or is this chemical dependency and addiction problem?"

I shook like this for nine months.

Like, if you'd seen me walking down the street

you'd be like, "Whoa, Mom, look at this guy.

What's wrong with him?" This is me. It's like...

I was just detoxing from 17 years of prescription drug abuse.

That's what it got me. That's what it got me.

I figured that since my father's thing was opiate,

my genius idea was that I'll take stimulants instead

because, you know, that'll be different.

Pretty much every amphetamine under the sun became my playground.

No crack, but lots of cocaine.

Lot of cocaine, lot of amphetamines, lot of beer.

A lot of taking big rips of tobacco out of bongs.

And that was it.

So, not the worst thing, you know, never seen any needles.

Definitely a lot of pill taking, definitely a lot of line doing.

And definitely a lot of staying up for days on end.

It was also the drinking,

which I didn't realize was slowly starting to get out of hand.

All of a sudden, I was the drunkest guy at the party.

The healing really begins

when we're able to identify what that source of pain is.

I cried all the time in my first year or two of sobriety.

Right, because stuff was just bubbling up.

A lot of childhood stuff had just... Was just

raging at the surface.

A lot of the childhood disappointments for me

stemmed with an alcoholic father

who was one of those people that would say he's going to be there,

and he wouldn't be there.

He would promise to take my brother and I on a trip or something

and he wouldn't show up. And so,

when you're teased by your friends about stuff like that

you internalize it.

The father that's never there.

And when he is there,

he's probably drunk most of the time.

It was sad to me,

in a way, that Bob never participated like he should have.

Always promising, promising.

I didn't do well with disappointment as a kid.

I think that I was extremely sensitive.

And I think I was pretty consumed with wanting everyone to like me.

I made friends quite easily but I was often just out of control.

When I was nine years old, I was...

I was molested by a camp counselor, and, um...

And it...

It's hard enough, I think, to, um...

I think, as a kid, to go through that.

Um, but it's even harder when you try to tell people who, um...

When you try to tell people what happened and they don't believe you.

And, um...

And so I held in this rage about authoritative figures

with people telling me what to do.

Anyone who could control me, I resented them almost immediately.

But the emotional scars...

...are tough to heal.

And I know that had my dad believed me,

I mean, he would've really hurt the person.

And I really wanted to hurt the person.

When this memory came back,

I actually had a real serious thought

and a plan to, you know, to...

To get a gun,

to get a pile of cocaine,

a whole bunch of pills.

Take a bunch of cash out, go shoot the guy in Long Beach, kill him,

drive out to Las Vegas, do all the drugs and blow my brains out.

And it's easy to think about those things when you're hurt like that.

It's easy to, um...

It's easy to want to react that way.

And I'm thankful that I didn't do that,

but I'll be damned if I didn't want to.

I hated him for a long time and I didn't want to hate him.

I wanted to love him.

And I got this chance to hold my dad

and to apologize to him for my behavior

and to not... And to not blame him for his behavior.

And it was a really special moment

between my father and I out in Palm Desert.

Yeah.

First thing that comes to mind is I hope he doesn't go out over this

and go back to using.

'Cause I can't imagine that pain.

Todd called me and asked me, "Will you go with me?"

So he could identify his dad's body.

And I said, "Sure."

I don't know if it did any good.

But I felt privileged to be able to do that for my friend.

My dad had suffered for a long time with the disease of alcoholism.

And to see him there, uh...

To see him there, you know,

in that...

In the coroner's office was, uh, was about all I could handle, you know.

And, um, I'm thankful that my friend Patrick was there with me.

Because at that point, I'd kind of had enough.

Even if I would've had the most idyllic childhood,

you know, like the Waltons household or something,

I still would've found a reason to drink and use drugs

because I would've tripped over and I just would've...

I just would've wanted more of it, so I...

I don't blame incidents that were negative

as a young boy, or as a young man

as the reason for my addictions.

I still consider myself a non-conformist in a lot of ways,

but the one thing that I had to let go of

was the idea that I know how to recover on my own.

I think he was willing to try anything

to stop feeling the way he was feeling.

For me, it was just removing heavy stuff brick by brick.

And the process and the recovery allowed me

to get lighter, brick by brick.

It wasn't like, "Hey, I'm sober!

The wall, the big tonne of bricks is off me."

Man, I had some serious work to do.

You know, it's growing up.

That's what we get to do now is grow up a bit.

A completely changed human walked into my restaurant.

I'll never forget it.

And I'd been hoping for it and praying for it.

