An Inspiring Journey Of A Recovery Leader

 

The recovery journey is not just about yourself, but also about making ripples to change other people’s lives for the better. Tim Westbrook sits down with Matthew Handy, who shares how he is paying forward as a recovery leader after everything he went through. Breaking down his philosophy of “debt of recovery,” he explains how he used his first-hand experience with addiction treatments to build the vision and practices of his very own Handy Treatment Centers and Harmony Grove Behavioral Health. Matthew also discusses why suffering has its own share of benefits, the role of pain in achieving lasting transformation, and why there is still enlightenment to be found in relapses.

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

An Inspiring Journey Of A Recovery Leader

Welcome back to I Love Being Sober, the show where we dive into the stories of healing, resilience, and transformation. Our guest is someone who truly embodies what it means to turn pain into purpose. Matt Handy is the founder of Handy Treatment Centers and Harmony Grove Behavioral Health. He’s a Certified Peer and Family Specialist. More importantly, he has lived the experience from addiction and incarceration to becoming a beacon of hope for others. He’s here to share a story, his philosophy on recovery, and how he is paying it forward in what he calls the debt of recovery.

—

Matt, welcome to the show. I’m so glad that you’re here. We were connected through Aaron McCall. Aaron called me up and said, “You’ve got to have Matt on your show.” I’m excited to learn more about your story. I asked for your profile picture, and what you sent was your mugshot. You don’t look the same as you did in that mugshot.

That was December 28th of 2020. It’s been a journey.

Matthew’s Story Of Recovery

Tell us what it was like. What happened? Let’s start there. What was it like before recovery? What happened?

I was introduced to recovery in 2012. I had gotten out of prison for the first time.

Where did you grow up?

San Diego, California.

You grew up in San Diego. When did you start drinking, doing drugs, or whatever?

The first time I got high was when I was thirteen. I smoked weed. It was a steady increase in exposure to different substances and use until I was about sixteen. I hit opiates, and then I started slamming at seventeen. I’m the oldest of ten kids. In my seventeenth year of life, I was kicked out of my parents’ house. They had one, three, five, and seven-year-olds. They had a bunch of kids.

How was that?

It was so very rewarding and extremely hectic. No complaints about the siblings. The reality was, I was born when my parents were 21 and 19. They were kids, too. I’m also the oldest grandchild. My grandparents have 28 grandchildren. I was the experiment. Nobody knew what they were doing. They’re all kids. By the time I was 13, my parents had eight kids.

How does that happen?

We’re Mormon. I’ll say that. There’s a religious component there. I don’t know. It was that my parents had this spiritual urge to have kids constantly. I remember the conversations as a kid. My mom would be like, “I’m almost positive that I’m missing something. I should have another kid.” They had their last kid, and they were like, “We’re done.”

Were your parents loaded? Were they wealthy?

No. That’s part of the exposure that I had as a child. My dad went to the Gulf War in ’91. There were already three of us. He went back to school to get his degree so that he could then go to law school. He graduated from law school, I think, when I was twelve.

Your parents are Mormons. They’re religious. They’re doing God’s work. They’re doing the next right thing. You have to have a lot of money if you’re going to have that many kids, because every time you have a kid, it costs more money.

It was a struggle for sure. I can remember times when we would have people over for dinner on Sunday, and then we would search through the couch to see if people dropped change. It was budgeting how many Top Ramens we had and stuff like that. It was intense. My dad graduates from law school and immediately finds a good opportunity. Even if he was making more money than he’d ever seen, they still had ten kids. There were a couple of years of growth where we became comfortable. By the time we were comfortable, I was already doing whatever I was doing.

I cut contact at 21 or 22, somewhere around there. I didn’t talk to my family for ten-plus years, none of them. No social media. Nothing, so nobody could find me. The thing was that I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I have an uncle whom I watched burn all of his bridges with our family. I knew this was going to be me. If I continuously try to have one foot in and one foot out with my family, I’m going to burn these bridges. When I’m ready to come back, it’s going to be a nightmare trying to get back. I put a bunch of pieces together.

It’s funny. I got introduced to recovery in 2012. I got out of prison. I have a brother who was in the program. I remember being in prison, making fun of him. I was making fun of him for going to go into twelve-step meetings. I’m doing drugs all through prison. I get out, and then my parents find out that I’m doing drugs. My dad said something to me that I’ll never forget. It’s 3:00 in the morning. I called my dad. Circumstantially, I had to tell him that I was using drugs because somebody else was going to tell him before me. I had to cut it off at that. I called him at 3:00 in the morning, and he got out of bed.

He went away from Mom so that she wouldn’t hear. I was like, “Dad, please, I’ve got to tell you something. Mom can’t hear.” He’s like, “What’s going on?” I was like, “I was using the whole time. I relapsed.” He was like, “What? Dude, you’re doing so good. You’re in culinary school. What happened? Are you an addict?” I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m a drug addict.” Drugs started young. It became a major problem. Everybody around me knew I was an addict before I did. It was this moment of clarity, like, “Oh my gosh, I’m a drug addict.” First introduction to recovery was right around that time.

I got sent to treatment for the first time and started my journey at that point. I knew I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t going to do something that they wanted me to do just because they wanted me to do it. I made these decisions fully aware of the consequences, where I was like, “I’m going to burn these bridges. This isn’t what I want to do,” and I left. I didn’t talk to them for a decade.

Had you not talked to him for ten years before that?

No, I was 21. I had just gotten out of prison.

What did you go to prison for?

That was for assault with a deadly weapon and drug stuff.

In 2012, you had this conversation with your dad. You say, “I need to go to treatment,” or he says, “Let me help you get to treatment.”

