Sharing Our Stories - Dustin Chavez

[00:00:00] The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the following program belong solely to

[00:00:04] the host and guest and do not necessarily reflect those of this radio station, our parent

[00:00:09] company, advertisers, or affiliates.

[00:00:11] Welcome to Sharing Our Stories.

[00:00:12] We share stories of support for individuals in recovery from substance misuse and mental

[00:00:17] health-related issues.

[00:00:18] There are numerous pathways to recovery, and each week we welcome powerful leaders and

[00:00:22] role models who have struggled in drug and or alcohol addiction, have found a pathway Welcome to the program. It's nice to have Tomas back from Vegas. Yes sir. He's building me up. A two state Superman now. Man, man, I wouldn't know about Superman, but I'm in two states. Two states. We gotta take a moment here for Nani. Nani, who every week is on our program, she's here, she sits here,

[00:01:40] and people that watch the program

[00:01:42] and some that listen that know she's here go,

[00:01:44] does Nani ever talk?

[00:01:46] Mm-hmm.

[00:01:46] No, never.

[00:01:48] Does Nani they're like a one-two punch now

[00:03:02] so I'm excited to hear his story to put a lot of the time it was me and Dan that cooked the turkeys. That's awesome. So that's our thing, we just, with hobbies helped this last couple years. Did you just go out on Thanksgiving? Yeah, well, we go out a week before Thanksgiving and we get up that morning before, so we stay up all night and cook everything, then we sleep in shifts, make sure everything's set up,

[00:04:21] then get it over to the center now and plate it,

[00:04:25] make sure it's wrapped good,

[00:04:26] and then we just go out there. If you are homeless with a radio right now, probably not a common. Let you know we had a llama park. You know what I mean? Or be on the lookout these next two couple of weeks for our beautiful faces, because we'll be handing out flyers all over the place. You know, I love a man who says, My Beautiful Face, Our Beautiful Faces. Come on, my man.

[00:05:41] That's wonderful.

[00:05:44] Our Beautiful Faces.

[00:05:45] Mahai, let's get right to this

[00:05:47] with Mr. Our Beautiful Faces here. and treatment companies out there like I like to give a shout out to Hazelbrook with Gino and everybody out there you know sharing with Aurora Sober Living many many more that's out there that a car certified it and that's Colorado Agency of Recovery Residences they're gonna have their big thing in the next couple of days and it's uh if it wasn't for recovery homes for people like us

[00:07:01] sitting at the table I don't think we'd be sitting at the table you know what I

[00:07:04] mean there's just some type of halfway house recovery home situation so that and Nani so we can get that information out so people can eat. You know what I mean? It's the holidays. We want people to reach you. Yeah, you can reach me at nani at triberecoveryhomes.com. Thank God I didn't have to spell that. Right. And OHNIE. Oh my God. No, you're good. You can reach me, I'm a co-worker, at dustin at triberecoveryhomes.com.

[00:08:22] Let's get Dustin going here.

[00:08:24] Dustin, this is your show.

[00:08:25] This is your program to share with everybody. Our guest today for sharing our stories is Dustin Chavez from Fort Lupton, Colorado. What's up everybody, how you doing? Good man, welcome, welcome. All right, so let's see where to start. I think I'm going to go ahead and start back when I was a kid. I definitely had a lot of issues growing up.

[00:09:40] I had a lot of family issues.

[00:09:42] Had a rough relationship with my father. Growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. My dad got a good job later on down the road and we didn't struggle too bad, but when I was younger, going to school with all the secondhand clothes and seeing everybody that was there with all the good clothes, that's kind of how that started. So I ended up starting to sell Coke. And when I was younger, that was the thing. I was like 13 years old and I started diving into that.

[00:11:00] And we always had a rule, like I called it my family,

[00:11:04] but it was, you can sell it, but you can't do it, right?

[00:11:07] So that was the taboo part. He's like come on. Yeah, it's a matter. We all like what's wrong with you don't even have Okay, so I Believe it was a breakup and I remember going over to my one of my good friends He was my best friend when I was younger

[00:12:20] I'm not gonna throw any names out there

[00:12:21] But I used to sell coke to his dad and that was one of our things

[00:12:25] I mean You tried to get the TV back. Okay, we move on. No, you know what? No, no, we'll talk to her real quick. Cause I did. At that point, I tried to get the TV back until I saw something else to take. Go get some work back. That's how that went away. That's just real talk. Yeah, we were 13 years old. Yeah, so 13 years old, I got introduced to crack and I started smoking it. And it was a recreational thing at that time, right?

