Rapper Matt Keegan talks to us about his grimy past and how he's turning it into a beautiful future.

Dive deep into Matt Keegan's journey of recovery, music, and self-discovery in the latest episode of our show. From his battles with addiction to his artistic inspirations, it's an open book for you to explore. Tune in and walk with Matt through his hardships, revelations, and victories.

Follow Matt on Facebook here

Transcript

All right, I started seeing Matt Keegan's Reels on Facebook a year ago, and when I dug into his content, his music blew my mind.  Turns out he's a guy in recovery and is gifted musically and is here with us tonight, but before we bring him in What's up, everybody? My name is Dan. This is Hard Knocks Talks.

Joining me in the studio. We have Donna co hosting. What's up, Donna? 

Hello. Hello.  Just trying to keep up on comments on Facebook  

Let's get matt in here  

What's going on? Hey, what's up? How we doing? Doing well, man. How are you feeling tonight?  I am feeling fantastic, all things considered. 

Awesome. Yes, I know you are fighting off a sickness right now, but you  are powering through tonight to 

carry the message.

Can't be sick for recovery. Can't be sick for recovery, buddy. We're ready to carry the message. That's right. Yes, sir. Is there anything 

you'd like to say before we 

jump in tonight?  Now, just grateful you guys have me on here tonight, man. I'm hoping to 

hit a message that inspires somebody this evening. Thank you.



All 

right, let's hit it.  This is Hard Knocks Talks.  If you are struggling with the substance use of a loved one or have tragically lost a loved one to drug related harms, reach out to Stronger Together Canada, peer led support groups by Moms Stop the Harm and or Naranon Groups of Saskatchewan. If you are in search of private inpatient addictions treatment, check out Prairie Sky Recovery Centre located in Lib Six, Saskatchewan.

one to learn more about today's sponsors, check out our new merch, or if you want to show us some love and buy us a coffee, all those links are in the show notes below on YouTube. 

MAtt your music is rife with experience. The things that you talk about for, from a perspective of lived experience it is very easy to see that you did not just make this shit up. Like you, you been through it. Immediately. When I first reached out to you that must have been over a year ago now I was interested to know, like, how did this get started?

Was this something that you grew up around, or did you stumble into it or how did it 

happen?   It's the experience. I lived through it, man. Coming up in active addiction as far as music goes, you know I'm incorporating the music thing into it. I've always had a story to tell, I'm the only musician in my family There's it doesn't run in my family at all and how hip hop and rap came into the picture.

I have no idea man I'm a death metal drummer. I'm a death metal guitarist. I am I don't listen to rap really, you know I grew up listening to eminem and nf and stuff like that. I have a okay appreciation for it, but in no way Am I in the culture of hip hop or do I have a love for hip hop or anything like that, I was really that guy, so if you could take, go back into your active addiction, I was that guy who would get high off Adderall or get high off some blow and I would start freestyling and I wouldn't shut up for two hours. I would just freestyle and just go and go. 

And it didn't really go anywhere. I didn't really put any music out. Like I said, I didn't have any aspirations of being any anything in hip hop whatsoever. And then I got sober for the first time. And my fiance at the time, who we're together now, she  told me she listened to this NF song and this Kalichi song.

So I don't know if you know who Kalichi is. He's this huge recovery artist here that pretty much set the precedent for this whole thing that I do what I do today. They had this song called Drug Addiction that he wrote, and she had heard it, and she said to me, she's I think you could do something like that, you should try and do something like that one day. 

And I was, I remember hearing that Drug Addiction song, man, and it just inspired me. You know what I mean? You ever hear something and it just lights a fire in you, man? It just makes you want to create, I would get that feeling, and I never knew what to do with it, I'd never sat down and created before, I sat down and I wrote this song and it was called comfortable and chaos. And it was about my life. And I was in a halfway house in Florida and I was your typical halfway house, kid, 30 year old man, trying to be a rapper. 

Did you have the, did you have the white framed sunglasses in the crooks and castle 

hoodie?

no, sir. Nope. None of that.  Hand me down clothes all the way. Yeah. The craziest part about like my story is I just. I was like the least person to ever make it to do anything. You know what I mean? And by no means do I think that I've made it by now, but I'm certainly doing stuff that I only ever dreamed of.

And it's like my music is like all around the world at this point, which is absolutely insane to me, 

so I'm going to jump in real quick here, because on that point, we have somebody in the comments on Facebook wanting to know, when are you announcing a tour?  

Oh my goodness.  I think I'm super far away from that.

He just notified everyone that he wouldn't be doing any tours for a little while.  

Yes, I did. Yeah. You remember that. Yeah, for sure.  Everything's happening fast. I got sober, when I made that announcement, I had six months, and for me it was just like when I was going around doing all these events when my Facebook went viral this year because when I first started talking to you Daniel like last year I didn't have a facebook.

I had no followers on facebook at all. I just had 120, 000 followers on TikTok. And that was like my main account. And then I started posting to Facebook and the Facebook essentially blew up overnight. And that's how I got to go do the gig in Washington, the one in Indiana, the one in Florida. So all these places are having me come and put me up in hotels for the weekend and having me speak there.

But. It just got to be a little too much too quick and I wasn't focusing on my recovery because like I have to do that because you can give me all the accolades and all the likes and all the viral whatever, but at the end of the day, that's not gonna keep me sober. I have to have a strong community.

So do I plan on soaring? Absolutely. One day,  but I don't think anytime soon. If it comes out, I'll happily do it.  

So tell us a little bit about what it was like 

growing up. Like what got you here?  So pretty much my very first memory as a kid is straight into domestic violences. I remember my first memory is my dad getting hauled off to jail and arrested for fighting with my mom.

And that's just something I grew up seeing immediately. And I was just in a really crazy, childhood. Mom was a true alcoholic. She was like the one that would start drinking, couldn't stop, and things would get wild. My dad didn't use anything at all for the first like 13, 14 years of my life.