No. It was, “You’re going to treatment.” My brother had gotten clean, so they knew what they needed to do. There was no “Do you need to go to treatment?” It’s “You’re going to treatment.” I went to treatment. I used methadone in treatment. I got kicked out because I told them, “I took my roommate’s medication.” They kicked me out. I didn’t tell my parents. They were like, “You have to wait two weeks to come back.” I was like, “Okay.” I was 200 miles away from home. I clicked with somebody in treatment, and he let me stay at his family’s house. He was like, “Go there. Don’t do anything stupid. You can stay there, and I’ll be here when you get back.” His family was the connection. I spiraled out of control right there. I went back to San Diego from Riverside County. All contact was cut at that point. Okay.

All contact was cut with your family, then what happened?

I ran around for a while, immediately back on the needle. I ended up with my second prison term. I sold a bunch of drugs to undercover cops three separate times. They were building a case on me and the group of people that I was hanging out around at the time. I got busted. I ended up doing 28 months in the county. I took a state local commitment for prison time in the jails. I got a five-year sentence. I did half of that in the county. I get out of there. Mind you, I’m skipping over a lot of the war story part of this. I’m going to try to give you the baseline of it. I get out of there. It’s back to the races. I ended up meeting someone who is now my wife.

How did you meet her?

It’s a funny story. We were at the welfare office trying to get on Medicaid because we both were trying to get our prescriptions paid for. I was trying to get my methadone paid for. She was trying to get other stuff paid for. I met her and moved in with her two days later. We’ve been together ever since.

That doesn’t normally happen.

We’re both clean. We got married. A few years back, we had a four-year-old daughter. Our second daughter is going to be born in December.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Shaping A Sense Of Responsibility And Survival Instincts

Going back to you being the oldest of ten siblings, how did that shape your sense of responsibility and your survival instincts?

We’ll go with responsibility first. There was always a kid assigned to an older kid. Get them ready, get them dressed, make sure they eat, whatever. That was how we all shared the work. I was always the oldest kid. There was always this assumption that they could look to me to know what to do. Growing up, I always understood that I had these baseline expectations from my parents that stem from their religious beliefs.

I always understood that if I can satisfy this over here, then I can do whatever I want over here. That’s how I always did it. I started surfing young and hanging out with adults. I was always trying to grow up much faster than I should have. My best friend when I was twelve was 32 or something. He was a good influence. He introduced me to music and was like a rock for that period of my life. I was always trying to hang out with older people.

I was thirteen with a seventeen-year-old girlfriend. I always made sure that I satisfied whatever needed to be satisfied over here. We had a lot of extracurricular expectations, too. I was always playing an instrument, was always in dance lessons, and was always in singing lessons. It was a bunch of random stuff that my mom wanted us to do. It was on top of going to church for three hours on Sunday, going to church every Wednesday, going to whatever other church activities are done throughout the week, and then the responsibilities within the church structure as well.

In the Mormon church, the twelve-year-olds get the priesthood. There are responsibilities that come with that. I always had to make sure that I fulfilled those responsibilities. There was a lot of responsibility placed on me. I only did what I had to do. It was easy for me to get away. I could ask, “I’m going to go over here.” It was like, “Okay.” They trusted the people that I was hanging out with. These people weren’t exposing me to anything crazy. I was going surfing with them. I like going to Mexico with them and stuff to surf.

At the time, I was young. I started surfing on July 4th when I was ten years old. Everybody always told my parents, “He could be good if you let him surf.” I was always able to surf whenever I wanted. My parents homeschooled us for a bit of that time, too. I was even more surfing. I always made sure I got to do this over here. I always make sure, “Let’s do that, and then I can do whatever I want.” That eventually turned into me manipulating because the reality is I was exhibiting addictive behavior way before I ever used. A lot of that stems from I was sexually abused as a kid. I was completely dishonest about it. I only told my parents about it around 2024.

That is only because the perpetrator then went on to hurt a bunch of my cousins and a couple of my siblings as well. That all came to a head around 2024. They confronted me about it, too, because this was somebody who I had been left with a lot when I was a kid. I was exhibiting addictive behavior, for sure, at a very young age, with a lot of dishonesty and manipulation. It wasn’t even on a level of being malicious. I wanted to do something different. I would tell them whatever they wanted to hear so that I could do whatever I wanted to do.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, it wasn’t anything inappropriate that I wanted to do. I wanted to go surfing. I wanted to hang out with these people. I just didn’t want to be home. There are rules at home. There aren’t rules anywhere else. I’m going to be somewhere else. I started manipulating that, though, right around thirteen. There was a dude across the street who rode BMX bikes, but he did drugs. I was allowed to go ride BMX bikes with him every now and then.

I smoked weed with him and saw things that I shouldn’t have seen. I didn’t partake in those things yet. Soon after that, we moved across the county. That’s where my drug use accelerated. It was me smoking weed, dabbling in coke, and drinking every now and then. I haven’t drunk in probably a decade. I hate drinking. I don’t like the way it tastes. I’m part Vietnamese, and I’m pretty sure that I have that Asian allergy to processing alcohol. I get uncomfortable.

I get puffy and red. I feel sick the next morning. I don’t enjoy it. I never have. Drugs have always been my thing. We moved across the county. I found a guy who was 25, also a part of the church, though. I was okay to hang out with him, but he was doing drugs and doing a lot of other crazy stuff, too. I was then able to smoke weed every day and do coke whenever we wanted or whatever. I was 13 or 14 when we moved there.

It started becoming a problem. It steadily got worse. I was going out and partying. We were in high school. My brothers were also attending the same high school. We hung out in the same friend group. We were skaters. I got my license. We’re taking trips to LA. We’re skating all over the county. We’re all doing drugs. We’re all smoking weed, for sure, but then there’s also other stuff going on. At the root of all this is my obsession with females. I was always willing to go farther than most people are to impress people.

