From Heroin, Homelessness & Crime to Saving Lives | Lance Orton's Comeback Story

On this episode of Fit For Radio, we sit down with Lance Orton, a man whose life story is a powerful reminder that addiction doesn't discriminate—and that no one is beyond redemption.

Lance grew up moving between California and Texas, navigating his parents' divorce and attending three different high schools before graduating from a Catholic prep school in 1993. He went on to earn a degree in Business Administration from San Diego State University, worked in technology sales, helped launch a resort in Napa Valley with his father, and later served in the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

From the outside, his future looked bright.

But after the tragic loss of his father in 2005, Lance's life took a devastating turn. What began with prescription painkillers eventually spiraled into a heroin addiction that consumed everything in its path. Over the next decade, addiction cost him his career, his family, his stability, and ultimately his home. He bounced from city to city chasing a life that seemed to slip further away with every passing year.

By 2018, Lance had reached rock bottom. Homeless, involved in crime, and living under the constant threat of the dangerous people surrounding the drug world, he found himself hiding in Portland after a drug dealer's enforcer tracked him down and stole his car. It was a moment that forced him to confront the reality of where addiction had taken him.

That same year, Lance entered CityTeam's recovery program. What happened next is nothing short of remarkable.

Not only did he rebuild his life, but he dedicated himself to helping others do the same. Today, Lance serves as the Executive Director of CityTeam Portland, leading efforts to provide treatment, shelter, and hope to those battling addiction and homelessness. He is also working alongside Portland Mayor Keith Wilson to expand access to recovery services throughout the region.

This conversation is a raw and honest look at addiction, loss, resilience, faith, and the power of second chances. Lance's story proves that your worst chapter doesn't have to define the rest of your life—and that sometimes the people best equipped to lead others out of darkness are the ones who have fought their way through it themselves.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

He has me pull over in some part. Uh his goons that were following me, you know, they get out. He has me sign the title to him in that was in the glove box, takes my phone, takes my wallet. His buddies give me a shot of heroin in the neck to pity on me.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

In the neck.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Something I swore I would never do. You know, as an addict, you say I'll never use it. I'll never use needles and then you use needles and I'll never do it in my neck, and then you do it in your neck. They drove off, and I'm this is October 1st, 2018, which is my sobriety date to this day. And I'm standing there going, What just happened? And it was almost weirdly serene. There was a moment of brief serenity where I just knew in my gut that this was the rock bottom. I'm not willing to go any further. I didn't know how what was going to happen next or what to do. I have no ID, no money, no, you know, no phones.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

You're just standing in that parking lot?

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah. I have no idea to this day where I was. And as he's driving off, that serenity quickly wore off. And as I started thinking logically, what am I going to do? I had a panic attack and I woke up in the hospital.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

It's the Fit for Radio podcast. I'm your host, Drew Tiedeman, and we are where we always are at the Stafford Hills Club, right here in beautiful Twalton, Oregon. It was actually voted the best health and wellness facility in the Portland area. And you'll see it when you get here. You got that saltwater pool, which is so nice. No tangles for your kids if you're in a non-chlorine pool. Learned that just recently. You learn something every day. And also, you also find that the community here is amazing. You want to come in and see these guys, they hold doors for you. People are kind, courteous, and there's a smile on your face. So if you need a sense of community and family, hit them up today at staffordhills.com. Tell them Drew sent you for half off your initiation. Now, I've got a great guest in here today. He is the executive director of City Team Portland, where he leads a continuum of care for individuals overcoming homelessness, addiction, and poverty. And now he knows what's up with all this stuff because he's a person in long-term recovery himself with more than seven years sobriety, um, but also went through a lot in order to get to where he is now. And we'll go through the list of accolades later. But for now, I'd love to introduce to the show Lance Orton. Great to be here, Drew. So nice to have you. Now, um, you are doing great things in the city of Portland, you know, where you have a lot of people who are kind of like, you know, they see what's going on in Portland and they don't know exactly how to help, and they don't even know which way to approach it. You know, like, do you come across as angry about it? Are you have your hands in the air about it? You know, there's so many different feelings from people who grew up here, people who reside here now, but uh, you are making a difference in doing it. But I saw an interview with you, Lance, where you said that it wasn't your conventional career path. Right. Um, because how you got to where you are, you you wouldn't probably sit your kid down and be like, so this is how you do it. No, definitely not. Um, but a long time ago, you were in a happier, uh, well, you're in a happy place now, but in in a happy place in Newport Beach, California is where you were raised, correct? That's correct.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Um, and so what was life like early on for you? It was very normal, you know. Mom and dad, mom was a Montessori teacher, dad was a Lego salesman. I've got a little brother, two years younger. Uh, we grew up in Orange County, and um, yeah, life was just normal. We were average middle class citizens, and my dad was my hero. You know, he was kind of the life of the party guy. We had more Legos than anyone in town, and uh it life was good.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

That I mean, anytime your dad can dial up Legos, Legos are uh no slouch. I mean, that is that's that's the Maserati of toys. That's right. Um, and so you you're in that world for a while, but things get shooken up a little bit right before your teenage years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

So I I think the big uh, you know, I mark my kind of journey with um a series of of what I now know as traumatic events. You know, at the time, many of them didn't seem that traumatic, um, things like divorce. And uh when I was around 11, 12, there were cracks in my parents' marriage. My mom just wanted to be a teacher and a mom, and my dad wanted to be a masters of the universe. You know, he had big ambitions in business, and um, this was right around the early dot-com or I should say pre-dot com boom of Silicon Valley. So we're in Orange County. My dad gets his first big break in career, gets a VP job for um a division of American Express, which moved the whole family to Dallas, Texas.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