And I would go be middle class with my dad and then welfare with my mom. So I learned real quick how to Adapt to any environment. I never stayed at the same school for longer than a year I dropped out of school in the seventh grade and My house quickly became like the party house all my friends would come over to and I've been to so many different schools there's three or four different schools of people coming to these parties mom and dad would be locked downstairs in the room You know twisted off what a prescription meds they were on and I'd be having a party of like a hundred people up in my room and  yeah,  those were my aspirations and That's how I got into selling drugs is I would tell mom and dad, I can get, X amount of pills for X amount of dollars, chop them, do some quick basic math, and then pocket a couple hundred bucks.

We had a,  multi generational farm that I grew up on, and my grandpa ended up dying, and  it hit my dad hard and we ended up running that pretty much into the ground it was a trucking company and a farm and all this stuff, man.  My family is hard workers.

The Keegan side of my family, man. They  built this huge thing and yeah, it just got ran into the ground just because of addiction took over. My dad couldn't cope with his dad dying  and pretty much ended up with nothing, but I could sell drugs, so I got into that world.

And this was back in 06, 07, 08. And I'm not sure if you were around back then  there was just an endless supply of pills in the States back then. There was a city I could go to and as fast as I could sell them and get money to go back and re up. Was as quick as I could flip it, and 

that's how I lived for years. So My late teens, early twenties was just me trying to be this really cool drug dealer and throw the coolest parties. And, those are the memories I chose to make. So everything that I talk about and rap about now is what I seen in those spaces because I watched it start off innocent.

Like it was okay. You know what I mean? We were just eating acid and smoking DMT and tripping on Molly. And it was had this like innocent quality to it where it just be some beer pong and. People weren't dying, people would get messed up and you might lose your mind for a couple of days, end up in a psych ward, but you're gonna come home and you're  good.

Yeah, I make it sound like it's a normal thing. Yeah, 

As soon as you said smoking DMT, I'm like, holy shit, bro, is that what you started on? What was the first, like, when, the first time you got loaded what were you getting loaded on?  

Six pack of Mike's Heart Lemonade. And I'll never forget the heartburn it gave me.

I'm so susceptible to heartburn, man. My body is weak when it comes to heartburn, dude.  Fourteen years old, I got heartburn from Mike's Heart. But I remember drinking it, though. Like I said, my life was chaos right off the rip. I had anxiety in the pit of my stomach all the time. And nobody ever explained that to me.

They just wanted to medicate me. So I had pills shoved down my throat from six years old. Antidepressants, ADHD meds. Ritalin, Adderall, this, that, this is wrong with me, you gotta take this, you gotta take that.  I'm already conditioned to take something to feel better, that's what I came into this world doing,  it was just like a natural progression, as I got older. When I got into drugs it took that fear away, it took that anxiety away, man, it made me comfortable. I remember I had that first drink, and then it progressed to some weed, and I remember just,  man, I just.  I'm cool.

And then I'm quick. I'm witty. I'm funny. I can be the life of the party, give me a couple of drinks. And then from there progress, a sweet, and then we surround with a cough medicine, you could take like a whole bunch of cough medicine and trip for a couple of days. We'd do that for a while.

And then I'll never forget. Where my, where the anxiety that I had for 10 years that I dealt with, I used to have real bad panic attacks. So I never had a panic attack before. I took these two hits of acid. It was called Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon Tabs, put in my tongue. And then I was also already tripping on like a thousand milligrams of dex from like a cough medicine.

And when you eat acid, if you know anything about acid, when you consume acid, it takes at least 45 minutes to an hour before you feel the effects. This stuff I felt the effects within 15 minutes, and I started to panic, took it off my tongue, and I took the wad of paper and I gave it to my buddy, and that's when I had my first bad freakout,  I'd never felt anything like that before that powerful, and I never came out of that trip. So I went to a really bad trip, and I freaked out for two days, and I see tracers now.

Like, when I move my hands or I look at the ground, I see patterns move, and I never stopped seeing it,  so that launched into this whole thing of anxiety, and I started having panic attacks. I'd smoke weed. I'd get panic attacks from the weed. I'd start just getting panic attacks from doing anything. 

So my mom gave me a Xanax and that's where like my love affair for benzos came into and that's where a 10 year benzo addiction began was right there at that moment. My mom was just trying to help me out with this panic attack, but through a medicine, a doctor gave her. And then before I know it, I'm seeing the doctor has given me the medicine.

And then Yeah, now I'm seeing a doctor for Adderall, I'm 16, I'm getting two milligrams of Xanax a day, I'm robbing my parents for all their oxys and percs and isomas and whatever I can get my hands on, and... 

So were your parents coming by the, this medication honestly, or was this like something 

like the whole family was doing?

Oh no, the  whole family affair, man, we were all doing it together, I don't know how it took off and got like that, but just one day we were,  they had a doctor that  they ended up suing and winning and won like a 50, 000 case against this doctor because this doctor was just prescribing things like crazy  they were trying to cop it.

We all were everybody was, but it was different back then. You could really get prescribed anything anytime. And I would go into apartment complexes and seek out like Old ladies to buy their scripts and go through their medicine cabinet and be like, yo, I'll help you pay your rent if you give me Get these refilled every month and I'll make sure that you can pay your rent, stuff like that Like it was wild back then. Just door to door. Oh, yeah. Yep. Absolutely Yep. Wow apartment complexes were my favorite place to go find scripts to buy  It always be something  

oBviously Looking back now and hearing what you shared with us, like things went sideways for you right away,  but when did it start to become obvious to you that things were going sideways and 

out of control?  I knew that there was definitely a wrong way of living because I had envy for kids who had a regular life coming up, man. I would see kids with both their parents still home and their moms and dads would be there for them.

teach them things and be there for their sports. And I would have a real envy in that mind you, I dropped out of the seventh grade. I didn't even get to see high school for longer than like a few months, and I just didn't get that experience. I didn't get that love. There was no love in my house.