I was always way more hyper-focused on female attention than I think. Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m wrong. I feel like looking back on it, I was always more hyper-focused on having females around me. In order to successfully do that, it’s a competitive world in high school, I had to stand out. I always had drugs. I was always doing something crazy. That’s where it accelerated into a problem, so much so that somewhere in the seventeenth year of my life, I was kicked out. They’re like, “You’ve got to go. You’ve got to do something, but you can’t do it here. We have too many kids here.”

 

I had gotten kicked out of school and expelled for some stupid stuff that I had done. I got sent to the Juvenile Court Correctional School. It’s an accelerated program. It’s a self-paced or accelerated program. I ended up graduating from high school in two months. I’m sitting around my parents’ house with nothing to do. I’m doing drugs. I’m hanging out on the streets all day. They’re like, “You’ve got to go.”

Getting Kicked Out Of Home

How does that work when they kick you out at seventeen?

I wasn’t even seventeen yet.

How can they even do that? Aren’t they responsible for you?

I just graduated from high school. This is what I think happened. They were trying to scare me into doing the right thing.

Into being a good kid?

Yes. They were like, “You’ve got to go,” thinking, “He’s going to come back.” That’s not what happened. I found my way to do what I wanted to do. Ultimately, I’m very lucky that I never got caught up in the things that I was doing at this time. I ended up living at a music studio and getting into crazy stuff. I developed some cool friendships during that time that I’ve carried on to this day. I still have a couple of good friends who also ended up in massive bands, like European tours and stuff like that, and have their own recovery story and also prison stories that they’ve gone through as well.

It was these couple of people who have stayed in touch over the years. It was not like a true best friend bond, but we can still check in. Now, we talk way more often because we’re all clean. We’re all doing way better things than we were. I ended up living in this studio. That led me to my first jail stay. I did a county year as soon as I turned eighteen. I got arrested while I was still seventeen. I got bailed out. We negotiated the case. Right after I turned eighteen, I checked in and did my first 8 months and 26 days in jail.

From there, I got out. My parents always gave me a place to come home to. It was within a couple of months, but as fast as I could, I would always be out of there for multiple reasons. After I was kicked out the first time, I understood it was not right for me to be slamming heroin in my parents’ bathroom with all these kids around. It’s like a running thing where I’m going to do what I want to do. I won’t disrespect you as much as possible, but it’s going to happen for a little while.

There was a lot of friction between me and my parents, historically, because of these calculated decisions that I was making that were terrible decisions, but they were also very disrespectful. Looking back on it now, I get why, at 36, with the history that I have, my mom and I have friction points to this day. I got out of that county that year. Some of the dumbest mistakes I ever made in my life were during this period.

I could get into detail with this if you wanted to. With a family member of mine, we started a boosting ring where we were going around. We went to 30 states in a year, and we’re stealing. We had a buyer in Malaysia. We were shipping everything to them. It was something very specific. It was breast pumps. They’re $1,000 breast pumps. We could go in there and get twenty of them out of a store at a time. We sell them all to this bulk buyer.

She would send us money before. We’d be like, “Do you want to pre-order 100 of these things?” She would send us a bunch of money. We’re doing drugs. As fast as the money comes in, it’s going out in order to fund these trips because we’re flying to New York, we’re flying to Florida, and we’re driving all over the United States. We were shipping out from wherever we were.

You’re stealing these breast pumps from a clinic or a store?

From a specific store.

Do you guys break in?

No, operation hours. Everybody would have their role. We’d fill up boxes. We would empty a giant $70 box and put $20,000 worth of merchandise in it. We buy the box and get out of there. It got to the point where we ended up stumbling across their security logs. This was in 2007, 2008, or 2009, somewhere around there. The internet was a thing, but it wasn’t as locked down as it is today. We ended up finding the security logs. As we could not go back to that store anymore, we could see that they were onto us.

This store used to be all over. They’re not a thing anymore. We would be able to map out, “We’re going to go to San Francisco. There are fourteen of them in a 30-mile radius. We’re going to hit these six today. We’re going to hit these six the next day. We’re going to hit these. We’re going to do it again. We’re going to burn it out until we can’t do this anymore, and then we’ll go to the next city.” It was very intense. We never got caught for it, but there was another team of people doing it around the same time. They got busted for it. The guy who ended up teaching us how to do this is still in prison for this.

Building The Vision Behind The Treatment Centers

Let’s talk about your personal experiences. How did your personal experiences influence the vision behind your treatment centers and Harmony Grove Behavioral Health?

All of my experiences contributed to how we built out that company. The chairs that we use, the curriculum that we’re developing, the colors that we painted them, the way that we drug test people, everything is from the client’s point of view. I did a three-year program straight. I did a nine-month program. I did a seven-month program. I did three or four-month programs. I’ve done a Synanon-based program, a faith-based program. I’ve done the full spectrum of different treatments.

How many times have you been to treatment?

Six or seven times.

Did you ever think it was going to be the last time?

Yes.

Did you always think it was going to be the last time?

No. I was very aware that I’m not done. The thing about it is, consequences weren’t ever enough for me. There was never anything consequential that could stop me in my tracks and say, “Maybe I should think about what I’m doing here.” By the time I was 21, I’d been to prison, lost a marriage, lost a kid, and overdosed. There’s a big core of consequences that could stop people, but not enough. By the time I’m 25, it’s doubled all that again. Except for the overdose, it probably tripled that by then. Consequences were never enough.

I tell people, “I think my addiction ran to its logical end.” I always liken it to an abusive marriage, where there was a honeymoon phase that lasted for years. There was a manipulation and abuse cycle, and then the fallout and divorce phase. I got arrested for a bank robbery at the end of 2020. By the time that happened, I was a heroin addict. It doesn’t matter how much I want to stop. I can’t stop. I was living under a bridge, though, so it was not much of a lifestyle, but I had fallen out of love with the drugs.