Now I'm sure you have listeners that are from Texas, and I don't want to offend anyone, but let's just say when you grew up on the beach in Southern California, Dallas, Texas is not, and it's not just Dallas. If it was Dallas, it was Irving, Texas. Okay. So you're talking suburb, flat, concrete everywhere, you know, there's not a beach or a wave in sight, and um, it just it was not um a happy place for me. And so I'm also, you know, adolescent coming on teenage, you know, 12, going on 17. Yeah. Um, my parents started heading towards divorce. Uh, my dad started having affairs and um wound up marrying the woman he had an affair with, who is still my stepmother today. Uh um and so there are a lot of complications relationships there. We'll get to that later on in the story. Um, but I chose to handle that as a teenager and just say, I'm gonna detach from these. This is an adult problem, it's your problem. I'm gonna go hang out with my friends and live my life. And um, so I I kind of grew up really quickly at 13. Um, my dad uh moved to San Francisco. Uh he started a company with a bunch of guys called previewtravel.com. Uh he was the CEO. It was the first internet company, the first website that you could buy an airline ticket online in in history. And he was writing books about e-commerce. Um, and uh his wife, my stepmom Lori, also a powerhouse businesswoman. They were just doing big things in the world. And I was drawn to that. I was impressed by that. I wasn't angry at my dad um at the time, strangely. Uh I I just, you know, I I looking back, I I my poor mother, uh, you know, what she went through must have been really hard. But I just detached from the whole thing and kind of stopped getting parent being parented. And so as my dad's living the life in San Francisco, I'm stuck in Texas, and I knew that the pathway out of Texas before college was to get kicked out and sent to my dad's uh so at 14 years old, I'm like, and you know, like let me back up just a little bit. 13, I I get a 17-year-old girlfriend and I'm off to the races. She's got a car, she's a cheerleader, uh, you know, alcohol, drugs, all the things popped into the picture. But I'm 13.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

And you're 13, you're like, I'm a rock star.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

I I mean, you know, the I mean a 17-year-old with a 13-year-old? And I look at 13-year-olds today, and I remember the things I was doing. We were going to clubs and, you know, doing ecstasy and cocaine. It was just, it was, it was not again, my poor mother. Yeah. Anyway, she did wind up kicking me out, which was a plan that I had. Um, and I got sent to my dad's, and uh this was my junior year, and we bounced back and forth, Southern California, Texas. So I was going to like two different high schools, you know, I had to meet new people, and finally I get to my third high school, which um coming from a public school in Texas to a private Catholic school in downtown San Francisco was a bit of a culture shock. Yeah. But one I welcomed, I loved it. It was, you know, we're living in this big, beautiful house right in the marina. I had Golden Gate Bridge views from my bedroom window. I'm driving a BMW. I'm in the most expensive Catholic school in the city. And I I I was loving it. I was happy. And my dad had two rules get good grades and don't get in trouble by the cops, and you can do whatever you want. And um I followed those rules. Well, it's uh that's not true. I almost followed those rules. You loosely follow those rules. Loosely follow those rules. And I there's a story I want to real quickly tell about that, and it'll be relevant later. I um we were at the beach in San Francisco um uh ocean beach, and we're sitting in my car and we're we're hotboxing, right? We got the windows uh smoking weed with the windows, doogie around, and the park police roll, and we had beers, some coronas in our lap, and I'm 17. The cops pull up, the park police, not even the real cops, like these are park police cops. And they bust us all, they give me a minor in possession, and they tell me I gotta go to this courthouse, this juvenile courthouse with my dad. And I'm like, no way I'm telling my dad this. So I show up by myself, 17-year-old kid, thinking that they're gonna just treat me like an adult. And the it's not even a judge, you know, it's like a counselor at this point. And she looks at me and says, What's your dad's phone number? Calls my dad. He comes down to the courthouse, he's obviously pissed, and um but it but the the sh it shifts is kind of funny because the the counselor is talking about the consequences and you know he's mad and he's doing the parent thing, and then she says, Well, we're gonna wind up suspending his driver's license for a year for this. And my dad's like, wait a minute, I gotta drive him around now. That that's not happening. So he gets a lawyer for me in steps uh into the scene. V-Roy Leftcourt. V-Roy Leftcourt was a criminal prosecutor, uh defend defense lawyer that handled big like drug cases, and he's a three-piece suit, Jewish guy, and he's doing your hotbox thing. He's doing my hotbox possession of Corona case. And this guy walks in to the courtroom, you know, months later or whatever it was. And I remember being enamored by this guy, the way he carried himself, the way he handled the questions. They bring in the poor park police officer, and they're doing like this mock trial, uh, you know, pre-trial. And he asked my uh, they they say, you know, how do you know the guy was drinking? And the guy's like, well, because you know he had the corona bottle in his hand and it smelled like booze. And uh they said, Well, do you, you know, my lawyer was like, Do you have that bottle of Corona? And the cop's like, No, we poured it out on the curb and wrote the guy a ticket. And he's like, So you have no evidence that my client was actually drinking beer. And they they threw the case out. They're like, This is too much. Yeah. And I remember the the not even the judge, the counselor afterwards, she looked at me and she was like, Look, in the real world, if you were an adult, I would be slapping the maximum penalty on you, but this is not, and your lawyer's right, the cop didn't really handle this properly, and they dismissed it. And so I tell that story because I carried that memory into the next decade or so of my life, thinking, okay, problems, money solves problems. Yes. Anyways, um, it was an interesting time. I did wind up graduating high school with good great grades, got honor roll. Um, I wanted to be just like my dad. His company went public. Uh, they sold it to um Saber Travel, which is the parent company for American Airlines, yeah. Big business. Turned into Travelocity.com. He parachuted out at I think he was 50, couldn't have been a day over 50, and did what most Silicon Valley.com retirees do. They bought 80 acres of property in Napa Valley and started a horse ranch, right? Wow. Sounds nice. Right. And I'm at college, uh, San Diego State. Um, getting a business degree because I wanted to be just like my dad. And he's like, well, this is the pathway.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

So life's pretty magical right here, right? Like you life's good. You've you've got this uh kind of golden life when you're not at school. You're at San Diego State, which is a place that everyone at that age wants to be. Having a blast. Oh man, I remember being at U of O, and you know, a third of our friends were down there in San Diego, and you just every time you'd go and visit, you would have they'd have to like pull you out of the car to go to the airport. Yep. Because it's that nice. So you're you're probably thinking you're just wheels up and you're gonna just be like dad.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