It was a survivalist. And this is not meant to trash my parents at all. They just did the best with the knowledge that they had, they had a lot of, they had drugs forced down their throats that they didn't really know what exactly it was that they were consuming.

They had stuff that they were getting from a doctor that said, this is medicine. We didn't know it was like a powder keg back then because a lot of people were unsuspecting and did not know that they're giving us legalized heroin, legalized. Narcotics, and it just, it was different back then.

So I don't want this to be something where I'm trashing my mom and dad. We have a, both of us have a, we all have a good relationship today. I love them both very much. 

Okay.  Did you ever have stints of sobriety? I know you mentioned earlier on 

what were those like for you?

No.  pRetty much it all culminated to, like I said, there was an innocent phase to it. And when I say innocent, it was still crazy, but it crossed over into this, and then all of a sudden meth starts coming around, heroin starts coming around, and we all swore we'd never do stuff like that, we did pills, like we had our pinkies out, like while we're taking the pills, like we're high society or something. And all of a sudden, meth, and we looked down on people who did stuff like that, then all of a sudden we're doing it, and then, all of a sudden, now people are starting to use needles and rigs, and they're smoking it.

And we had never heard of anything like that before, we just snorted pills, basically, snorted our drugs. And then this cross happened, and then it just started to get dark and dingy and... We stopped throwing parties the way that we used to, like it stopped being fun, you know it stopped being a good time and then it became real cutthroat, you know It became I need this not to be sick, Like I have to have this and then we're I'm gonna do whatever I have to do to get it type thing, you know So when it morphed into that, and then I'm living in a trailer with no furniture inside the trailer, one of my dad's old rentals, I just started squatting in with five or six other people, I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor, blankets stuffed in the windows, overflowing ashtrays, dishes piled in the sink, no food in the fridge, that's right about then is when I was like, man,  I'm 24.

What the hell am I doing with my life? This is nuts. I can't even pay a phone bill every month, dude.  So right there at that point is when I realized. And then  consequently I got involved with a guy who was running a circuit, a music festivals.   And that for me, as somebody who'd stole drugs for almost 10 years, that was like a candy land, I ended up getting plugged in with somebody that pushed a lot of major weight, and then I started moving a lot of hallucinogens, lots of acid, lots of stuff.

I started dressing like a Hunter S. Thompson character, carrying around a briefcase, and the briefcase was like full of just like... In like drugs that'll push you away for 10 years, i'm like very fortunate I did not get arrested with what I had because I would have been gone  We ended up doing this deal where we took some stuff up to michigan And it was a whole setup.

It was to a SWAT team It was a set up deal and we ended up getting nagged in michigan and we both got sentenced to 2 to 20 years It was our first crime. That was my first experience of prison and This is where I found myself, this is where I found out what I was actually like made of and stuff and I'll tell you when I came face to face with a lot of those demons when you're in prison  i've been on benzos for 10 years.

They just took the benzos away So now i'm having panic attacks and I had to face the panic attacks and I had to go through opiate withdrawal in there too. It was a whole thing man. But I got boot camp  which is a 90 day parole As long as your minimum is two and your judge agrees to it and it's your first felony.

It's the first time I've ever been in trouble, legally. It's the first and only time. First time you got caught? Thankfully, that was the first time I got caught. First and only time. That was it. And like I said, very blessed, very fortunate. And yeah, rolled through there. On a side note, my death metal drumming saved my life.

I was getting messed with a lot and people were like, Hey, if you don't pay us 10 bucks, 50 bucks a week, we're going to stab you.  And I wish I could tell you I was like brave and fought him off, but I was just like, Nope, I'll go make a call immediately. We'll get you that 50. But I didn't have anybody. All my people that I thought were my friends went to my house, took everything that I had, robbed me of all my work, robbed me of all my clothes, and I was alone.

So I ended up getting plugged in with a step metal band, and they looked out for me the rest of the time I was there. It was pretty cool. But that when you were inside,  that was when I was inside, and that's where you 

and that's where you. We're introduced to death 

metal,  no, I've been playing death metal drums and bands and opening up for pretty big bands for almost 10 years.

Okay. So hang 

on a second now like that. We just blazed over that. When did that get 

started?  So when I was 16, my mom got me a drum set or I was, I would go to this church and play on the drum set and I learned to play it by ear. And I just took the drums like water, man. Like I didn't have to practice or learn anything.

Like I learned entirely by sight and by ear. Yeah. And then I got a drum set and I worked at it for a while and then I just kept getting better and better and then before I know it I'm playing like Green Day and ACDC and then next thing I know I'm playing Slipknot, I'm playing All That Remains, I'm playing some really complicated stuff and then, if you build it they will come.

Word got around, I have the party house, right? So people start coming over, there's a drum set up in my room and then I'm having all these huge parties and then I got people coming and bringing their guitars and we start linking up.  And there was this there was this local shop, it was called the Underground in Sandusky.

And then there was Peabody's in Cleveland. There was all these legendary local, places to play. And started going there and playing. Man, I opened up for a band called Chimera, which is a huge metal band. Played with Mushroomhead. Played with Tommy Bext, back when he was with Divine Heresy.

Got to do a bunch of cool stuff, man. It was sweet. It was awesome. I was always drawn to the stage, dude. Always, man. It just a place that I feel at home at, yeah.  

 When you found the drums now, it, obviously it didn't curb your desire to use, but did you find an that must've been an outlet for you.

Did it change your life at all? And for the better in any way at all?  

Nope, we just partied like we were rock stars,   I loved ripping a half of a pan 40, a pan of 40 and playing drums for two or three hours. I could get after it, that was my bread and butter.

And then, yeah our band, three of our bandmates were pill dealers, and three out of the five. And we would just go and. It was like Lords of Dogtown, man. We'd just go shred a place up, get in fights, be wild, be violent, get kicked out of bars, smash shit, leave, take a huge house party back to the house, blow somebody's place up, play a renegade show, set up a...