[00:13:41] Like I didn't get addicted right away,

[00:13:43] but it was a good feeling.

[00:13:44] And then after that, like that whole, you know,

[00:13:46] sell it, but don't do it rule became a non-existent, right? You were the Mexican version the second down did they like leave out of speed just Take out the oh the right Yeah And then I ended up walking in on my baby's mom and her new boyfriend having sex when I came home from work, right? And after that, I broke up with her, I couldn't do it. Even though we had it like she was pregnant and we had our daughter and her name is Aria and I got permission to say her name.

[00:16:20] I got a good story about that right now.

[00:16:22] So we ended up fighting.

[00:16:27] I ended up taking off my sister's balcony, me and my brothers, and I landed on Cinderblock,

[00:17:40] and I remember that day very vividly

[00:17:42] because it hurt so bad,

[00:17:43] and it was probably like one of the only few times

[00:17:45] that I'd ever drank.

[00:17:46] I'm not an alcoholic,

[00:17:47] but I'll do every other drug in the book. That's a crazy thing that we deal with in this field is like everybody just says because it's legal It's okay. And we're like man. It don't matter if it's legal. Yeah, he's messing you up Like this the law enforcement has nothing to do with it. It's funny that we're saying that because we're tribe members

[00:19:04] But as far as the addiction part of it is So I started doing these pills, right? And at this time, like I'm doing good. You know, my family's kind of back in my life. I actually have a new relationship now and thinking about going back to get my daughter, my oldest daughter. And, but at this time I've been away for like four years. And so her and her new husband approached me with,

[00:20:22] will you sign your rights away so that he can adopt her?

[00:20:25] Right?

[00:20:26] I didn't want to do it.

[00:20:27] I didn't want to do it for different prescriptions. Like I got Vicodin here, I'm gonna get Oxycodone over here and I'm gonna get morphine over here. And I had those prescriptions and so I'm doing them. I lose my job because I started becoming addicted, can't show up to work. But then I started realizing that, oh, I can make money. I can make money off these pills, right? And so now my old addiction and now my old behaviors are starting to come up

[00:21:41] because it's like, okay, now I can feed my addiction.

[00:21:43] All I gotta do is turn around and sell these things.

[00:21:45] And so like, yeah, I'm glad that, I mean, there's a lot of things I'm not gonna sit here and like, you know what, I'm not gonna incriminate myself, but there's a lot of things that I could have gotten trouble for that I never did. There was one time. Yeah, there was one time, right?

[00:23:00] But anyway, so, and at this time, like,

[00:23:03] my mind is so messed up and I could not even show up to court to sign my rights away, so I called my lawyer and I gave permission for her to do it and I didn't even show up to court that day. And I dove myself into the next relationship

[00:24:22] trying to replace just that heartache

[00:24:25] and at the same time, and mind you,

[00:24:27] so like all this drug use that I had anymore, right? I don't have the drive that I used to have. And so the cat comes out of the bag and she's like, yeah, no, you got a problem. And I didn't want to admit it. And so I start going crazy. And now in my mind, I'm like, no, hell no. I'm not gonna let my, I'm not gonna let my son, and I'm not gonna let what happened to my daughter with me happen to my son in me, right?

[00:25:41] And it's crazy because the same exact story happened.

[00:25:44] I come home from actually trying to,

[00:25:46] like I wasn't trying to get clean And so I was able to kind of kick back a little bit. And then I started realizing that I had the problem with the opiates. And so I never- So you were up and down. Always, up and down all the time. So what does that look like for you? Like, you know what I mean?

[00:27:01] Were you up most of the time and down?

[00:27:03] How did that affect you?

[00:27:04] Well, I don't know how to explain it.