And and I graduated now, I was on the San Diego program, which is five years because that's standard for everywhere else. Standard for San Diego for Cal State schools when you're having fun. Yeah. Um and I and I my grades were not as good as high school. They started to go down because I was partying, I was doing the college kid thing, but it was never, it wasn't getting in the way of my um, you know, the drugs and alcohol weren't causing major problems in my life. They were just kind of there. Still recreational. Yeah, exactly. Not they hadn't become habitual or medicinal yet. Um, and so when I graduated, I remember my dad set me up with a whole bunch of interviews in Silicon Valley and I blew them all. I mean, I went in there with ego and pride, and I was meeting with C level executives of companies like on sale.com and eBay, and you know, and these were all brand new companies at the time, right? And I didn't get one call back, not a single callback. So you they just think that you had too much bravado or I think it was, you know, nepotism, too much privilege. I mean, I wasn't a smart kid. I I had a business degree, but you know, and which back then it carried more weight than it does now. But I I think that um I didn't have anything to offer at that time because I had my only s real skill, and this is still true today, is um I am a people person. I'm a networker, I can connect people. But back then, you know, they they didn't need that. Yeah. They needed, you know, a humble kid that was eager to learn. Yeah, and wanted to grow in their system. I was not that kid. I wanted to be the CEO that day. Yeah, exactly. Like, where's my office? Yeah. So I go back to San Diego, I get a sales job, um, did really well for a while, but wasn't really happy. And I like enrolled back in grad school because honestly, I wanted to keep doing keg stands. Yeah. Uh, but grad school was not like undergrad. There was actual studying and work involved. And um, but then my dad called me and said, Hey, come up to Napa and help me run this ranch, right? And I'm thinking, that sounds fun. So me and my girlfriend moved up there in 2000, about 2000, and uh lived on this ranch for a couple of years. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And so what was the ranch? Was it like a was like an executive retreat center. It was called Mayakama's Ranch. Uh, it was a horse ranch, it had uh cabins, hotels, a restaurant, a yoga studio. You know, it was a place did a lot of weddings. That was our bulk business. We did like two uh almost 200 weddings a year. It was wild. Impressive. And I lived on the property with my girlfriend, and we were like the resident managers of the property, and it was a good time. That does sound nice. Yeah, until my girlfriend and and this particular woman, her name is Emma. Uh, she was the love of my life. She's the one that got away. Okay. And she um I settled in really well. She did not. She was this half Persian, half English, big Iranian family down in San Diego, and she did not do well in an isolated country environment where you know we're feeding horses at 6 a.m. And yeah during the week there's nobody there, so it's really quiet. So she goes back to San Diego and my heart is broken. So this is trauma incident number two. So she gets cabin fever on 80 acres, basically. Basically, she's a city girl. And we're still good friends today, but she that was that catalyst, you know, experiencing real heartbreak for the first time. My drug use started to become medicinal. I started using it to numb the pain.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

So after she left and you're left there, what's the drug of choice early on?

SPEAKER_02 15:50

I was an equal opportunity user, man. Whatever it was, pill, you know, we would get mech pills from Mexico. That was a big pill popper. Um, I used methamphetamines for the first time. There was a restaurant guy working at the ranch down the street that gave me a little bag of powder and I didn't care what it was. And that was meth. I remember that stuff was just like, whoa, that's strong. Um so it didn't matter. It was whatever made me feel good.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yeah. So, and and I'm guessing just by the looks of you, the meth wasn't your drug of choice long term. No, opioids became my my real drug of choice. And you would run into a time, and we'll get to it because we're not quite there yet, but you run into a time where you like opiates at a time where I call it the wild west of pharmaceuticals. Yes. You know, it went absolutely gangbusters. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

My drug dealer was Kaiser Permanente. I had a doctor that prescribed me 180 10 milligram NORCOS, the 10 slash 325s. And that was my drug for a year. I missed at least six years. And I would hit the refill button on the automated pharmacy request. The doctor would refill it and then they would ship it to me wherever I was. Didn't matter. Didn't even matter if I was out of state. They would just ship these bottles. And so 180 pills a month, that was enough to keep you going for quite a while.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Yeah. And for people who don't know all the numbers on it, those are doubles. So you're actually of 360 if you were getting, like, say when somebody goes to the dentist and they write them nine Vicadin or Norco, that actually is half of what's right you're talking about here.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

And um that yeah, that was my drug of choice for it must have been six to ten years I had those things being refilled.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

You'll find actually in the news recently, they found three of those pills in Tiger Wood's pocket when he flipped his car just a couple of weeks ago, which another guy who's had a lot of surgeries and stuff, but that stuff becomes medicinal. But if we just back up for a second, um, you're you're there in in at the resort and your girlfriend leaves, but is this where at some point um and it was confusing to me in the notes because you're living this kind of plush life. How do you end up in the military?

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Great question. So my uh so I started doing really shady things after my girlfriend left. I embezzled, I don't know how much money. I started writing checks to myself on the ranch's account. So I went up stealing minimum 10,000, could be as much as 20. Uh, I'm still sorting that out with my stepmother to this day, uh, and and am in the amends process. Oh, are you paying that money back? I will I will be actually paying it in full here very soon. I'm in a position to finally be paying that debt off. And my poor stepmother, you know, she and my dad, my poor dad, you know, they basically were like, look, you gotta go. You know, this it's time for you to leave this ranch and go make your own life. And I didn't really know what to do at that time. I I went to San Francisco, where I graduated, tried to get a job. Do you remember WorldCom? Remember the company WorldCom? So I got hired at WorldCom a week before it blew up. And when it blew up, of course I didn't start. And then I was like, man, now I'm like pretty much homeless. I'm living in my car. And uh I said, you know what? I'm not if I go to my dad, he's gonna say the word rehab. I knew that was coming. And that's not what you wanted to hear. That was not me. I was not a rehab guy, I can handle this on my own. And so I thought I had done some sales work for a defense contractor down in San Diego selling rack mount computer systems to the military, which gave me access to the bases down there, and I got to see some cool shit like the Apache gunships and the Miramar top gun base. And I was like, you know what? I'll just join the army. Why not? 9-11 had just happened. It was, you know, it was an honorable thing to do. I'm gonna go play soldier for a few years.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

And it's a way to kind of you think maybe, and tell me if I'm wrong, it's a way to run from some of the issues that you're developing.

SPEAKER_02 19:49

Yes. I knew I honestly thought that it would square me away. I I really thought it would instill some discipline that I knew I was lacking. I knew it would take care of my housing and all that. I knew that I'd get in shape and I would need to quit using drugs because I really wanted to. I didn't want to be addicted. I didn't want to be an addict. Like, that's why Kaiser was the perfect drug dealer for me, because I didn't have to deal with the shady world of street drugs, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Yeah, and it sugarcoats it to where you can kind of convince yourself, like, I'm not really on drugs, I have medicine. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Yep. And when I got into the army, I got assigned to an amazing division, 101st Airborne Air Assault. Uh, got stationed at Fort Campbell. Now I went in and enlisted because honest truth, I could have been an officer, but to be an officer, I would have had gone to OCS. The next OCS class didn't start for like six months or something, and I needed a place to live now. Oh, I'm not sure. So I'm like, you know what? I'm going in combat arms, 13 Fox Ford Observer, and um, you know, I played it off like I was a tough guy and gonna be cool. But the reality is I was terrified of being homeless.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

So you do uh you do a um how long are you in the military for?