Little PA system. Just get loud. Have the cops called, chaos sounds like it. A constant chaos. Yeah. Yeah. I thrived in it, man. I thrived in it. Tell 

me you went inside, you were in prison  you found some recovery in prison. Did you stop using when you were inside  

For a time? I did.

 That's how I got off Xanax. That's how I got off for the first time in 10 years. I couldn't take a Xanax for a panic attack, and I had to learn these breathing techniques to get through my panic attack, and if anybody's watching this and they're stuck with anxiety attacks, I'm telling you, exposure therapy and breath work  will outdo Xanax any time of day.

I'm not telling anybody to not take their medicine, but if you're imprisoned by this medication, because some people can be. There is a way off of it and you can live life without panic attacks. I was agoraphobic I couldn't leave my house without having a bottle of xanax, or else i'd be afraid of this panic attack When I sat in prison and faced it I would have the attacks and lo and behold nothing would happen My heart would beat fast and feel like I was going to pass out i'd get short of breath But then I would take these incredibly deep breaths and just fight my way through it And it would go away 10 times out of 10 and that's when I found out that the whole thing is not real The anxiety is not real and the xanax was just a bandage.

 Took about two years for my mind to go back to normal. But yeah, so I was in there for a while and got through that part. I started going to church, I started trying to get a semblance of something.

You know what I mean? I felt very drawn to God at that time. I felt very drawn to church. I was praying every night.  But of course, prison's rife with drugs, and Suboxone is everywhere in the prison I was in, and it was incredibly cheap. And I ended up falling back into that, and before I know it, I'm like waking up from prison dope sick, and because I've been taking subs, and then I ran out of the subs.

Now I'm waiting for boot camp to come get me, and I'm like about to go to boot camp dope sick.  And I'm in prison. I'm like, man, how the hell did that happen? But fortunately they came and got me and I got out of there unscathed, so it was quite the experience So what was it 

like 

getting out of prison, going back to the real world.  

It was an adjustment for sure, but I was hungry to do the right thing. And I would post on my personal Facebook. I didn't have any sort of social media  Dreams back then. But I would just post, and I would get quite a big response every time I would post.

I had a lot of people that were very supportive of me and supportive of what I did. And I was sharing what I was going on with. But then, pretty much right off the rip, though, when I got out,  I wanted to get high.  But I didn't want to do the fentanyl because people were dying from the fentanyl, and that would concern me. I didn't want to be another statistic And so I really didn't get into fentanyl too heavily just because it's i'm a traditionalist man I like my opiates to let me catch a nod. I don't want him to kill me 

so that's when I discovered Kratom, that's when I went and seen a doctor, and then I was on Neurotin, and then I ended up having, prescribing opiates somehow in 2017. It was this whole thing, this whole ordeal. And but I would tell people I was in recovery, and for some people that is their recovery, but for me, I was anything but recovered, man.

I'm taking four or five different things just to get through the day, and it was very toxic for me.  

We got a comment here, Rick Stone.  Rick 

Stone is sitting in the hospital parking lot right now with a so called panic attack. He goes on to say, my anxiety attacks feel like drug overdoses every day.

Life is really scary. I come to the hospital every day, so I know if I go down, I have a good chance to get up. I assume that's what you were going to add there. 

Oh my,  yeah. Rick, listen, man, I did that for years. I lived under that fear of that panic attack for years and would absolutely have to sit outside of a hospital because.

I would tell myself, okay if I'm going to go down right now, then at least there will be somebody there to help me and they'll be able to save me. But I can tell you, when you reverse the mindset, and now, when it would happen, I would just say if I fall and I hit the ground right now and I die, I guess that's it, I'm going to die, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

So if you're going to take me out. And that's what I would have to say to myself. And I know that sounds a little abrasive, but you have to bully this bully that's bullying you. You know what I mean? So I talk shit to it, and I get, in no uncertain terms do I let that thing rule over my life.

I would say, start with some breath, breathing exercises, some diaphragm breathing, which you can YouTube, diaphragm breaths for anxiety, and then from there on, another big thing is just accepting death and accepting that, yeah, you are going to die, we're all going to die, at the end of the day, there's nothing you can do about it, and the sooner you accept that,  It loses its power over you.

And when I tell people that, that's like a radical thing for people to try and accept and digest, but that's what I had to do to get over this. And the second I said, alright, you're gonna kill me, my heart's gonna beat really fast, I'm gonna get really sweaty, and I'm gonna die, and then, all of a sudden I'm still standing here, I'm not dead.

I'm still sitting here, so now what? I'm just gonna keep going about my day, that was stupid, wasn't it? Try that man, and I'm telling you, it can change your entire life. You don't have to live in fear of that anymore, let it take you. Drop wherever you're gonna drop, bud. If you drop it, it's your time to drop. 

 To say something about breathwork, I finally bought into it, and it changed my life. It it absolutely changed my life. Now, I still have, not to say, and I was talking about this the other day, people sometimes say, oh, I entered recovery and nothing worries me anymore.

Nothing scares me anymore. And I, that's bullshit. I still have really shitty days, right? But, six and a half years into recovery, and finally I buy into it, and finally I take it seriously. And breath work, man,  good call, man. That, it's amazing. It really does. Change so much. I have the best revelations like after a good breathwork session That's when I have my most clarity and I can finally meditate.

You know what I mean? You know the squirrel cage I thought meditation was passed beyond me until I found breathwork and I finally 

felt quiet  Oh my goodness. It is wonderful. It's a just breathing into the stomach, too, if anybody needs a quick example of it. You breathe into your belly, you fill up your stomach for four, so you breathe in for four, you hold for four, and then you exhale for four.

And do that three times when you're having anxiety, and immediately, physiologically, you will change the way your body's reacting. I would have to break up and snort a Xanax. So get myself to calm down and I would have to start this annex and then take water and splash it up my nose to get it in there faster.