And Todd walked in

and gave me a freaking huge sincere apology.

In person.

And it was a pretty heavy moment, and I knew he meant it.

And I felt just a part of me...

Me, I healed. He helped me heal.

And I was just so fortunate that Todd was alive.

And I really had no idea how a human could survive everything he had done

and been through.

He beat the odds.

And that's a choice. And we all see people that

don't choose to beat the odds.

He got it.

And I think that's beautiful.

When I looked into his eyes,

somebody was there.

I got lucky.

I got lucky, and maybe

I've got my son back.

I'm glad he's back.

Got my buddy back.

And the personality had not changed.

He was still completely inappropriate, over the top obnoxious Todd,

and I couldn't have been happier.

I was stoked.

Here we are, getting to celebrate...

I think he's coming up on ten years.

If I don't get loaded the next couple of weeks,

I'll have 16 years.

It's a whole new kinship.

Our relationship is completely different than when we were loaded.

And it's rad.

A famed rehab doctor called our next guest, Todd Zalkins,

the worst case of pill addiction he'd ever seen.

Well, for 17 years, prescription painkillers

had a total hold over Todd Zalkins.

His escape is chronicled in his book Dying For Triplicate.

The sole purpose is to help somebody else

to make them realize that he or she can get well.

This is essentially nine and a half years later

from the initial scan that we took before I came into recovery.

And I'm hoping that we see something

that's an entirely different looking picture of my brain.

So let's start with your surface scan.

Color doesn't matter on these scan images

What we're looking for is the blood flow is healthy, dynamic and symmetrical.

Here is your 2006 scan.

So, what do you see? Where does your eye go? What stands out?

It goes right to that big hole.

Looks like someone just took a spoon and just...

Exactly.

And just took something right out of it.

So, Todd, you wanna contrast your old scans with your new ones?

-Definitely. -Let's see the differences.

All right, what do you see different now?

Oh, my gosh.

It looks like a wound that's kinda healed.

It's almost completely normal now.

Yeah.

This brain image back in 2006

is equivalent to, probably, a 70 year old brain.

What we see now is much more equivalent to

a 45 to 55 year old brain

that's much healthier and normal.

So, Todd, let's take a look at your, uh, emotional brain scans.

Here is your 2006 scan.

-My goodness. - What do you see?

Um, I see a disaster.

When this is lit up like this it contributes to problems

with getting stuck in certain thoughts and mood states.

And when things aren't going your way,

you tend to get sort of oppositional.

You get verbally argumentative.

-Absolutely. Yeah. -Right.

Hard time moving on, letting go.

Yeah, just cut me off on the 405,

and I cause an entire shut down of the highway.

Not too far from here, on the 405,

a lot of traffic going on, and this gentleman in this Mercedes,

he cut me off, while he was doing it he flipped me off.

So I just went volcanic and I threw it in park.

And I jump out, I got the suit on, I'm all toxic and sweaty.

I just bashed in his windshield.

You would've thought these people, it was like Armageddon going on.

Which it kind of was.

And people on the freeway are looking around

like they couldn't reach for their cell phones.

Yeah, how frightening would that've been, huh.

It was quite terrible.

-Yeah. Right. -Quite terrible.

Disturbing for you, as much or more than the people...

They're probably still in therapy.

I should probably start kicking in for their co-pays.

Right. But it's an example of how out of control you were, right?

It was just absurd.

Yeah, terrible behavior.

-Yeah. -Yeah.

This is your scan of when you were actually using in 2006.

Here's your scan, uh, right a few days ago.

A tremendous difference. It seems more calm.

Exactly right. So your brain's a lot calmer, a lot quieter.

Yeah.

We could've anticipated this based on the complete change in your

emotional tone, your impulse control, your behavior.

Right, the fruitfulness of your life.

Um, anything to enhance the...

overall health of the brain,

I'm in.

Are you working out regularly, you exercising?

Religiously.

-Oh, yeah. -Good. What do you do?

Mainly water stuff. Surfing and distance swimming.

The ocean is a huge part of my recovery.

This is where I got sober, down in South Orange County.

You know, the water's just freaking beautiful.

On a clear day, you can see 40, 50 feet below you.

It made all the sense in the world to me to bury my dad's ashes

because I spent so much time in the water here.

So I get to go out and hang out with my dad.

It's a spiritual place for me.

This is the first time in human history that this has ever happened.

That we've had such a large percentage of our population have access

to high potency opiates on a daily basis.

It's pharmaceutical drugs that are killing people.

I'm an interventionist.