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Just about three years. I enlisted for three years. Um, about halfway in, uh, I kind of got into a groove. I was doing well, and I started meeting some captains uh out at Fort Campbell, and we were under General Petraeus at the time, really respected division, and I felt a sense of belonging and pride. And I thought, you know what, why not make a career out of this? 20 years, you know, I I'll be done at 38 years old and and uh start, you know, whatever I want. Well, uh the funny thing about addiction is you can keep it at bay for a while, but it always creeps back in unless you actually address the root causes. And so um I uh started finding ways to get those pills back in my life through the army. And um then the big tragic accident that happened, and this is the tragic accident in tw 2005. Right as I was waiting, I got into OCS applied, was accepted, my whole unit deployed. I got held back. I'm sitting in Fort Campbell, Kentucky on an empty base and doing These drills with other bases around that were left in garrison, and I get a notification from the Red Cross that my father had been killed in a tragic accident. Flipped a tractor on him, a fluke thing, wheeled up and crushed him, killed him inside. Oh my God. That is that's unbelievable. Yeah. And I was not spiritually equipped to process that loss. I was not mentally equipped. I didn't have a support system. Um the the army didn't provide a lot of uh support. They said, well, go take 30 days and leave. Um and I and I'll I'll shall share this because this is important. I was sitting in my XO's office waiting for the paperwork to clear, to be sent back to San Francisco. And as I'm racing through thoughts in my head, the predominant thought it was not remorse, sadness. The thought that was going through my head was I'm about to inherit a buttload of money. And I knew that that was a very broken, selfish thought. Selfish thought. I mean, I was like weirdly aware that I shouldn't feel that way, and yet I was like, I'm not gonna have to work anymore. Well, in a in a an ironic twist of fate, my dad did not have a will when he died. He wasn't 50 years old, 51. Didn't think it was happening. Didn't think it was happening, and um obviously they were very successful. The my stepmother, um, when I got to San Francisco, she pulled us, me and my brother aside and she said, My dad didn't have a will. Uh I want you guys to here's the estate. And it was I didn't understand it. It was like percentage, you know, 0.01% of this company and 0.02% of this company. He was on the board of all these companies. And so there's no dollar amount, but I knew it was a lot just based on their lifestyle. And she said, if you sign this document, to this day I don't know what it was. Uh when I die, 50% of the estate will go to you and your brother, and 50% will go to do whatever I want, which is the fair way to do it. She also was diagnosed at that time with terminal cancer. Oh my goodness. This is just wild roller coaster. And the poor woman had a bilateral mastectomy, she was battling cancer. The doctors told her she was, you know, six months to live. Well, she beat that cancer. She's alive and well today, which is incredible. It is. And we have never seen any of that money, which we shouldn't. You know, it it it's not our money. Still in play. Still in play, it's her money. Um, but I uh and that was a kind of a godsend at the time because had had I had received that kind of money at that time. You were gonna burn it up. Oh, or were I be dead. I honestly the way I used, I'd be dead today. I wouldn't have survived the fentanyl.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

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SPEAKER_02 25:49

Not to so no, they sold the ranch um because she, you know, Lori was battling cancer and trying to get her own life and dealing with her own grief. And I'm going back into the army. And so um I, you know, tried to re-engage. She was doing everything she could to get her own life back together. Um, I could not re-engage in the army. Like I, you know, I was just, I started using those pills again, called my old doctor, got the prescription refilled. On top of that, I was using Xanax, and then cocaine came into picture. And I just, you know, it didn't take long for the army to kind of pick up what on what was going on. Um, I had a positive UA. They kicked me out, they took pity on me, gave me an honor a general discharge under honorable conditions, which was a gift. Probably the best you could hope for that. Oh, I didn't deserve it. Uh it was a total gift. Um, I went back to California to try to ride my dad's good name and build a life for myself. And um, it was just sort of I had some successes and then I'd burn it down. I'd have some, you know, it was just kind of this slow 10-year rock bottom after rock bottom that just kept getting lower and lower.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And this whole time, are you continuing with your prescription? Do you still have the doctor in your pocket?

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Until the opioid epidemic became the, you know, the Sackler family, Purdue, OxyCon, all that hit the news. And I don't know, it it took a while to trickle down to my doctors, but by 28, 2018, I'm living in Bend, Oregon. And the doctors are like, no more, we're done. We're you're not getting into it.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Just not we're not like we're weaning you off.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

You're just done. You're done.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

We're so this is all very concerning. And now, granted, I know where it takes you, but I have seen this happen multiple times. And just give you some frame of reference. Two years ago, one of my actually my best friend from college died of a fentanyl overdose. And it's all a result of the end of the pharmaceutical superwave into the street drugs and everything that people sucked into. I'm not, I'm not even talking about a guy who was homeless. I'm talking about a lawyer who died of a fentanyl overdose. And and it's these types of things that it was so dangerous to prescribe some of these drugs, but it was even more dangerous to just turn the light off. Yeah. Because that opened the door to all the other problems. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

And my my prescription, when I had them, I was highly functional. I actually I worked out, I had jobs, and you know, it would eventually kind of catch up to me. But as long as I had that prescription failure, it was when it ran out that problems happened. And I would usually get it to last right up to the end of the prescription, then it'd be a week of debauchery where I'd have to figure out how to avoid getting dope sick. And that was the cycle that went on for 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Because you were probably and I, like I said, so many of my friends, I'm guessing, you know, you had the prescription, and so you would take it kind of along the lines of what it said, but maybe just a little bit more. And when you go a little bit more, that leaves you those days of dead zone. And that's where you're in trouble. Exactly. Because a a functional addict takes it like a vitamin. You know, it's like, oh, every day at four o'clock I take it here. And so that takes me from going into the ground and then I'm up and then I'm fine. They take that away. Now you're chasing something which is going to lead you, I'm guessing, to a darker place. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

And the first time I experienced full-blown withdrawals, there was a series of just days where I couldn't, it was awful. I I had no idea. I mean, I knew they were addictive, but I didn't know the level of pain that you go through to try and detox yourself. I mean, it is terrible. And this was just the pills. I hadn't even experienced heroin withdrawal yet, but that would come.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Which is just so terrible. I mean, it's just all it's just it's pills on steroids. You know, when it cause that's it's all they're all opiates and it kind of uh it works that way. So now you're in Bend, they're cutting off your prescription.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yep. I'm doing the ski bum life, working at the Pine Tavern as a bartender and a server. I kind of figured out you could hide in the hospitality industry, you know, a lot of party culture. And um I walked into work one day, sick from not having my pills, and a dishwasher noticed that I was dope sick, and he handed me a little bag of black tar heroin, said this will fix you right up. I knew what it was. I knew that it was bad news, but I was so in pain that I didn't care. And from the very first moment I tried it, I knew that was gonna be the end of me. I just knew it in my gut. And it sure enough, six months. Within six months, I was homeless. I had drug dealers after me, I had cops warrants for my arrest. I'm living in my car. Uh it was just a mess. Were the warrants from stealing? Uh no, I I didn't get into the stealing thing. It was possession distribution charges.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