Now I just do that and I still have anxiety sometimes when I'm about to get on a stage in front of a thousand people and I'm dead sober or if I'm about to go into a rehab and rap for eight unenthusiastic people, I'm freaking out. So I do those that breath work and I do that. I breathe into my belly for four.

I hold it for four. And then I exhale for four and I'll notice within the first one, boom  I'm relaxed. I'm chill, so give that a shot. Diaphragm breathing on YouTube. So 

 What brought you into your first real genuine stint of recovery? 

 So I had gotten out of prison, was seeing the doctor, was doing all these different things, convincing myself that I'm sober, I'm in recovery, life's good, but I was miserable and I wanted to kill myself. I went to rehab in Florida, and now there's this guy,  his name is Richie Weber, and he is in the next,  town over from me.

He has a big recovery platform, and I watched him build it from the ground up. We used to party and get high together. So he was a really big inspiration as to one day I want to do something like that. One day I want to be a recovery voice and share my recovery, but I want to give people like the real raw truth of this, so I ended up going to rehab in Florida and I told myself, Because I was against AA for the longest time. I did not like AA. I thought it was disingenuine. I would call it a cult. Just the same things that you've seen a lot of people do, I did. It's a little bit culty.  Sure. Let me, and you are absolutely welcome to that opinion for sure.



And I love the program. I'm just, I'm, I got clean in, in NA. So just through that lens, just 

sure.  I get it because I thought the same exact thing but for me man it's like I'm grateful for that cult because that cult today is  Support system and a friendship and a bond that you can't put a dollar amount net worth on, you know When I went down there I was encouraged to go out and find somebody that had something that I wanted, right?

So  Mind you I'm against this shit. I hate it I don't like a I don't like all the hugs and the smiles   that makes me uncomfortable when people do that, but why at the end of the day why is that my thought process Because I in my world people smile at your face and then stab you in the back, but that's not how reality works That's not how people really are So I was encouraged to go out and find something that I truly wanted and I'm somebody who has something that you want So I did just that found somebody and he spoke in a way that I liked he carried himself in the manner that I Respected and he had a lot of knowledge about the big book that I wanted to know more about I asked this man to be my sponsor.

I asked him for his number. I was in 2019  Place that I'm sitting in today is because of that interaction that I made back then and I still talk to him three or four Times a week. He is a huge part of my life my recovery who I am now. He's a mentor He's helped me build endless aspects of my life and helped me become the man that I am today.

And that's one small part, and that was given to me for free because I was willing to go ask this guy for my number, so I got all about this. One thing I see in this program over and over and over again is people... That stuck around and became insanely successful.

 And when I say successful, I don't mean financially. I mean with their family. I mean with getting their kids back. Physically, their body gets put back together. You know what I mean? Mentally successful, so that's what I wanted, man.

I wanted to be somebody my daughter could rely on. I wanted to be the dad that my daughter could call and say, Dad, can I have 50 for this? And. I can hand it over and give it to her, or hey dad I need picked up or dad I need you and I can say I'm there. I'm there for you. I love you.

I got you. I wanted to be that person because I wasn't there for my daughter like that, my I conceived my daughter then I bounced, I ran away. I was scared. I tried saying that she wasn't mine and I didn't see her for almost five years. I'd get her on the weekends and take pictures with her on Facebook so I can pull chicks, she was cute.

She was good for that, but as far as like being an actual father and a dad, I ain't have time for that.  So  

tell us about Kayla.  

You wrote that song. Kayla was right in the middle. Yeah, dear Kayla.  Dear Kayla, absolutely. You know When we met,  my mom brought her home one night, actually, and I was  I'm the guy that brings girls homes and just moves them right into your house, that's what happened.

She's like the fourth girl I've done that with. Brought her home, moved her right into my house, and I was like, alright, we're in love. She knows, she has a slipknot shirt, that means we're meant to be together, and you're cute, I love you now.  Yeah, absolutely. So we were staying in that trailer for a while.

That was in my mid twenties, when I was trying to work an honest job, but I was still like using here and there and still dealing with the Xanax and the pills and all that. And yeah, I ended up getting pregnant and then I ended up bouncing and that's when I got wrapped up in the music festival thing. 

changed my identity entirely and I just I was there for the birth of her for sure  but as far as like actually being a father for those first couple years, Kayla did it entirely on her own. She did a good job, she had her own place and she didn't really do too heavy of drugs at that time.

She'd just smoke her weed and do her thing and she was a good mother, but things had a way of going south and Right after I got back, after I went away to rehab in Florida, she ended up going pretty hard to the left as well. And she ended up giving up rights to my daughter.

So daughter ended up going with grandma. As for my daughter resides today, her grandma stepped up and took care of her. I've been co parenting with her grandmother ever since.   So the relationship between me and Kayla became pretty strained. And if I'm being honest, man, I didn't have nice things to say about her, when I wrote the song, the last thing I told her, said about her was nasty. I said very nasty things and I held. It against her for abandoning our daughter without being able to look in the mirror and understand that I did too You know, I abandoned her too. Yes. I showed up for her now, but where was I the first four years?

Kayla was there, you know so That's something that the program has helped me come through to see now because I didn't see that then even when I wrote the song I didn't really fully see that so I every time I perform the song or I put the song out i've dropped that with a disclaimer like I didn't write this song on the pretext of I was heartbroken when she passed or this was like this big thing like because when she died, yes, I was it hurt.

It hurt to see my daughter hurt like that. But again, I wasn't saying nice stuff about her the week before that happened. I wasn't sitting over there crying over. You know what I'm saying?  But I can tell you, though, when that happened. It changed the way I thought about the whole situation and do I wish I act differently?

Absolutely, man. I wish I acted way different, dude. I wish I would have reached out to her. I wish I would have been, if I would have known what I know now not be the person who I am today. I would have just been there for her. I would have tried to plant seeds like I do with people now, when I see people who are hopelessly out there, I'll just plant seeds every now and then I'll send a message like, Hey, just want you to know, man, I love you, dude.