And I travel all over the United States,

you know, families have me come

and try to motivate their loved ones into getting treatment.

The kind of treatment that I went through in 2007.

I have worked with

people who are CEOs of major corporations,

I've worked with self made millionaires,

successful music people, actors.

Any moms?

Oh, my goodness. I've...

Tons of parents, both moms and dads,

just stay at home moms.

Moms who are just taking care of their kids, and behind closed doors,

they're doing this, that or the other

where it's drinking, drugs, or both.

And, you know, this...

This topic that we're talking about, addiction,

it spills over and affects everybody.

And it's not just the guy who looks like he's homeless

without missing a couple of teeth.

He looks like he's smoking meth, like that's our only problem.

Somewhere in our country today,

someone your age is gonna die from this.

That scares the heck out of me.

And I hope that it scares you guys.

Because you guys have got families who love you,

teachers, friends, people...

People who care about you.

And we leave because we die from this stuff.

For me, one of the most important things

next to just going to meetings is helping another man.

To be of service to another human being is...

Is the lifeblood for me, that's the magic.

There's an old saying in program,

which is, "You can't keep something you don't give away."

That is the key to sobriety,

is being able to give this to other people.

Often times, it's painful.

We unfortunately help people for a duration,

they decide they don't want it, they get loaded, they die.

But the up side is every once in a while a guy gets sober and stays sober.

And when that happens, it's magical.

You know, if you can help somebody and they can have...

They can have a fucking great life, man, being sober,

then what else can be better than that?

Look, all I can say about Todd Zalkins is that it's a miracle that he's sober.

I remember as a kid, he always seemed kind of crazy to me.

And then, as I moved up here on my own and started with the band, I'd see him more

and instead of seeming like an odd and crazy guy,

he seemed like a very sincere odd and crazy guy.

What did you say, about 1990, you saw a picture of me,

and what the hell did you say I looked like?

You did look like a bouncer from the Backstreet Boys. That was so great.

Like you look at this picture.

You look like this quintessential 90's dude, just like...

Like your whole body is just completely waxed and shaved.

-Geez. -You look like bronze.

Like you've been in a tanning bed.

-Your hair was bleached.

He had a puka shell necklace.

He was just...

Puka shell necklace.

You were wearing sandals with socks.

Do you see how he breaks my balls?

It's amazing I still have hair.

In these last 18 months I cannot believe I don't have plugs.

You know, from going bald because of this.

I have problems all the time. I call him Brad and Jake,

I get the two mixed up, you know, all the time.

Because there's a lot of similarities, you know.

Fortunately, there's one big difference.

And the big difference is Jake, through Todd,

has been able to pull out of a situation

that looked like it was going in the direction his dad went in.

So where were you 18 months ago?

What was going on 18 months ago?

Let's talk about that little winning streak.

18 months ago,

I had just won the primaries, I know that.

I was on to be the next president.

-Uh-huh. -And then...

-The president of what, like, Second Street? -Of bullshit.

-President of bullshit.

President of bullshit.

I'm Troy Nowell.

I was married to Brad Nowell, the singer of Sublime.

Brad died of a heroin overdose.

Jake's been robbed of having a wonderful person to be his father.

Educate yourself.

Heroin kills, period.

We miss him, and we'll miss him forever.

Don't let anyone miss you.

There was this subconscious desire

to kind of understand what my dad's experiences were.

Why would he smoke this? why would he snort that?

Why would he drink this? Why would he pop that?

All throughout growing up there was a lot of parties.

But these were like, you know, more than just friendly get together parties.

These were like, you know, the grown ups doing coke in the other room parties.

And by the time I was 16 I was involved with

the coke doing, and the crazy

and the playing dominos at 6:00 in the morning.

And I would be able to get destroyed off my mind, but I would be

the 15 year old kid who can drink all the adults under the table,

which is a terrible thing to be good at.

But then, when I wasn't doing that I wasn't going to parties with kids my age.

I was isolating.

How was that isolation?

Great. So much fun.

Right.

Isolated in my room,

up all night at odd hours.

Yeah. Taking things apart.

Yeah, man. I would draw pictures

and write lyrics on like post-it notes about yay big.

And I figure I was saving space.

Look, here's the thing. It's not their fault

that I started using drugs and alcohol,

and it's not their fault that I started

being that kind of guy.

But they did create an environment that was conducive

to that experience.

I really wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Say they had been the parents that were anti-partying and anti-doing this stuff,

I probably would have just gone out and done it a whole lot worse.

I would see Jakob, and I certainly saw a young man who was troubled.