The consistency that I was still experiencing in drugs that I’d never found in people grounded me in the experiences that I was having. I always tell people, “Drugs are good at what they do. If they weren’t, nobody would do them.” I found this consistency early on. I was able to always find solace and peace in the most chaotic of times because I had this thing that I knew was lying to me, but it was telling me the same lie for the last fifteen years. It was consistent.

Drugs are really good at what they do. If they were not, nobody would do it. Share on X

It’s like the solution.

I tell people all the time, “Drugs kept me alive.” If it wasn’t for that component of what I was doing in my life, I probably would have killed myself a long time ago. I always had that to look forward to. I always had that thing that I could go back to and find peace in that, enough to keep me going. I don’t know if people identify with that or not. I just know that is the easiest way for me to convey what was going on. By the time I got arrested for the last time, I was well into that divorce phase. Mind you, I had nobody enabling me.

I had nobody that I was codependent on in my life, that in my darkest moments, I could reach out for $10 or whatever, or find a family member who would take me in when it was raining. I had to fully experience all of the consequences of my actions. In that, I got to fully benefit from my suffering. I got to understand the depths and darkness of not just the decisions that I made, but the consequences that followed. Through that, by the time I got arrested, I knew I was done. I needed to get rescued. I couldn’t do it by myself. Do you ever see those jail Spanish Bibles? It’s in Spanish. It says, “Rescued, not arrested,” but it’s in Spanish.

No. Are those in jails?

In jails, always. It’s bars. It says in Spanish, “Rescuedado, no arrestado.” I always think about that now. I was rescued, not necessarily from the drugs or anything. I was rescued from the cycle that I couldn’t get myself out of because, for my entire life until that point, I didn’t want to be rescued from the drugs. I knew how to do it. If I were ever serious about getting my life together, there was a very clear path to that for me. I’m not unique, but something that I had that a lot of other people don’t have is that I knew that when I was ready, my family would accept me back.

I knew it. I didn’t burn them. I made mistakes when I was a kid, but as an adult, I haven’t done them dirty. I hadn’t spent all that time with one foot in and one foot out, where I dragged them down or let them down time after time after time. I had this clear path out. The thing was, there was an expectation that I had to meet before I could utilize that pathway. I couldn’t meet that small expectation first. I had to be clean for a year.

Was that expectation out in the open?

Yes. In the industry, we always hear people talk about genetic predisposition. I have a genetic component to my addiction. I don’t contribute much of it to that, but there is one. One hundred percent of it was my choice, but I always get to, “I was predisposed to it anyway.” There is an understanding amongst my family. There are a couple of people out there still that I’m blood-related to. I was one of those people who said all the time, “All we want is for you to be clean, and you can come back.” My brother got thirteen years clean or something like that, but he never left my parents. He stayed under my mom’s wing while he was doing whatever he was doing, so we never had to go through that.

How far apart were you and that brother?

Twenty months. It’s me, and then a set of twins. He’s the second oldest in the family. I think I’m the only one who has ever actually utilized that extended hand to get back to it. Have you been in treatment?

No.

I’ve done a lot of treatment. I always told myself, “This is very inefficient. What they are doing is inefficient. I could do this better.” It’s egotistical and probably delusional to a point, but at the same time, I have all this experience, what didn’t and what did not work for me specifically. I built our company out from that point of view. There are terms that I’ve come up with that are not industry norms or recognized by other professionals. One of them is that we refuse to be clinically lazy.

We have clinical integrity. I’ve never heard other people say it. They probably have, but that’s part of who we are culturally. What it is is every treatment center that I ever went to, there would be blocks of time where they’re supposed to be different lessons. It’s all structured well. You can see it online sometimes, and people are like, “It has a good curriculum.” Every single one of them that I went to, without fail at least once a day, whoever was supposed to be facilitating any given meeting would come in and say, “You guys are going to read the big book for the next hour,” or “You guys are going to have a meeting amongst yourselves for an hour,” for whatever reason.

It was supposed to be relapse prevention or some type of DBT or something. Those were the first things where I was like, “This probably shouldn’t be happening because we’re here for a reason. You guys are experts. Why are we running these groups?” I’ve been to treatment centers where that was 100% of it. On the backend, now I know there are expectations legally through certifications like JCAHO and stuff, where it’s like, “This is not supposed to be happening.” Clinical integrity is a big part of our culture in our treatment within our organization. All of it is built out from my positive and negative experiences in treatment that I’ve been through.

 

Experiencing The Benefits Of Suffering

Let’s move on to the benefits of suffering. One thing I love about your message is your willingness to talk about suffering, not as something to be avoided, but something that can shape us. What does it mean to be allowed to experience the benefits of suffering?

I touched on it a little bit earlier. A lot of people have codependent or enabling relationships. I saw this one guy. I knew him for years. I use this as an example all the time because it’s the prime example of what this is. His mom would give him $100 every Christmas. Because he got that $100 for Christmas, he would look forward to that and justify everything that he did because he knew that he was going to get that $100 at Christmas. It’s something that little thing that can perpetuate your sickness.

It’s an extreme example, but it always blew my mind that that was what he would talk about all year. A big thing that we always see, and I’m sure you’ve seen it, is that there is a level of ignorance. A lot of the time, it is family, but there are always those relationships that seem to take responsibility for people and their addiction. When you do that, you take responsibility from them. That could be very detrimental to somebody’s progression in their addiction because they are not allowed to fully experience their suffering. I’ve seen it where these codependent relationships become the crux of all of their problems.

It also allows them to justify everything that they do. When I talk to people about this now, I try to make people aware that my entire progression in my story was that I couldn’t lean on other people. I ended up under that bridge because my wife, girlfriend at the time, and I were like, “This is $2,000 that we could be spending on drugs every month.” We made this decision together. “We’re going to stop.”