And anytime you want to come around, I can help you anytime you want help. Like it's there, and they'll open it and read it and they won't respond, but that's cool because I'm gonna plant another seed in two weeks anyway, so I just. I wish I would have did that with her, but I didn't, so by then though, she had known me as a rapper and she liked my songs, she was proud of my songs,  it wasn't all a hate, it was a love hate relationship between her and I,  but, she'd known of some songs of me and She was proud of him, she was, and I know that she would like this and she would be proud of this song.

She'd be happy that I wrote a song for her and, immortalize that, that struggle that her and I had, something to remember her by because, it sucked the way she went out in a very brutal fashion and, it sucks because my daughter is that's left a hole, it's left a hole in my daughter, my daughter doesn't understand and that's gonna my daughter's gonna carry that forever because she was my whole my daughter's world, and that's just what this disease does.

That's what this addiction does. That's what it is. It's like  we're different people, but we suffer from the same affliction. You and I are  different, but I guarantee you we get down to brass tacks.

We did the same things, we had the same thoughts, we dealt with the same fears, the same anxieties, the same sickness. It's an all encompassing thing, man. It's just, there's just different ways to get around it and fix it. We all have, it's crazy. I 

want to talk a little bit about what it was like integrating into your daughter's life and recovery, but before we do there's a pile of comments on Facebook, and Donna's going to at least read a few of them.

We don't want to want you all to feel like we're trying to ignore you, but I don't know if we're going to get to them all. 

So Candace Holland says Matt helps me stay clean so much and he reminds me of my mom. She was an addict that overdosed in 2007. 

So sorry for your loss. Yes, so sorry for your loss. 

Happy to help. It blows my mind that I'm able to help anybody. Hey,  here for ya. 

There's been a few comments in here. I won't be able to track them down on the fly like this, but there's been several comments talking about how much you've helped people. It's incredible the things that I've been reading tonight here, Matt. 

 As a parent who has experienced child apprehension and then in recovery had to reintegrate into my son's life. I'm always interested to know what that was like for you.

You entered into recovery and now you are starting to take some responsibilities. Tell us about what was going through your head and what your experience was 

like.  I entered into recovery. And I had a fire to get her back and to create a relationship with her. My responsibilities as a father just  took over.

I'd missed so much time and I realized I had created this little life and she looked up to me as her father and how could I let her down as my father had let me down and I wanted to give her everything that I never had, I want her to have the respect, the love the sound, just the comfortability that I never had.

I don't want her to ever have to spend a day in that chaos. She's already had to endure so much, right? So I set out from there. My goal is like, all right, I'm going to make it. I'm going to have to earn her trust, and that's what I had to do that first year was just showing up, picking her up, being there when I said I was going to be there, and earning her trust, and having to navigate  all these nuanced, different things, a child is unfiltered, and they're going to say what it is, and how they're feeling, and they're going to say things that hurt you, and they're going to have takes and feelings that you're not going to like, and you really just got to understand that it's they're a child, they're just a child and you got to meet them there and you have to demonstrate, you have to demonstrate because they're watching you, everything that you're doing, they're paying attention to, and everything that I just spouted off to you, that's not something that I learned that was taught to me from my second sponsor, this other guy is He's a powerful man.

He's just powerful. He's in my life big time, man. His name's Steve. And he taught me so much about being a dad and how to be such a better patient father and how to demonstrate, these emotions and how to act and stuff. And man, I worked so hard at just trying to be there for her and get, gain her trust back.

And I did, within the two years, suddenly it became dad, dad dad, and I still kept working for it, still kept working for it, and now, it's turning into, I'm trying to discipline her and teach her certain things, and how old is she now?

, 10, about to be 11. Oh, yeah.   Oh, yeah. She's full on herself, too, man. She is her own. She's become her own person. You watch that from six, seven on. They begin to get a grasp of the world and develop into themselves. Yeah.

She's, and she's quick witted, man. She'll keep me on my toes. She can quick wit right over me sometimes. She's very smart. She's got that. quick on the draw thing. She's got her own TikTok. She just recently started like writing songs and she wants to write music now.

And it's cool, man, because she's emulating what I'm doing. And she's a huge Melanie Martinez fan,    

do you let her listen to your music? 

Oh, good question man,  she did not like the Dear Kayla song at all. I can't imagine. She was mad, and I didn't want her to hear it. I actually had her blocked from all my social medias and she, I don't know how she found it. I think she created a new account and she came across it one day, and it's definitely been a source of contention. She was resistant to it at first, but she sees, she sees that I'm doing it for the right reasons. Like I'm here to help people. That's ultimately what I want to do. I love that. I get to do this, like to help people and for a living, it's crazy.

Cause that's ultimately all I've ever wanted to do in my life is like a job or a profession is just be able to help people in whatever capacity that is.  I get to do that today and I know she sees that and she's coming around a little bit more. We don't talk about that song, but at the end of the day, I just try and explain to her like, that song, it helps people and for what the song was for, it was, it just talks about where we were at, if you really listen to the song, it's about what actually happened.

It's not  for anything else, it's not to prop her up and say, oh, this is what happened. It's to say. I want people to hear that song and I want them to go take that love that Kayla in their life, and I want them to reach out in a way that I wish that I would have. That's the purpose of that song.

 In my personal experience, when I heard that song, it brought me to tears, cause, I think Donna and I have had a hell of a ride and things could have gone very... Very different 

when I heard that song it moved me deeply.

 And I'm sure it caused some contention between, obviously with your daughter, but like what about other family members? What about Kayla's family? 

Yeah,  Kayla's mom. Yeah. She didn't like it either.

She's Very contentious towards my music and my movement as well, their idea of an addict is just to not talk about it, just don't talk about it. And she doesn't want her around any of my groups. I do a lot of events. I do a lot of recovery events. And that's just something we've had to butt heads on because that's just something I'm not backing down from.