[00:27:06] I know I'm different though, didn't fit her lifestyle, right? And I was full go into that lifestyle. So she left, she up and left me with my son at my parents house. Like I had nowhere to go. I wasn't paying the bills at the house. So we moved out of the house. She dropped my son off while I was staying with my parents house. Cause I had to move back with them. Cause we were splitting up and she was with that new dude. And so they took off and they took off to Seattle

[00:28:21] and she was there for like a month.

[00:28:24] And I had my son for about a month and I had to like,

[00:28:27] I knew it.

[00:28:28] I was like, okay, well You know, I don't want to live, I don't want to be here no more. So I started going downhill bad. Like I started manipulating my family, talking about taking their air conditioner and their TV. Just air conditioning.

[00:29:40] Just air conditioning.

[00:29:41] Bad, bro.

[00:29:42] Oh, dude, it wasn't.

[00:29:43] In the summertime, bro.

[00:29:44] Yes, it was.

[00:29:45] When it was hot, we know.

[00:29:47] No, no, okay, no, Because it was a long, it was a long, it was a long chorus, right? We always had this little closet that we would go into. The tough guys, by the way, the tough guys are always the lovers, okay? Yeah, but you know, everybody, Slim has been in this industry probably one of the longest standing, besides Tony that's here, you know, we got world class, the heart of Denver

[00:31:02] in this radio station,

[00:31:03] but Slim has been around every rapper up to down

[00:31:07] in this Metro Denver area. all of me and my brothers and sister, we would all, this was our spot to go have our private conversation, right? It was so not private because it's a piece of drywall. It was right next to the living room, right? So I would go in there and I would sit there and sing to my girlfriends these songs that I would write. And my whole family would be saying, all right, seriously. I think my first one was like,

[00:32:21] I think I remade the On Bended Knee.

[00:32:23] I don't remember exactly how it went,

[00:32:27] but it was pretty funny though. And I remember, long story short, I ended up manipulating my way onto a Latino festival in Scottsbluff, Nebraska where baby bash Amanda Perez lighter shaded brown Bobby when he was alive. Rest in peace, rest in peace, rest in peace. That's a little Chicano town right there. And so I remember I was dating this girl and I went out there to go see her.

[00:33:41] And to be honest with you, I went out there to go hide out because I owed some people

[00:33:45] some money.

[00:33:46] So I took off.

[00:33:47] And I, anyway, it was called Who Da Thought, right? Me and my brother, we called Who Da Thought. I dragged my brother into this too, so. Yeah. I was just kidding, I did. Well, okay, so my brother's a really good dancer, right? And everybody's always told us that me and my brother were not made for a little town, the little town that we came from. So we took that around with it, bro. And my brother can dance, dude.

[00:35:00] Like, I swear if you put him on,

[00:35:01] like that's so you think you can dance,

[00:35:03] I guarantee he might not have won it,

[00:35:05] but he would have been up there.

[00:35:06] They all noticed.

[00:35:07] Yeah, they would have been, yeah.

[00:35:08] He was talented. and kind of like somebody that I looked up to and just being able to like hear him speak and he's a very grounded person and he's actually very like, yeah. He's very anti-drug, very pro weed, but very anti-drug and anti-alcohol too. I didn't notice that, because SPM used to come up here all the time

[00:36:20] and we'd get loaded and baby Vash would be like, I'm cool.

[00:36:23] Yeah, and so one of around, right? And so, you know, like, it comes out of the bag, right? And then not only that, but we're doing a show and then my probation officer sees me with some drugs in my hand on a picture that was posted on Facebook that I was tagged in. And so now I got them threatened to throw me in prison for that F6, by the way.

[00:37:40] No, yeah, it was crazy.

[00:37:42] And now they know about all this.

[00:37:44] So basically, like I was exposed.

[00:37:46] So like one of the greatest things in my life I was so good at just talking my way into everything, but I had no follow through, right? I had no follow through. And so I ended up meeting this other girl. Well, actually before that, so during all this, when everything's going downhill, I end up, what you doing down there, bro?

[00:39:01] Don't worry, I'm back, I'm back.

[00:39:02] I'm back.

[00:39:05] That's tight.

[00:39:06] Anyway, I end up, so to shelter my daughter from that, but she never kept her away from me either. She was smart enough to not let me around my daughter when I was too far gone, but that was hard, right? And believe it or not, that kind of drove me into addiction even more because now I had my daughter, but it made me start thinking about how much I miss my other two kids, right?