I got us kicked out of everywhere we went anyway. It was after we got kicked out of this one place. We were looking for another place. We were like, “You know what? We’re on the street. We go home once every three days anyway. When we need to shower, we can get a hotel or something. Let’s start being homeless.” If I had had somebody that I was codependent with, I might not have been able to experience some of the most intense, painful, suffering moments of my life that pointed me to where I’m at now.

Life happens for you, not to you. The suffering happens for you. You’ve got to experience those things.

The way that I look at it is we’re forged in the fire of our own mistakes. Suffering and pain will always be the greatest catalysts for change. We’ve talked about that for probably all of humanity. Pain is necessary for change, but there are lessons in that suffering that are so unique to those experiences. People who go through addiction have lessons and morals that other people don’t even realize exist. There’s a resilience and a level of independence. I believe that anybody who can successfully enter recovery can do anything that they want if they put their head to it. The hardest thing that anybody could ever try to do is enter recovery after an extended bout with addiction.

We are forged in the fire of our own mistakes. We will always be the greatest catalyst for change. Share on X

I have my opinion on why I think that is. Why do you think that is? What makes it the hardest thing to live a new life after living a life of addiction? They are two completely different things.

I know what it is for myself. All those years that I was active in my addiction, and I never tried to enter recovery because I knew I wasn’t ready, the reason why I knew I wasn’t ready is because of the work that’s involved and the amount of suffering that’s involved in recovering. Something that I don’t think is talked about enough is that when you get sober, for the most part, it gets worse at first.

I can relate to that.

Everybody can. You’ve got years of damage that you have to repair. You have relationships that you have burnt to the ground. You lost your job. You’ve sold all your stuff, or whatever it is. You now have to face these realities. Facing these realities, looking in that mirror, and getting honest with yourself for delusional people are some of the most painful things that you could ever have to do. If I am not careful, I will lie to myself so easily. It is so easy for me to believe a lie because it looks so true.

When you are going through these growing pains, if you don’t have the proper foundation under you, which is built with that suffering, the pain, and the experiences, there has to be a level of suffering that goes into that foundation. Without it, what would stop you from continually going back to it? The hardest part is the initial early recovery. People start hitting these friction points with their family. I’ve seen it in myself.

My best friend passed away a couple of years ago. He entered recovery. He had to look in the mirror and do all this work. He said, “I’ve got this job. I can’t pay my rent. I’m sober. I’m going to these meetings. I’m miserable. I would much rather be using and going through these motions while I’m using than try to do this sober.” I think it is very easy for us. This is true for me, and I believe that it’s true for a lot of us. Once you cross these lines, we are now willing to and able to do things that other people couldn’t even fathom doing. We are now coming from the problem towards the solution. The rest of the world stays in the solution and tries to avoid the problem at all costs.

I’ve got a brother that I’m in business with. He talks to me all the time. It’s like, “I could never, ever do that.” The reality is that because we’ve been there and done that, there are things that we can do because we know we’re capable of them, and things that we will do because we’ve crossed so many other barriers and lines that are societally agreed upon that normal people don’t do. It’s a lot easier for us to cross that road again.

A big part of my whole philosophy about my recovery is the social calibration of my moral compass. To answer your question, the reason why it’s so hard is that a lot of people are robbed of the full benefit of their suffering and their addiction. They have to go deal with these extremely painful situations in recovery. They’re like, “I at least have this blanket that I could put on in my addiction.”

It is the solution to the pain. I was thinking about this. The reason why it’s so hard is that everything has to change. I lived my life a certain way. I surrounded myself with certain people in certain environments. I did certain things. That’s my experience. Everything has to change when you get into recovery, like new eating habits, new sleeping habits, and new exercise habits. You pray and meditate. You do gratitude lists, new friends, new hobbies, and new interests. Everything has to change.

If you go back to your old environment, it’s too easy. The path of least resistance is to go back to doing what you were doing because you’re going to be triggered. You’re going to be irritable, restless, and discontent. It’s too easy to go back. I created a completely new lifestyle. When I see people create a new lifestyle, it’s hard because when you’re early in recovery, you’re still the old person. You still haven’t become the person that you want to be yet. They say you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

The people who I want to be like don’t want to hang out with me. They cannot yet. It’s almost like slowly growing, changing, transitioning into, or transforming into a different person. That’s my opinion. I remember when I celebrated five years, they said, “Congratulations, you’re no longer a newcomer.” I thought I was an old timer at a year sober, two years sober, or three years sober. It takes five years of hard work to finally get to a place where you’re like, “I’m good.” Statistically, and I don’t even know where this comes from, people who make it to five years are 85% likely to stay sober for life.

There are statistics that I constantly refer to that are staggering. People think they’re going to go to treatment for 28 days and come out a different person. That is not true.

“I’m good. I don’t need sober living.” It’s like, “What?”

It’s amazing that there are these expectations that are put on recovery. The reality is, you forgot to put the expectations on yourself. I could never wash away 17 years of slamming dope and running the streets in 28 days. It’s impossible.

There are expectations put on your recovery. Do not forget to put expectations on yourself as well. Share on X

It takes a minute.

I have a mentor. He has always driven this home. He’s like, “It is nearly impossible to get well in the place that got you sick.” He’s the only Navy SEAL in the history of the world that, after he got out of the Navy SEALs, picked up a fentanyl habit, went on this crazy drug addicted run, and in order to get out of it, joined the French Foreign Legion. He totally understood what he had to do in order to change his environment. Do you know what the French Foreign Legion is?

No, I don’t. It sounds like the Green Beret or something.