And then once they catch you, it's like even seeing you, they're back in your pockets or they're they're searching your car. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:45

I was, I mean, it was it was a vicious cycle for a few months there. And there was this one particular, I'll I'll get to the big rock bottom. There's one particular guy, Crazy Cameron. He was not a drug dealer, he was the enforcer for the drug dealers when you didn't pay. Okay. And uh I got tangled up with this guy and he just had it out for me. He was a an ex-con, really scary guy, arms the size of both of my legs together. I know that's not saying much, but still pretty big arms. Yeah, beast. He was a meth addict, so just you know, meth and opioid. Wild man. We don't mix. And this guy just terrified me, and he had it out for me. Um, the debt I owed was minimal. I mean, it was minimal. But for some reason, uh he just did not like me. He's some probably college-educated kid, thought he could out I could outsmart him. You think you're better than me, type of thing. All of that stuff. And so he would um hunt me down. I'm living in my 99 Jeep Cherokee, bouncing around parking lots, and he would find me. He would, you know, tap on my window with a gun, take everything I owned, and then, you know, leave me. And that went on for a while. Finally, I'm like, I this this is just not working for me. I gotta, I gotta make a change.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

You gotta get away from Cameron.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Yeah. And and I knew I needed to sober up at this point. I'm like 42 years old. You know, all my friends are doing big things, getting married, having kids, starting businesses, and here I am living in my car. And so my grand plan was to drive to Portland and self-detox in the back of my car off of heroin. Off of heroin. And it was a hefty habit. I was using you know a couple of grams a day. Um what does that cost? I was selling it, so I don't even know. I mean, it was a couple hundred bucks at least, two two to two fifty a day. You know, I would buy it in big quantities, sell a little bit to feed my habit. And that's how I got in trouble with the drug dealers. Um, and so I put I had every I had everything I already owned was in my car because I was living in it, and I had my birth certificate, social security card, the title, everything. I drive to Portland, I got 50 bucks, half a tank of gas, I make it to the Walmart Troutdale parking lot, and I start this the self-detox process. And this was the pain I had never known. I mean, I knew that it was bad from the pills, but this was unbearable. By the fifth day, I'm praying to a God I didn't even believe in. I mean, I was an agnostic guy at best, didn't grow up in the church, had no real reverence for the spiritual whatsoever. But you need to find something. I'm like looking up, going, if if you're up there, either take me, because I don't I can't deal with this, it's too painful. And I couldn't see, I mean, I had so many barriers to get back, warrants in two different states, drug deals after me, no friends. My mom had put up boundaries, my brother put up boundaries, my dad's dead. Um I, after the fifth day of wanting to die, and I was I was actually suicidal. And for for those of you, I mean none of you know me, but I'm I'm a pretty positive, optimistic, extroverted guy, zeal for life is just my natural tendency. I wanted to die. I was thinking about which buildings in Portland did not have rails around the top so I could go and jump. I'm praying to the universe. That was my sense of a higher power. I just take me or show me a pathway out. So then on day five, I go into the bathroom, I'm throwing up, I'm stealing fruit from the produce section to try to sustain myself, and I decide I've got to get one more fix, right? Just one more.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yeah, which is wild that you're going through all that, but the mind is a tricky thing, you know, and it's like it'll convince you that we're just trying to not be sick, but really it's just gonna start you over. Yeah, I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_02 34:14

I couldn't do it. I mean, that was just plain and simple. And so I uh Facebook messaged a girl in Ben that I knew would bring me some dope. She said yes. I walk back out to my car three hours later, and guess who's in the back of my car with a gun? Crazy Cameron. And so did she rat you out to him then? I still don't know exactly how it happened. My guess is that he either he knew her or found me. I don't know. Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

And you being in the Troutdale Walmart, Troutdale Walmart parking lot just short of Gresham, he didn't have to travel far to find you. Three hours.

SPEAKER_02 34:47

No, he did.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Well, I know, but like if I'm gonna search those areas for a homeless guy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:53

I stood out like a sort of first, second, or third stop.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Yeah, and he knew the car. I mean, he shut me down a hundred times in the past. And so he gets in, he tells me to get in the start the car, start driving. I'm thinking I'm gonna run out of gas any minute, which might not have been a bad thing. And um, and I and I'm I'm honestly thinking this is it. Like he's either gonna kill me or worse, beat the crap out of me and leave me in a bloody pulp. Um and he's high as a kite, he's rambling crazy talk. He's telling me about this Jesus in the desert for 40 days, and I I mean a story I'd never heard, right? I didn't grow up in the church, didn't know anything about that. Then he says something to me that I'll never forget. He says, Don't worry, Lance, I'm not gonna hurt you. God told me, not this one, he has a plan for you, and you need to go to rehab and get your life together. Crazy Cameron said that? Yep. Oh my God. Now, again, in the moment, this didn't really register as significant at the time. I heard more of this wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. I need to get out of this car and get away from panicking. Yeah. And so long story short, he did he has me pull over in some part. Uh his goons that were following me, you know, they get out. He has me sign the title to him uh in that was in the glove box, takes my phone, takes my wallet. His buddies give me a shot of heroin in the neck took pity on me.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