[00:40:20] And I was fine all the way up until I had that back

[00:40:23] in my life, right?

[00:40:24] Then it started making me miss that.

[00:40:25] So I started going downhill real quick.

[00:41:23] you got it going on this long, you probably had a couple albums, you had a little bit of a career to it and you kind of messed it up.

[00:41:26] So would you say it was a hustle or would you say that the drugs, you could have been

[00:41:30] a whole lot better without the drugs.

[00:41:33] You could have made it to something because I mean, a guy like Baby Bash is giving you

[00:41:36] some shine.

[00:41:37] I mean, he's a pretty hard judge to get on that stage with, you know what I mean?

[00:41:41] So you had some talent there.

[00:41:42] So, you know, I just wanted to her for a year and a half, broke her heart, she couldn't trust me anymore. And so as I'm sitting here trying to get clean, it's not working. I end up going to prison over that charge because I'm falling apart. I'm trying to do some boxing. I'm trying to get all these things together. And just nothing's working for me, right? Because I've created such this chaos in my life that I have no avenue to go and I'm still trying to maintain a relationship,

[00:43:01] which is impossible, right?

[00:43:03] And so fast forward, I get out of prison,

[00:43:06] we try to work it back Street and it's rough, dude. Stout Street's rough, but I love you, Stout Street. I give you my props, this is my greatest of Stout Street. Love you guys, everybody over there, Stout Street. You do a tough program. No, it's a tough program. It's a tough program, but they got it together. They do, you know, and it's a great program. And like, I'll tell you what, Stout Street saved my life.

[00:44:20] Mine too.

[00:44:21] It didn't, it stayed, it didn't.

[00:44:23] You know, at the end of the day,

[00:44:24] it brought me to where I am right now.

[00:44:25] It gave me the tools that I needed to get here.

[00:44:28] They get a lot of props right out here. only and it didn't work. And when I realized that I was already too deep in, right? And you know, so now I'm shooting up. Now I'm using the needle. I got scars and everything all over my arm and I'm going downhill and I'm using every drug in the book. I got this point, it's not what do you do? It's what you got, you know? And I didn't care what it was. I was putting it in my body. I did not want to live.

[00:45:40] I was literally trying to die.

[00:45:42] I got arrested.

[00:45:43] I manipulated my way out of things just

[00:45:45] and because COVID hit, nobody was getting arrested.

[00:45:48] Nobody was going to jail, right? I got people following me, now I got feds following me, now I'm in part of a big ring and whatnot, however that goes. And I got really blessed. I'm not gonna really talk too much more about it. But I ended up getting arrested one night. My thing was, we never stopped, and that was so dangerous

[00:47:00] because the drugs and everything in my life

[00:47:01] had led me to a point where I didn't care

[00:47:04] if I was running from the cops or who I put in danger,

[00:47:06] or who was around, and I didn't care.

[00:47:07] I wasn't stopping, we accept me back again, right? And they do, by the grace of God, they accept me back. And there's a, you know, I gotta give a shout out to Carly at girls, she works in the outreach over there

[00:48:20] at Stout Street and that girl,

[00:48:21] that team fought for me to get there.

[00:48:23] They fought and they showed up court and they guaranteed.

[00:48:26] It's not easy.

[00:48:27] Not easy to go back after you leave. like jack somebody for their car, that would be a crime against a person, right? So they were letting us out. We were out, we were running amok, and it was almost like we were unstoppable, right? And like I said, it's to a fault. And so I end up getting into Stout Street. I had to manipulate the judge because nobody was gonna bond me out. Nobody could afford these bonds.

[00:49:40] Every single bond that I had was like $50,000 and up, right?

[00:49:42] And realistically, there's nobody in my family

[00:49:45] or anybody that could even cover that with equity or anything. is upon, like, I had to go, like, with the condition that I would be released to Stout Street. So they would have to come pick me up and I would have to be there. And now I'm, like, heavy stipulated, right? But I'm also not even sentenced yet. So I'm in Stout Street and this is something that Stout Street doesn't do, right? Like, you're supposed to be sentenced and ready to go before they even accept you. I don't know how this all worked out, but we worked it out, right?

[00:51:00] And so I'm in-

[00:51:01] And we do that.