It’s a contingent of the French military. It’s by all foreigners, but the attraction is that they completely erase who you were. They give you a Canadian social security number and a French name. You become a completely different person. It’s one of the most intense trainings to even get stationed somewhere. He said because he had been a Navy SEAL, they would make him scrub toilets with toothbrushes and be like, “Navy SEAL, go scrub that toilet.” He calls it his baptism in humility.

One time, he had to build a pyramid. They’re up in the French Alps. It’s snowing. There are no rocks on the ground. He had to build a pyramid as tall as him, with equal sides out of rocks, before he could come inside. It took him days to do this. It was some of the most miserable stuff, but he was like, “I have to do this.” He always tells these stories. He would be up there in the middle of nowhere by himself, getting punished for nothing. He’d see this airplane go by, and he’d be like, “I wonder where they’re going.”

These are the types of extremes that when we go to those extremes in our lives, we have to radically do something different. That feeds into this whole “Everything has to change” thing. These changes started happening in me. The process of this change looks different for everybody. For me, it started while I was doing drugs. I fell out of love so hard with the situation. I was in some disgusting situations between gangs and stuff going on.

We were crossing the border constantly. It got scary and dangerous. It was like, “This isn’t worth it to me anymore.” I had my girlfriend with me. I started to fear things. For the first time in my life, situations happened around her in Mexico. She never went back after a couple of these things happened. It was like, “Life is getting crazy.” I’m 28 when I meet her. Stuff started getting crazy around 30. These are the massive extremes that we go through. The only logical thing that makes sense is that we have to go through extremes to change.

We have to go through massive extremes just to experience change. Share on X

I’m a man. You’re a man. My mentor and I talk about this all the time. Part of my philosophy that I’ve come up with is that as men in recovery, we have to balance ourselves. There are four parts to us where it’s our mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional. We have to stay level. If one thing is suffering, it’s got gravity, and it will pull you down into it. Everything spirals unless you’re constantly working on these things.

The trajectory of my recovery changed when I met Taylor Cavanaugh. He has given me permission to talk about this and stuff and name him by name. Taylor and I talk about it constantly. The trajectory of my recovery changed when I met him because there was that component of myself that I never understood was so important. It was the nutrition and working out. I started doing that, and it felt like everything was snapping into place. Around the same time that I met him was when the idea of Harmony Grove started to enter the picture. When I tell you that things came together in ways that had to be influenced by something much greater than myself, I’m not exaggerating. Do you know what Blue Bell Ice Cream is?

Yes.

Our facility was Blue Bell Ice Cream’s administrative office. Our IOP is over there. It’s got an amazing facility. Our staff is amazing. I could never have put this team together based on my historical record. I couldn’t have done this myself. There’s something else going on. I was a complete atheist after I fell away from the church and this whole lifestyle or whatever. I spoke a Christian language well because of my upbringing.

I used that in a very destructive way to be a jerk to people in my addiction, who claimed to be Christian or whatever. I was an atheist is what I claimed. About two years after I got arrested the last time, I’ll never forget it. It was a moment that I had where I was like, “It’s been months since I thought about drugs.” I’m thinking about what had gotten me to that point. I cannot justifiably say that I’m a lucky person anymore.

There is something else going on here. I have all of these metrics that I can talk about, where it’s like, “I should have been dead. I should have been in prison.” I definitely should have been in prison for the rest of my life, many times over, for the things that I didn’t get caught for, and for the things that I got caught for. Things were working themselves out that people ask me all the time, “How are you not in prison for the things that you got caught for?” I have to tell them, “I can’t take any credit for it. There was something else going on.”

Standing where I am now, the reason why I was given slaps on the wrist through this progression is that I was supposed to do exactly what I’m doing now. That’s the only justification that I can say. All of that credit has to go to something other than myself. It has to because I know myself. A lot of people around me know me. I will mess everything up every single time.

All of these things snapped into place when I started working out and looking at my nutrition. It was a game-changer for me. I have hit friction points in my recovery, too, specifically with my family. I’ve got some stuff going on in the background that is pretty painful. For the most part, I live a life that, years ago, living under a bridge, if you had asked me, “What are you going to be doing in five years?” It definitely wouldn’t have been this. You saw my booking picture, right?

Yes, I did.

That is a completely different person. It’s amazing to me.

It’s amazing how you’ve come so far. It’s amazing what recovery can do.

I’ll add this to that before I move on. This is what I talk about in the debt of recovery. I believe that it would be better for me to be out there using still if I wasn’t helping other people. It’s part of this balance that I have to make sure that I work every day to try to tip that scale a little bit back towards the deficit that I’ve created in my life. I’ve done so much bad to other people. You can take the criming out of it. You can take the drugs out of it. I’ve done so many bad things to people in my life.

There will always be this deficit right there, but then I’ve also done all this other stuff. I enter recovery, and all of these blessings come. That still counts against me. I still have to balance all this back out. I have to look at it as a debt, or else what am I doing? I have to continually be working towards paying something back, or else what am I doing? My real core belief about why I’m doing this is because I believe in my higher power. There’s somebody out there. I don’t know this person. I don’t know what they look like.

I’ll never know what they look like. I’ll never realize whether this interaction happened or not. There’s this person out there that I’m supposed to help. If I’m not doing everything that I can to make sure that I’m in a position to help that person when I interact with them, I will completely fail in what I’m supposed to be doing. I have to be the person who can help people. I certify sober coaches. Every month, we teach a certification course.

Through that, I’m certifying people who are going to help other people. I’ve got this treatment center where we’re bringing people in and helping them, too. I don’t know if it’s going to be these core people that I interact with. Maybe it’s one of their parents. Maybe it’s one of their children. Maybe it’s one of their future children that they don’t even have yet. It’s this ripple effect of recovery. One person can have a massive effect on the community around them. If you enter recovery, you automatically owe this debt to whoever you want to say it’s to. I say it’s to my higher power. I owe this debt to this higher power to do everything that I can to make sure that I’m balancing that every day.