In the neck.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

Something I swore I would never do. You know, as an addict, you say I'll never use needles, and then you use needles, and I'll never do it in my neck, and then you do it in your neck. They drove off, and I'm this is October 1st, 2018, which is my sobriety date to this day. And I'm standing there going, What just happened? And it was almost weirdly serene. There was a moment of brief serenity where I just knew in my gut that this was this was the rock bottom. I'm not willing to go any lower. I didn't know how what was gonna happen next or what to do. I have no ID, no money, no, you know, no phone. You're just standing in that parking lot. Yeah. I have no idea to this day where I was. And as he's driving off, that serenity quickly wore off. And as I started thinking logically, what am I gonna do? I had a panic attack and I woke up in the hospital. Kaiser permanente. My people, my drug dealer. So wait, when you do you know how you got to the hospital? Uh uh someone found me in uh unconscious, called an ambulance. And so you just panicked so much that you passed out. I guess that's what the nurse said. Uh we to this day, no clue. I'm sure my mind, trauma is a is an interesting thing. Yeah. And it can shut your brain down. You know, it's like shock. I just I passed out and I woke up in the hospital and they were checking me out and giving me drugs and all the things to make me comfortable. And I was milking it. I was like, ouch, ouch, ouch. And they're gonna be giving they were giving me Norcos. That's the crazy thing. They were in the hospital every four hours. How many do you want? One or two? Two, please. Yeah, like you're gonna say one. Right. After four days, though, they pick up on the fact that like this guy doesn't want to leave. So a social worker came in. Her name is Monica, never forget, and she says, Hey, are you do you have a place to go? We got to discharge you today. And we get the sense that something's going on. And I was like, Yeah, I'm homeless for the first time. I admitted it. I asked for help, and she gave me a voucher. I actually have one. I know we're on here, but I've got to do it. Oh, we got a camera. Yeah, I got these are the uh shelter vouchers to City Team Portland. So I she wrote me out and she said, This is uh take this to the shelter, they will give you a bed. And uh that that I have that the actual one she gave me framed in my office. That's that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

It's kind of like Scrooge McDuck's first dollar, you know, or the magic dime, the dime or whatever it was.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

It's the most significant piece of paper in my life, more important than my college degree.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Absolutely, it is. And because what you're about to embark on is something that, like I mentioned at the very beginning, some people truly don't believe is possible. And, you know, the you hear heroin addiction and meth addiction, you're like, oh, that we've lost them. You know, because like alcoholic, you bring them back all the time from it, even though it's just as dangerous. It's these drugs. And I think that even especially in an intelligent guy like you, as you're laying there and you're kind of manipulating them to stay in a hospital, you know that Norcos aren't gonna cut it. I'm gonna get sick. This is and I all my problems are still here.

SPEAKER_02 39:10

I'll give you some statistics. Because you brought this up alcoholism, 20 to 25% success rate of recovery nationally. Meth amphetamines, about 10% success rate. That's long-term surprise five, six, seven years. Opioids? Three percent. Three percent success rate.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

And that's so scary.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

It is.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Are you thinking that this is this is it? Or do you think you've turned you're gonna turn a corner here, or are you just hoping?

SPEAKER_02 39:39

I I at this point that the the shift had happened that I surrendered. I knew I didn't know how to live life. As a 42-year-old college-educated guy from a well-off family, the one piece of evidence that was true is I just did not know how to manage my own life. And I had a problem. So when I got to the shelter, I was willing to do whatever it took to get out of this. And so um, I get in line, there's there's the houseless line of people outside five o'clock waiting to check in. And, you know, I I walk in and there's two groups. There's the houseless people, which I was a member of, and then there was another group of guys that were kind of rutting the place. They were doing the check-ins, cooking the meals, cleaning the bathrooms, making the beds, and they they still looked a little rough around the edges, but they had newer shoes and and combed hair, right? Yeah, and something about that. Yeah, they were just they they they were they were different. And eventually one of them came up to me and was like, hey man, you you you you look like you could use some help. Can we help you? We got this program here. You can move upstairs, help us run the place. You live here for free for a year, we'll help you get sober and help you get a job. And all I heard was you can live here for free for a year. And I said, Sign me up.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

Yeah, whatever it takes.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

Whatever it takes, I didn't care. And I didn't know it was faith-based. I didn't know, you know, I had no idea was that what I was getting into, but I had an open mind. That was the key. I knew that my all the ego was gone and it was just gone. I I proven to myself and the world that I could not manage my own life. And that was, I think that's the the most important thing in addiction is you got to get to a rock bottom where you you're done being the boss of your life, right? And this group of guys was incredible. They they came around me, they loved on me. I at first I, you know, I didn't college educated guy, I was probably the only guy in the building with a college degree, but we all shared the bond of addiction.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

And swallowing your pride is part of it, right? Like it's so hard to say, I need help. And like I'm a prideful guy, just like the next guy. And like, you know, there's been times in my life where I'm like, oh, you were probably drinking a little bit too much there, or oh yeah, the the pharmaceutical super ride, everybody touched everybody. But I always like just prayed in my mind that if I ever reached that point that I could say that I needed the help. Now I never got there. I never got to that, but I just and I don't know if I would still be too prideful, you know, and that's what scares me. And so when I hear someone like you who is from an affluent background and you've you've tasted the greatness of things, and now you're with a bunch of homeless people and addicts, and you have to say, I'm one of you. Yes. Not like, oh, I'm here on accident. Yeah. Because that's not going to bring you back.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Yeah. Yeah. And it was important. I I had to, I had to hit that point. And I see it now as the executive director. I can tell in five minutes of meeting, in 30 seconds of meeting with someone if they've hit their rock bottom or not. And it's heartbreaking because oftentimes they're not ready yet and they'll have to bounce back through the system over and over.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

And they're like, Well, no, I'm ready. You're like, no, you're not. You're not. There's there's more action to be had here. So what I do want to get into, though, is you know, you don't just use the program and then retreat into the darkness. This becomes a not just a part of you, this becomes uh a career and a mission. Calling. And I I I want to get into exactly how that happened. Yeah. The Fit for Radio podcast brought to you by Moto Sport Hillsboro. And I've been talking about their electric mountain bikes that are so legit. If you want to get on one today, there's never gonna be a better price. It's right now $2,199. That's $3,000 off of the gas-gased G Light Trail 2.0, and it's for the person who wants to get out and actually hit the trails. You'll go places you never thought you could get to. And if you're like me, where you're getting a little bit older and you still want to go shred it up, uh, that electric assist is exactly what you need. Lightweight frame, powerful motor, and built for the trails. They bought up the inventory to bring the savings to you. Motorsporthillsboro.com, the hardest place you'll love to find. Also brought to you by the Stafford Hills Club. I talk about it all the time, and it's one of the easiest things for me to speak on. They've got an amazing saltwater pool. The grill opening shortly here. The classes. My wife loves the classes and it gives her a little bit of a break and a reprieve from her duties as a mother. Let's be honest, we all get a little burnout. We get a little tired from time to time. So the kids' club a chance to work on yourself and maybe just relax and have a coffee over by the fireplace in the cafe. It's all got something for everyone. Also a premier tennis facility. Check them out today, staffordhills.com and tell them that Drew sent you for half a month of your initiation. So explain it to me. How do you go from resident to director? Yes, great question.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