[00:51:02] Yeah, well we, yeah, Tribe does that.

[00:51:04] We got you, we gonna help you.

[00:51:05] We gonna come on through. how to help people and how to do these kind of things. And I got really into it. And then I ended, Stough Street ends up not working out for me. I'm not going to say anything because I'm not trying to speak bad on Stough Street. Right? You already said that. Oh, me too. I must speak to you too, but it saved our lives. Yeah, it saved our lives. You know, and I learned out the street the same way. Yeah. So I'm not in hell at a Stough Street. So I ended up, I was made to leave Stough Street, right?

[00:52:20] I was told I could go back in a certain amount of time.

[00:52:23] And so my thought was, I don't know where to go.

[00:52:25] You know, I have nowhere to go.

[00:52:27] I'm in the middle shout out to Boomer, Joseph P. Yeah, he's actually a graduate firm. And Corey Beach. And Corey Beach, yeah. Dirty Corey Beach. Dirty Corey. Anyway, they're very recovery friendly, right? And so when I told him that I was getting in the tribe and I was not gonna be able to

[00:53:40] do anything for two weeks because we have a stabilization period, he was like, no, absolutely,

[00:53:44] go do that and then you got a job when was working with, that I created that fellowship. Now I had another fellowship that I was building with all these other fine gentlemen. We dream together, man. It doesn't work.

[00:55:00] It doesn't work.

[00:55:00] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:01] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:02] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:03] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:04] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:05] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:05] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:06] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:07] But it doesn't work.

[00:55:08] But it doesn't work. inspiration not giving up yeah swallowing your pride knocking on your brother's door getting on that phone I remember when I got kicked out of Stouts Street my dad was like you got to get out of here cuz your mom's gonna kill you yeah you know what I mean and my mom was gonna actually give me a room I in the good room I wouldn't take a bed I slept on the couch until I figured out where I was gonna go next yeah you know I wouldn't take a bed I had to go

[00:56:22] to a program and that's what I was doing I told my brother when I knocked on the

[00:56:26] door I said look I just need a week know what I mean? To be promoting, I was like, who's this guy? And then I heard one, two, and then Nonny was like, please just go talk to Melissa. And I went to talk to Melissa and she's the hardest crowd on earth. And she goes, I love him. I hired him yesterday, I'll go, well, too late. All right, cool. You know what I mean?

[00:57:40] And what's great about, you just saw passion, man.

[00:57:43] Like what I hear in your story is

[00:57:46] you didn't understand your passion and in love Alcohol, let me throw some dope cuz it's all about me me me me me me me It's never about you. It's never about the situation. It's never about Anything healthy, but when you get into recovery and what I love about your story is you figured out how to take that passion That intent that love that respect for yourself and build around it, you know, we can you know and and

[00:59:01] Everybody listening, you know, you don't get things back overnight. So we ain't gonna lie to you

[00:59:05] No, I know you don't I ain't seen my kids since he was two years old

[01:00:07] nobody else. Turn yourself in. Turn yourself in. And it's always usually around mental health and drugs. Sober people don't go out and kill people very often. It's all about

[01:00:14] that passion and intent and it's all about that heartbreak and not us knowing how to

[01:00:18] self-regulate ourselves and how to be okay with loss and how to be okay with not having

[01:00:23] love and how to be okay with people walking away from us and not agreeing with us and And I'm working two jobs, but it's gonna be one job because I'm devoting all my time to this. But you got the energy to work two jobs. I do, but I don't want to lose the energy. So I'm trying to find balance. You don't want to break yourself. You don't want to burn yourself out. And not only that, but Saturday night. Four years ago, you weren't able to do two jobs. Yeah, that's true. That's all right. I couldn't do one job. That's all I'm saying. That's all I mean. So, but also at the same time, just so you guys, anybody listening out there wants to know that it is always time you had a bump in The road in your life you said I just went in harder I just went further into drugs you had a bump in the road when you left Stout Street there in the end You went to your brother's house. That was your chance to once again go bump in the road. I said I'm done Yeah, and that's that's when you were no longer that person. Yeah, you know and and that the person I see now is that guy

[01:03:02] Yeah, the guy who's determined to continue on his path and thank you for the work