Doing The Things You Don’t Want To Do

I’m sitting here thinking about growth versus decay. To your point, you’re either helping people or you’re not helping people. I don’t know if I would necessarily say you’re helping or you’re hurting. You’re lying, cheating, and stealing over here, and that creates the debt. You’re helping people. You’re being of service. You’re doing the next right thing. You’re doing one or the other. You’re either continuing to pay that debt back, or you’re continuing to go further into debt. It’s not to say I’ve been perfect while in recovery. I would say that more often than not, I’m doing the next right thing. I’m helping people. Like you, I’m working in a business of saving lives, helping people, and being a good example.

I am hard-pressed to say hurting people as well, but I do know myself. If I’m not hurting people, even if I’m not beating people up or robbing them, I know who I become. It’s funny because if I don’t workout for one day, my wife will automatically be like, “What’s going on? Are you okay?” “Yes, I’m fine.” “No. You’re not going to work out today?” “No, I need to take a break. I’m good.” “Are you sure?” She knows. If I deviate from my program, there might be something wrong. It’s because I become a crappy person fast.

Right about the time that I met Taylor, it was one of those things where I was spiraling in recovery. I was going to multiple meetings a day. I had a good sponsor. I was working on steps, and I was spiraling. In my head, I’m like, “I’m doing everything these people tell me to do. I’m going to these meetings.” Maybe people believe it or not, but I wasn’t working out. I wasn’t eating well. As soon as I started doing that, everything snapped into place, and I was okay.

I can tell you that health, wellness, exercise, and fitness are a huge part of my recovery. That was when, pretty quickly after I got sober, I started working out. I started doing yoga. Health and wellness are a big part. A lot of times, when I talk to people, “You’re so physically fit,” it’s not just the physical fitness. It’s the mental, emotional, and spiritual fitness. All of those things are part of it. I have a friend named Tom. I was going to F45 for a while, and I got him to start going to F45. He hadn’t worked out in ten years or something. He’s got long-term sobriety.

I remember he started going to F45. He was going almost every day, but he was only going six days a week. He’s like, “I only go six days a week because I heard that you’re not supposed to go every day. The one day I don’t go, I’m not feeling right.” I’m like, “You can go every day if you want. Just don’t go hard every day. Take it easy. If mentally and emotionally you feel better, then go every day.” In my opinion, in my experience, a day off for me or a rest day doesn’t mean that I’m sitting on the couch. I’m still going to be doing something.

That’s the funny thing. It’s like, “I’m not going to lift today, but I’m still doing 202 pump burpees in the garage.” She’s like, “Are you sure that’s enough?” “Yes, I’m good.” I think that there is a correlation. We do some hard stuff in addiction. There are some decisions that are made. Sometimes, getting that next bag can entail doing some difficult things. There’s a discipline that comes with doing those things in your addiction. It’s discipline and dedication in your recovery.

I believe personally that the highest form of self-love that you can have is self-discipline. If I’m not practicing those disciplines every day, then I’m failing myself on those days. It’s like, “I need this for my mental sanity. I need this because it makes me feel good. I need this because it keeps me aligned with my goals.” It was missing. I played on a competitive water polo team from a very young age, where this team competed in the Junior Olympics year after year. I was fifteen, and I was the captain of my varsity team in high school with seniors. It was like, “I was good at this.” I swam.

 

Some of those baseline expectations that my parents had were, “You’re going to play a sport, and in the off-season, you’re going to cross-train. During the summer, you’re going to do a sport.” Luckily, surfing qualified for that. It turned into that quintessential teenage California surf bum playing the guitar at the beach, surfing, and smoking weed. I have fully lived a life of discipline, whether it was in a good type of discipline or bad discipline. If I don’t have discipline, I will spiral faster than anything.

There is something to focus on. It’s like having a purpose.

First of all, I hate going to the gym, so I built this cool gym in my garage. I do not like going to the gym. I like working out, though. Sometimes, I look at my workout plan. I’m like, “I don’t want to do this.” Doing those things, even when you don’t want to, is so important. It is probably more important than doing the workouts that you want to do. I still have to do it whether I want to or not.

I’ve done Ironman a couple of times. It’s the same thing. It’s the Ironman journey. It’s not just doing Ironman. It’s the journey. You’ve got to run when you don’t want to run. You’ve got to swim when you don’t want to swim. You’ve got to ride when you don’t want to ride. You’ve got to get enough sleep. There are all these things you have to do when you don’t want to do them. We talk about discipline and doing things when you don’t want to do them because it’s in the plan.

I read a meta-analysis of a bunch of studies. The result ended up being that there is a chemical reward that happens that changes the structure of your brain when you do something that you don’t want to do because you have to do it. There’s a physiological reward to doing that. It’s not that they become easier because you’ll still not want to do it, but there’s something that happens to your brain. As time goes on, you become more resilient mentally.

There is a chemical reward that happens within your brain when you do something you do not want but really have to. Share on X

I wonder. I can say that I’m pretty good at doing things that I don’t want to do.

Me, too, probably.

Biggest Lessons From A Relapse

Let’s go on to relapse, desire, and spiritual growth. Recovery is not linear. Relapse happens. Craving still exists. Let’s talk about that reality. What are some of the biggest lessons you learned from relapse, either your own or those you’ve witnessed?

My podcast is going to be called My Last Relapse because it was one of the most important things in my life. Something that I’ve also learned is that we have power in words. Ultimately, we’ve let a medical industry give us these words that we get to as addicts, point out and say, “I was triggered, so I have no control over that. I had this craving, and so I couldn’t stop myself.” For me, the reality is that those are excuses. The reality is, I wanted to use drugs, and so I did. I get to tell you this word, which is a buzzword for you to understand. “I have no control over this.” That’s not the truth for me.