So I w when I was when I graduated the program, so year-long residential, faith-based 12-step program, I I started becoming really fascinated with the Portland landscape. I was seeing policies and things, you know, I was meeting um uh politicians and it was restrained. It were like coming into my life almost like, you know, uh coincidentally, and I would see these policies that didn't line up with my lived experience. I remember thinking, like, that's not gonna help anyone, that's gonna enable someone and keep them in their addiction longer. And it was like it was so evident to me that the landscape just didn't line up with the housing first model, the harm reduction model. And I know all these are really well-intended philosophies, and they can be successful for some forms of homelessness. But man, they in my experience, it just I I became fascinated with the whole landscape of policy. So um, yeah, I started meeting with politicians and learning who was doing what, met other executive directors. Um, I I was asked to become the executive director after about a year and a half of doing some other development work for another nonprofit. Um, it did a thing under the Burnside Bridge called night strike every Thursday night. It was outreach working with the houses, giving them some media services and then helping them find shelter. And it's actually really cool. If you ever want to check out something wild and different, come down 7 30 p.m. under the Burnside Bridge on the west side on a Thursday night. Every Thursday. Every Thursday. 47 weeks out of the year. We don't have it this week because it's fleet week and all the ships. Oh, yeah. Other than that, every and it's where I met my wife and like a huge piece of my my world today. I'm still there every Thursday. Nice. I'll come check it out. Yeah. But I just I remember so when when City Team meeted a new director, they tapped me. I was there, I was volunteering, I was mentoring, sponsoring guys, and it was just post-pandemic, so the streets were a mess. You know, they weren't enforcing any drug laws. Measure 110 happened. We decriminalized drugs on the street, and um the capacity for treatment was such a huge need. And when I came in, I just said, look, I looked at these policies that didn't line up with my lived experience, and I just said, I'm gonna do everything I can to get as many people into treatment through City Team and others that are doing residential recovery programs, because I really think that the key to the segment of the population of homelessness that is related to addiction, which I believe is bigger than what most people think it is. And we know from Medicaid data that at least half our 14, 15,000 people that are homeless right now have co-occurring substance use disorder andor mental health issues.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

We just know that as yeah, and a lot of them are using these substances to try and help them with their mental health stuff, and it's a vicious circle. Right. Or causing or bad, you know, it's just a big mess of it.

SPEAKER_02 47:27

You never know if it's chicken or the egg on that. Exactly. And so um I believe that residential community-based recovery programs, whether they're faith-based, non-faith-based, as long as there's community and people are healing together, because addiction is a a disease of isolation, right? And as long as you're in community and you're working together and you've got time to heal from all the wounds for me, processing the loss of my father, the divorce, the embezzlement from my stepmom, like healing, all of that stuff had to happen for me to stay sober. And then the final key, of course, is service. Like you've got to be of service. And City Team is my way of giving back. And so we built in the last two, I've been there four years as director, we've added a women and kids program, purchased a brand new building in St. John's. We've built bought a new building in Old Town, created a 110-bed recovery campus. I saw that. Yeah, really cool. Awesome project. 30-bed emergency shelters, second floor long-term recovery program. And then what we added beyond that is a third floor of long-term sober living for graduates. So we no longer have to exit people after they graduate. They can stay, live with us for another year, year and a half, save money, work on that credit score, all the things that's required to get back to system.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

Yeah, because if you just push them back out the door, they run into those hardships again. And then what's the first thing we use is our crutch. That's right. And if you and even if you're like living inside, having a hard time, you're like, oh, well, maybe I'll just use a little bit because I'm nervous or I, you know, I don't know what my future is. Being able to stay up there on that third floor is kind of like, well, I you also, it's self-governing, as in, I don't want to get kicked out of here. I don't want to do anything to jeopardize my progress, so I'm not going to use.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

And I had a lot of advantages that most of our men and women don't have college degree, some life experience and successes in the past, a resume that, you know, I I can it's easier for me to get a job than most. And so I wanted to make sure that we had that second layer of just runway of for people to get that credit score up and just find the time to, you know, find the job and we can work with you and workforce development programs and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

And also for you, one of the advantages you had, even though there were boundaries set during your active addiction, that there's kind of a door left ajar for you. If you get your life together, maybe your brother, maybe your mom, maybe your stepmom are all gonna come back to you if you can prove it.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Yeah, and that was that that they had to shut that door down for me. That was that's important because had they continued to enable and help and give me money and hotel rooms and couches to crash on, I never would have made it to City Team. So they had to put up those tough boundaries, and that's a big thing we see in Portland right now is the enabling. So much enabling. So we're giving people housing, rapid rehousing while they're in active addiction with no requirements to seek treatment. And that just doesn't work. It doesn't work. I mean, I believe that housing is a human right for everyone, but when you're knee deep in addiction, you've got to get people the help that they need, or otherwise housing's just gonna, you know, and we're seeing it right now. It's a these apartment buildings are getting destroyed. And um, anyway, so I uh dedicated my life to helping those that are ready and when they're ready. And um, it's just uh like you said in the beginning, this was not the pathway I would have chosen for myself when I was sitting down with my college guidance counselor. What do you want to do when you grow up? You know, this is not what I saw for myself. I wanted to be a Silicon Valley executive, just like my dad, right? Yeah. But here's kind of the crazy twist of fate. City team's headquarters is in San Jose, California. So technically, I am a Silicon Valley executive, just not the way that I thought it was going to be.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

But also, it kind of it's hard to say it needed to happen this way because that you didn't deserve to go through everything that you went through. But if you hadn't, then it this wouldn't happen. I wouldn't change a thing. Kind of what my thought process is on the whole thing is it's like the Missoula flood thing. You know, the Missoula floods, if you're living in it where a giant ice shell falls off and floods the entire western part of the country, it's pretty frightening and horrific. But what it does is it builds beauty, right? Right. And if you look at the gorge, you look at any of these beautiful landscapes that are formed by such a flood, you kind of look at yourself as that. You know, like you were a you were barreling down a mountain at one point and wrecking everything in your way. But if you hadn't gone through that, we wouldn't have the beauty that we're kind of seeing today. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

Yeah, and the purpose and calling that comes from such an experience, the crazy Cameron thing. I mean, it's brought me into my faith, it's given me a a career that, you know, I get to be of service for the rest of my life, which in turn keeps me sober. Yes. So yeah, it's been pretty special.

SPEAKER_01 52:14

So with the crazy Cameron, I'm dying to know. Did you you you let or last time you saw him was when he robbed you blind at uh at Walmart and then took you to the middle of nowhere and left you for dead. What uh when jabbed heroin into your neck?