I want my daughter to be exposed to this because my daughter's already had it where it's at and if she has her mother's blood and my blood flowing through her... If she gets older, she needs to have the facts, she needs to have some of the tools and an understanding of what this is. We can't just sweep it under the rug and not talk about it because that kills people.

And that's the mentality that I take towards my kids too I'm not trying to save my kids from the world, I'm trying to prepare them for it, 

yes, absolutely. And I... Me too, 100%. It is an unforgiving place, and if you don't have...

And understanding of what it is and you think it's just all going to be handed to you.  Her grandma does what a grandma does, I need to do what a father does. And that's my mission with her right now, man, is getting her prepared and making her do things on her own and making her uncomfortable and being loving and supporting while doing it.

But it's still a task, cause she's getting grandma'd and she only gets dadded two weekends out the month, so I do what I can.  

Was it tough to get grandma to buy in to letting you see 

your daughter?   Nope.  She was very supportive with that. And she's taken good care of her.

She's given her a great home. She's been good to her.  All of her needs are met. She's very spoiled. She lives very good. And she's never tried to keep me from her. She's never doubted me. She's never, ever stepped in the way of her being with me, . Her and I have actually... Seen eye to eye on a lot of things and honestly, I think just most of the stuff we just butt heads with is just petty little things because at the end of the day, we need to be on the same team because our both of our goal is to make sure that 

my daughter is successful,  

tell us about kratom because I know you use that as a tool.  for your recovery whether you feel now that was misguided or not, but I remember when we first spoke the first time you were just starting to come into a realization where this may be a problem for you.

So tell us how that came into your life and and what it 

did for you.  So disclaimer, let's do a disclaimer first. If you are taking kratom right now and kratom is part of your recovery, congratulations on your recovery. Happy that you're sober. I'm happy that you're doing well. It is not for me or anyone else to say who's sober, who's not, what's recovery, what's not, okay?

That's not what I'm about. However, I am going to share, I am going to share my experience and others experience of what's happened with Kratom. And that's, and if that doesn't skew what I just said, okay, when I start taking Kratom, I abused the shit out of it. I am a abuser. I abuse things. I'm an addict.

I cannot take things right out the gate. If it gets me high, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna ruin it, so right out the gate with Kratom, as soon as I got it and it made me feel good, I started taking it every three or four hours, by the mouthful. Were 

you already abstinent when you started taking 

Kratom? 

Yes, that's when I got out of prison. Yep. Okay. Yep, I didn't say, I didn't take it to get off anything or not take anything. So in my mind, I was taking it to stay away from like the opiates, which... That's a use that it has for a lot of people. A lot of people take kratom instead of opiates and Some and you can live a productive life on kratom, it doesn't debilitate You're not going to nod out from it.

You're not going to overdose and die It's next to impossible to overdose and die from kratom. You really have to would have to consume a lot you really got to commit to that water You really got to commit but for me though The withdrawals were the problem and how quickly the withdrawal set in I would, because I had taken it every three or four hours, I would experience an opiate withdrawal within four hours.

Now, from my understanding, the reason that is, there are some people who get opiate withdrawals from Kratom and there are some people who don't. The people who, like me, have a neural pathway to know what it means to withdraw from opiates, we're going to have the opiate withdrawal. For the regular person who's never been addicted to opiates, if they take Kratom, They're not gonna get an opiate withdrawal from kratom whatsoever.

If they're gonna get like a coffee headache, maybe, tops. But for me, I'm full on dope sick. Bubble guts, chills, runny nose, no sleep, anxiety. It was a nasty freaking withdrawal, dude. I'm telling you just from the powder. And that was before I graduated to the extract shots. The extract shots are literally equivalent. 

They're very potent, to say the least. They're very impotent. What'd you call them? And the withdrawal is very nasty. They're called extract shots.  You can buy 50 times or 100 times the powder, the tea. You can buy little, and they're little shots. And they're at every gas station. They're all over the place.

I just shared a video on my page at the drive thru across the street. There's like a whole bunch of racks of these extract shots at this drive thru now. And it's All it said, too, it said we are one step away from a bad decision, stay connected, friends. And I just said that, it did 3 million views, with thousands of comments of people thinking I'm, like, creating and generating all this hate on Kratom.

All I'm doing is just sharing my experience with it. Subsequently, there are a lot of other people that have had the same experience. It's not like my experiences is minuscule. A lot of people have had problems with this. And even the head shop owners will tell you they got people coming in. They're like fiends for this stuff, for this extract shots.

And In no way am I trying to demonize it. In no way do I want to see it banned. Anything that pulls somebody out the mouth of Big Pharma is a win for me. I believe in like freedom of choice. I'm pretty liberal with my beliefs, and I believe that people should have the right to choose.

I don't want somebody making all those choices for us. And I certainly don't want to see that pulled off the shelves because somebody like me can't use it successfully. There are people who use it in their recovery, but for me, and the reason why I broke my sobriety and I counted it as a relapse, Because I was fucked up off of it, man.

At the end of the day, I was really messed up off of it. I was really sick, and I literally felt like I did when I was on opiates. I felt just like I did. And it has this way, when you abuse it, it becomes evil. Not that I'm saying that the plant or the substance itself is evil. It's the way I was using it.

Because I was having suicidal thoughts. I was having just this, I, this whole crisis and it, I felt the more I took it, it attributed that to that, when it first started taking it, it felt good, I felt great, I'd get these boosts of energy, I could work 12 hour shifts, I could be more attentive with my daughter, my back didn't hurt as much, all these great things, and then after six months or a year, all that stuff stops, and then all of a sudden, you're just taking it to maintain, now you're taking it not to be sick, now I gotta wake up in the middle of the night to take it, just to get to normal, and,  Yes, and that's when for me, it was like, all right, this is a relapse, and when you work a 12 step program, it calls for total abstinence from all substances, and I don't get caught in the politics, all that shit.