I’ve talked to a bunch of people about this, and it isn’t the truth for them either. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen or that they don’t exist, but for me, I don’t have triggers. I have excuses for using. I don’t have cravings. I have the desire to use. It’s completely up to me whether I take advantage of these excuses or take advantage of these definitions that I get to throw back at these clinical people. Relapse isn’t necessarily a part of recovery. We hear this all the time, but the statistics say it’s about everybody’s story, though.

It is most people.

Full disclosure, I got clean on December 28th. I got arrested on December 28, 2020. I had a couple of years, almost three years, clean. I relapsed at the beginning of 2024. Historically, my shortest relapse was only a couple of weeks. This was in Texas. I didn’t have access to the drugs that I wanted, even. It was so stupid, but one of the most important pivotal moments of my life because it pointed me in a direction that I didn’t understand I was going to go. I was sober.

I was doing the darn thing. The reality was I still had this desire to get high, even with all of the good stuff that was going on. I had these years under my belt, and then I relapsed. I learned a valuable lesson that I no longer even want to get high anymore. The massive importance of that was, yes, I was clean. Yes. I was sober. Yes, I was doing all this stuff. I was checking off all these boxes and stuff, but there was still a portion of me that was preoccupied with getting high.

I got to go through all these changes and experience a bunch of cool stuff, make strides in living a new life and going through radical changes in my environment and relationships, and stuff like that. Through that relapse, there is no part of me that desires any of the consequences now. That was the first three years. I don’t want the consequences of getting high. It was easy not to use, but I still wanted to get high. I thought that there was a chance that I could use a gentleman. Through that relapse, I went right back to the feelings of desperation and despair that I had left when I got arrested.

I was like, “This is so miserable. I need to escape this as soon as possible.” That was why it was historically my shortest relapse, too, but it was so important. I don’t regret the lesson that I learned, but I do regret the ripple effect of what that had for some of the negatives. I am still dealing with those consequences, but it ultimately pointed me in the direction that I’m going. I wouldn’t have had my treatment center if it weren’t for some of the lessons that I learned in that. I wouldn’t have some of the connections. I wouldn’t be here talking to you for sure if it weren’t for that relapse.

 

Life happens for you, not to you. Sometimes, it takes many years before you even get to realize, “That’s why that happened.” I got sober in 2011. It took me five years. It took me a long time, 5 to 10 years, before I truly worked through everything. My first five years were separation, divorce, and bankruptcy. My real estate license was revoked. I lost my business. I lost all my homes. I had started Camelback Recovery in 2014. I was two and a half years into it.

I owned a sober living home. I was the house manager. I was doing all the BD, all the admissions calls. I was working at a treatment center twenty hours a week to get my internship hours. I was in school getting my master’s. I was driving for Uber on the side to make enough money to pay my bills. That was the journey. I’m so grateful for it, but I would not want to go back there. I can tell you that much.

All of those major losses in recovery are like, “That was in recovery. You had to face all that stuff in recovery.”

If I wasn’t going to meetings once or twice a day, if I wasn’t talking to my sponsor, if I wasn’t close to a bunch of other people in recovery, if I wasn’t in it, surrounding myself in the middle of the herd, there’s no way. I went through some tough times. It was rough. Even 2024 was a rough year, too. I’m no stranger to rough times.

That isn’t talked about enough. Recovery might suck up front, but if you make it through all of those promises, all of those rainbows and stuff, they are there.

Get In Touch With Matthew

The gift is on the other side. This too shall pass. We’re coming up to the end of our time together. Is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn’t?

Nothing that I could think of.

Tell me. How can people find you? How can they learn more about your treatment center? How can they connect if they want to connect?

Our website is HarmonyGroveBH.com. Our phone number is on there. You can get to me through there, too. I’m starting a podcast soon. It’s going to be called My Last Relapse. We’ll start recording. I don’t have social media. I used to tell people it was a conspiracy theory thing, but I didn’t want my family to get hold of me. I do have an Instagram. I forgot how to refer people to that. I got it for the first time. I don’t use that to keep in contact. If you want to get a hold of me, you can call the office. They will connect you to me.

Matt, thanks for your vulnerability, your honesty, and your vision for sharing your story with us. I truly appreciate you.

I appreciate the opportunity.

Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you in the next episode.

 

Important Links

• Harmony Grove Behavioral Health
• Matthew Handy on Instagram
• Camelback Recovery
• Harmony Grove Behavioral Health on Facebook

 

About Matthew Handy

Matthew Handy is the visionary Founder and Owner of Handy Treatment Centers and Harmony Grove Behavioral Health, where he leverages his profound personal journey to create impactful and empathetic recovery environments. As a Certified Peer and Family Specialist (CPFS), Matthew brings an authentic, client-centered perspective to the behavioral health industry. A Houston resident, the 35-year-old entrepreneur grew up in San Diego as the eldest of ten children, a background that instilled in him early lessons in responsibility and resilience.

Matthew’s professional claims in the recovery industry are uniquely rooted in his lived experience as a former client, giving him unparalleled insight into the emotional, psychological, and practical challenges of navigating treatment. Having overcome significant personal battles, including years of addiction, incarceration, and homelessness, he understands the transformative power of hitting “rock bottom” and using that pain as a foundation for growth. His driving philosophy is to provide safe, supportive spaces conducive to profound personal change, helping others find the harmony he has discovered in his own life.

Driven by a deeply felt “debt to recovery,” Matthew is committed to guiding others away from destructive paths. He is an active member of the Texas Association of Addiction Professionals and NAADAC, consistently seeking to enhance his understanding and contribution to the field. Additionally, his regular attendance at Spiritual Care Network meetings underscores his belief in integrating spiritual well-being with clinical recovery, reinforcing his holistic approach to healing and his dedication to strengthening community recovery resources.