When I had the opportunity to see Jake's grandparents,

Papa Nowell and Janie

look at me, and they said that Jake's in trouble, and, uh...

And Papa Nowell said, verbatim,

he said that "I can't go through with this again."

We couldn't lose Jakob.

You know, we just couldn't.

Emotionally, it wouldn't have worked, you know.

I couldn't go through it again.

Wouldn't want to.

'Cause I'd barely made it through Brad.

They lost years of sleep over Brad.

And every parent experiences this when their loved one

is in the thralls of addiction.

We torment our parents, often unknowingly

because we're so selfish and so self-centered with our behavior

that we have no idea that we're destroying all the people who love us more than anything.

I was prepared to do anything that I possibly could to help Jakob get well.

I mean, it's an unconditional love

for Jakob and for the Nowell family.

And certainly for the love that we all share for Brad.

Actually, Jakob was... He was scared.

I was not fucking scared.

Dude, we're all scared when we come into recovery.

I wasn pissed off and I was tired.

-Angry, scared... -I wasn't scared.

We're all in fear when we're in recovery.

Okay. Yeah, you're right. You're never scared.

I was pissed. I was furious.

-He was pissed. -I mean more like grumpy.

And, um, but...

I was scared the days prior,

but at that point I was just like, "God damn everything."

I was just very cynical if I remember.

-I kind of, you know... -Very cynical.

He's asking me. You can comment on me all you want,

-but right now I'm gonna comment on you. -That's it, I'm outta here.

I think it took a little while for Jakob to fully trust me.

And that took a lot of work.

But as we've moved along,

you know, that level of trust is really unshakable.

First six months were kind of rocky but he was still doing it, hanging in there.

I'll never forget, like, at month ten there was this big shift for Jakob.

He was... He was really accepting

deep down inside this, like, "You know what?

I've gotta do this if I'm gonna save my life."

Part of me feels like, in a lot of ways, it's...

He's doing what he feels, sometimes, what he couldn't do for my father.

I don't want to be so bold as to make that claim.

Because I wasn't there, but at the same time,

that's how I see myself in this situation

if I put myself in his shoes.

And that's an incredibly noble thing.

And it's just incredibly appropriate.

I wish we'd had a Z-Man around at the time, you know.

To take care of Bradley like he takes care of Jake now.

I don't regret having gone through addiction

because it makes me resent my father much less

because I understand that addiction isn't a choice.

It's not as easy as the campaign of "Just say no."

If it were that easy, people would just say no. That's not what addiction is.

You can't just say no. That's not going to stop the problem.

Just say no might stop the kids who were already not going to do drugs from doing drugs.

But the kids who are predisposed to being an addict

or may become an addict later in life are not gonna just say no forever.

If you ever would've told me that some of my,

really, the best friends that I have in my life are sober people,

I would've said, "Come on, man, no way."

-Right. -Right?

But it's certainly my truth today.

-Totally. -And, um...

'Cause I hang my hat on those people, and now,

you know, Jakob's one of those people now.

That guy would just ride or die, you know.

I understand how

strong and close knit the connection between him and my dad was.

You know, they were like brothers.

So it's only normal for him to be like an uncle figure to me.

And that's what's really mind blowing is that

from my dad's death,

he eventually had to get sober 'cause he didn't wanna die like that.

And it led to me...

For him to be able to

intervene with Jake gives him, uh,

some relief from what happened, what we all went through with Brad.

It gives us a lot of relief, too.

This last year and a half's been a lot of healing.

I mean, for well over a decade, I...

I really tortured myself, you know,

not being able to answer Brad's call.

And in some weird way I feel like, uh,

because I'm sober now,

I've been able to be there for this family that I love.

You know, I love as much as I could love anything.

And to see the family get relief,

to see Jakob get relief,

to see him blossoming as a man and as a musician,

and to see his talents start to grow,

and to see him work his program of recovery,

it's paid me back inside of here.

A lot, you know.

And Papa, Janie and I will talk intimately about how...

How hard it still can be and how hard it was,

but how good it is now, too.

You know, because we get people back in our lives

when we start to make these changes.

And that's what's significant about it.

Is that he's here.

Papa's here, and we get to celebrate...

It really is, it's a celebration of life over death.

This is for Brad.

The hopeful light on the other side of this is that, you know...

I went into the same dark places that my father went to,

and I came back and tried to utilize the negatives of his experience

to make my experience more positive,

and to lead a full, rich and more successful lifestyle.

Hopefully.

Key word.

Morphine and Valium