I think somebody working at MAT program can totally work the 12 steps, but I'm telling people I'm abstinent from all substances. So for me, that's why it was such a big deal and why I was like lightweight crying with you on the phone because I just felt like a piece of shit. I felt like an absolute liar.

Like I told everybody, I tell everybody I'm absent and I'm Matt Keegan recovery, but I'm having to put eyedrops in my eyes before I go live because I'm so tweaked out off these extract shots, yeah. 

I have

to

say,

I really appreciate your candor tonight. There's been some tough comments that you've made, but you've navigated them with grace. 





Absolutely. Tell us about Crime Family. 

Tell us about that song.  Oh my goodness, man. I wrote that song in my grandma's driveway. And,  so for me, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, a lot of people will say they didn't make this. They didn't make that to me. It's an all encompassing term.

It's for everybody that was getting in on that back in the 2005 678. If you remember, there was a generic of a pill of a generic of a pill of a generic of a pill, and there was a never ending supply. So here in America they charged it. Us at the bottom, we were prosecuted as drug dealers for selling their product the doctors eventually they came after all the doctors But you know who they never went after  people who created the product the factories Where are the big factories that pushed out these millions of pills and who's the person that overseen and said?

All right, we made them 10 million pills this month Now we need to make another 20 million pills next month. Who did that, and why are they not being charged as the person? It just doesn't make any sense. If you charge somebody for selling drugs, you charge somebody that has manufactured and created it, right?

So my whole big guff with these people is... They never got charged, but yet they're sitting over here prosecuting and locking people up, putting them in prison, putting doctors in prisons, and I'm not saying that they shouldn't, but I'm saying that the people whose product that we all had a hand in pushing, they should be held accountable too.

And I'm not talking about big fines that don't even dent their...  Quarterly earnings. I'm talking about jail time. And if I had it my way, it'd be much more radical. And we would do something much more crazy if I could unite people in that direction, because it's sickening that the way they, these lobbyists and these corporate people get away with the absolute murder that they bring down in this world, it's disgusting.

On the same token,  thank God for amoxicillin. I have pneumonia and it just cleared my medicine up. So I don't have a problem with  modern medicine. I just have a problem. With them commercializing addiction, and now there's this big push, so that's my talk about crime family and let's on the mere side of subtoxin.

The following song,  they have this big push now. Suboxone is the gold standard to substance abuse disorder treatment. They're prescribing it to people who are on meth. They're prescribing it to people who are on alcohol, suboxone and opiate and people will say, Oh, it's an opiate antagonist. I've done opiates.

I have a very intimate knowledge of opiates, and so do millions of other people, and Suboxone It gets you high like an opiate. I take it every day. It doesn't get me high. If I took an oxy 80 every day, twice a day, at the same time, for three months, it wouldn't get me high anymore. Of course, it's not going to get me high.

Oh, we're well aware of that.  oF course my thing is, these same companies, that  created the millions of pills and didn't get in any trouble, now they're creating millions of addiction, substance abuse disorder medication, and pushing it out, and, oh, by the way, it's incredibly addictive, it's gonna take two to four weeks for you to get off of it, and if you wanna get off of it, we're not gonna offer any resources to do so. I have a problem with that. I have a big problem with that. That these same companies that created the disease are now hawking the cure, and I just don't think anybody's talking about that. More people should talk about that. And more importantly, more people should get together and hold people accountable.

We cannot get together in mass and go cancel somebody for a mean thing they said in 20. 13, but we can't all get together and stop like people literally being enslaved through a pill without even knowing do you know how many people are in my dms?  Whose doctor just puts them on suboxone without even telling them how addictive it can be?

And now they're stuck on it They've been stuck on it for years and their doctor says oh you're going to be on this for the rest of your life Meanwhile, they said they're so depressed and miserable.  Their libido's gone Their energy levels are low and they have to take this meditation. They can't miss work to get out of it They can't go to rehab because they got medicaid It's crazy.

So  these things I talk about. And again, I have to flip on the other side of the token. I'm not anti suboxone. I every time I've went to rehab, guess what I begged for crawled there and cried for when I was withdrawn from opiates suboxone. So it has a place. Are you shooting fentanyl on your neck and you have to get on M.

A. T. So you don't die. Okay, then yeah, there are some extreme cases, but should it be for every Tom, Dick, and Harry that we can throw a quarter at? No, absolutely not. There should be steps and people should be able to be made aware of what exactly the risks are that come with this. But again, if you're, if you've maintained a life and this has given you a life back and it's been a life saving medication for you, I'm all for that.

I am 100 percent for that. I will advocate for that and I will fight for that. But at the same time, All the information needs to be presented. And I get a lot of hate for presenting this information. For just daring to say that Suboxone is addictive, there are people that have made videos that say I'm killing people.

And all I'm trying to do is just educate people and share the share what I don't see anybody else doing. I don't see anybody else making videos talking about how suboxone has been addictive. That's it.  

Where can people find your music? Where can people follow you on social media? Tell us all the things.  

Yeah. I'm on everything. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram at Matt Keegan. Recovery. MATT. Keegan is K-E-E-G-A-N. And my music's on pretty much all the major streaming services. We have Flow through a Muse, so you'll find me on YouTube, apple Music, Spotify Matt Keegan just Matt Keegan On those Not recovery, it's just Matt Keegan.

'cause you can find me across. Pretty much anything and everything. I don't really have an alter ego. I am the same person.  I am the ego. You're catching me now. Yes, I 

am all. Yes. Awesome. Okay, man. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. Appreciate you sharing your journey with us, telling us a little bit about your music, helping us learn a little bit about your message and that's it.

We'll let you go. Take care. 

Take care. Take it easy. Thanks for having me, guys. Yeah.  

All right. If you got something out of tonight's episode, give that like button a click at the bottom. If you are on YouTube, hit that subscribe button, hit that notification bell. We go live every Friday morning, every Sunday evening.

If you don't got time to watch us for an hour, you can find all our recordings on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. That's it for tonight. Take care, everyone. Say, this is Hard Knocks Talks.