SPEAKER_02 52:28

Was that the last time you ever saw him? No, so there were two more incidences, and this is kind of crazy. So 90 days into City Team, right? I'm I'm the drugs are out of my system, I'm feeling better. Except I started thinking about Crazy Cameron in that last day, and I started thinking about my Jeep. And I was like, man, that son of a bitch owes me a Jeep, right? And I I mean, I obsessed about it for three days. I'm like, you know what? When I get out of here, I'm I'm coming after this guy. I'm gonna get my Jeep back. Sanctification is a very long, slow process. Yeah. So I devised this vengeance plan. I'm gonna reach out to him on Facebook and let him know that I'm coming, right? 90 days in and sobriety. I've I've changed a lot since then. Yeah, yeah. So I log on to Facebook, and sure enough, he's online. I see in Messenger, a little green line, and I'm thinking, I got this guy. And right as I was about to start typing my ridiculous I'm coming after you plan, it hit me. I mean, almost like an audible voice in my head, what he said to me, Lance, I'm not gonna hurt you. Don't worry. God told me, not this one, he has a plan for you. You need to go to rehab and get your life together. And that was the moment I realized, I don't know about how all this God and angelic possession or whatever that I do believe that God used him to let me know that I was gonna be okay. And so instead of saying, I'm coming after you, I said, Thank you for what you did. I'm in a treatment program, 90 days sober, you can have my Jeep. And he was like, Wow, proud of you. And then I deleted him and blocked him. Yeah, you can't be around people like that in the end. But here's the kicker. Six years later, right? I'm doing this exact testimony that I'm doing with you right now in front of a group at the Moltenham Athletic Club, group of business guys. And afterwards, one of the guys comes up to me, he's like, Have you ever thought about reaching out to Crazy Cameron and seeing, you know, maybe you could help him? And I was like, Look, this is not a guy you invite back into your life. But yeah, if God wants to bring him back, I will open that, I will let that door, let him open that door the next morning. I'm on Facebook with my wife, drinking coffee Saturday morning, and guess who messages me? No way. Cameron Avery. And he's like, Hey, is this the Lance from Ben that I stole your Jeep? If so, I'd like to make amends. So we get on the phone and he shares his story, and my we we reminisce about the whole thing, and he's sober six years, he's got his kids back, he's working down in Albany, helping guys transitioning out of prison. He's got his own wild story. Yeah. But just that kind of bond of the experience together was just wild.

SPEAKER_01 54:52

That's amazing. I maybe I'm gonna have to get Cameron on. He's got a story.

SPEAKER_02 54:56

I bet he does. He's got a story.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

That is incredible. And it shows that, you know, whether it's meth, heroin, there is a way back for you. Um, you know, and and I think it's smart to to alienate yourself from those things that were in your old life, you know, aside from maybe checking in on Cameron. Um, a guy who came on recently who was addicted to methamphetamine, didn't leave his house for 10 months at one point. He balloomed up to 350 pounds. And he said his whole thing was if you hang out at a barbershop long enough, you're gonna get a haircut. That's true. And it's the same thing with drugs and bad influences, and and you know, anytime you don't want to do something, hanging out with people who do want to do that it is inevitable. That's true. Especially if you have an addictive personality or you're just a slave to a good time, like some of us have been throughout our lives. Um, so I think you're you're doing amazing work. I want to know what um what's the plan moving forward, and I want to know what people can do to help who uh think that you're on an awesome path and and want to do something themselves. Yeah, great question.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

So I have just completed four years as director. City team just completed these incredible expansion projects. I'm getting ready to take a little mini sabbatical this summer. So literally in 16 days, I will be headed to France and I'm gonna walk the Camino de Santiago for 30 days. It's a pilgrimage across Spain, 500 miles with a backpack. 500 miles. 500 miles. Why didn't we lead with that? That I mean, that's impressive. You know, it's just a way to celebrate uh what God has done in my life and explore what is next for both me and for City Team Portland. Um, of course, my wife will join me at the tail end and we'll spend another couple of weeks in Italy. Awesome. Um, but I think that um whatever is next, it will continue to focus on helping those that want to walk out of addiction, using my story and lived experience to help revitalize Portland, be there for the policymakers that have questions. Our leaders are starting to listen. We have a mayor that is paying attention to the things that aren't working. We have an upcoming county election, the county chair. Most people don't know this. The Multanoma County Chair is the most powerful position in the city of Portland when it comes to mental health and drug addiction. They control the budget, they can they are the mental health authority of our city. So pay attention in November. If you want to know who to vote for, let me know. I won't say it on here, but let me know because it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 57:19

Okay. And we want to make sure, and I think everybody really wants the same thing. You know, and I think some people want to be uh, let's say that you've got a more of a strategy. Some people are just kind of scorched earth with it, but we all want the same thing. We want people to be off the street, we want people to get the help they need, and we want people to be able to enjoy the city. That's right. Right? Like all those things are important, and and it doesn't have to be one or the other. And so I think I know that you're doing incredible stuff, and it's it's one of those things where other people see what you do and it it gains momentum. You get other people on board. How how do other people get on board with you to help your mission?

SPEAKER_02 57:59

Yeah, you can find me. I'm easy to find. You Google me, LinkedIn, Lance Orton, or city team.org slash Portland. I'm there. We've got all kinds of volunteer opportunities. Nightstrike on Thursdays is incredible. Um, yeah, easy to find. Reach out, love to chat.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Awesome. And one thing I will uh leave people with as well is you've done a lot of other things with it, like health, wellness, fitness. Um, you're going on this massive 500 mile spirit journey. Yeah. Um, and you know, like you used a lot of things like hot yoga and and different endurance things running in order to scratch the itch, right? Yep. And I think it's important. You don't have to not feel and you don't have to be bored, you know. And so many people think, oh, my life's over. That's who I was. And and you know, I've got buddies who entered sobriety and they they told me, they're like, I was, I was drunk Brian. Or, you know, like I I was I was party boy. And I guess the moral of when somebody changes who they are in that fashion is you don't have to be drunk Brian, or you don't have to be that degenerate. You could be a new version of yourself that people are totally okay with. You are what you constantly do. And if you constantly are hammered, of course you're drunk Brian. But if you're constantly doing great things, people see you in a completely different light. And I'm just so proud of what you've done. And it's been an honor to sit down here with you today, Lance. And uh I hope that people take the time to check out City Team Portland and see what they can do to help. Thank you, Drew. Pleasure being here. Cheers.