1376: Sean Hemeon | The Good Little Drug Lord

1376: Sean Hemeon | The Good Little Drug Lord

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes to authors, thinkers to performers, even the occasional neuroscientist, Russian chess grandmaster, cold case homicide investigator, or arms dealer.

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Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, Sean Hemeon, actor, artist, former good little Mormon boy whose speed ran a career change into meth dealer, Russian mafia debtor, and federal informant before most people figure out dental insurance.

Sean grew up believing [00:01:00] that being gay made him a beast unworthy of salvation. Then crystal meth gave him what his religion, family, and his own mind had failed to provide: confidence, belonging, sexual freedom, and the feeling that he was finally somebody. Within a few years, he had gone from a closeted Mormon theater student to supplying Washington, DC's club scene, carrying drugs through airports, working with federal agents, and hiding from a supplier who threatened everyone he loved.

Today, we'll examine how shame becomes addiction, how an intelligent person watches his moral boundaries collapse one rationalization at a time, and whether redemption is possible when you survived but someone else didn't.

So actually, I know you're in screenwriting and acting, and I'm not, so I'm going to jump right into this weird place potentially.

But take me to the moment when you first looked into the backseat of your car and you realize there's this young guy in the back of your car, and he's not just sleeping.

Sean Hemeon: No, he's not just sleeping. I'll throw a little context out to stage it. At that point in the [00:02:00] story, I was deep into trafficking crystal meth from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.

Total disclaimer, I'm not proud of any of the decisions that I've made. I felt cornered and backed up against the wall in order to do these things, and that will make sense later in the story. At this point, though, I found a connect in Atlanta who was working with some cartel people, and I would get it back to D.C.

in that way. And on one of these weekend trips, I'm hanging out with him. He's going to go pick it up, the supply for me. I meet one of his friends. I never met the guy before, just this young, cute college kid. I was like, "Oh," and he was really into me. And I was like, "Okay, this is great." So he and I were just hanging out.

He had done drugs before. I gave him drugs. I gave him one of the party favor gay boy drugs is GHB. They love that one.

Jordan Harbinger: That's kind of dangerous, right? It's like alcohol- It's

Sean Hemeon: extremely dangerous ...

Jordan Harbinger: it's like alcohol on steroids, right? Like, you have one- 1,000% ... and you're like, "Great." And then you have two, and you're like, "I'm going to the ER I bet."

You

Sean Hemeon: go into seizures and do this whole thing. And, like, the thing with [00:03:00] that is everybody knows you do not drink alcohol with that because it, like, hits the same place and your, your whole body just shuts down. And I was smoking meth at that point, so we were doing that. We were doing the GHB. This young man left at some point, and we think he left to go drink alcohol.

We're not sure, but then he came back. Anyway, so we go out to the clubs at night, and he starts acting weird. And when you do too much GHB, you fall out, which means you're just, you look like you're having a seizure, which wouldn't make people panic, but not to drug addicts. We're just like, "Oh, they're falling out."

Like-

Jordan Harbinger: Lay him down on his side or

Sean Hemeon: something ... lay him down, and this is really bad, but let's try to stuff more meth up his nose. Maybe it'll jumpstart his heart. Oh, my God. That sounds so bad.

Jordan Harbinger: That does sound so

Sean Hemeon: bad. But you have to understand, like, I haven't drawn a sober breath a year into this by this point.

I am so far gone that these things just seem normal to me and-

Jordan Harbinger: How many years ago was this? Must seem like a lifetime ago for you.

Sean Hemeon: I have been sober 21 years, so 2003, 2004. So

Jordan Harbinger: it is a lifetime ago, in essence, here.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, and I felt for the guy. So we laid him on his side, went into one club. That club wasn't really popping, so we came back out, [00:04:00] and he was still breathing in the backseat.

And we've been in this situation with other people before, check their breath. We do the whole thing. And then we went into the next club, and I came back out early morning hours and to check on him, and this is that moment. When I get into the front seat, I turn around, and his eyes were still closed, but it just feels off.

If anybody's ever been around a body that's nearing death or... It's just, there's a feeling. It just doesn't seem right. I check for the heart. You can feel it, so I'm like, "Okay, but this isn't right. I need my other friend to come out and verify this." I go in. I find him. He's with some boys. He's having fun.

He won't come out, and he's like, "You're being paranoid. You're being dramatic."

Jordan Harbinger: Which is also maybe a reasonable take for, to say to a meth addict.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, exactly right. 1,000%. So I go into a corner. I do more drugs, and in my head, I'll go check on him every 15 minutes or something like that. I don't know how much time passes, probably half an hour.

It's a drug [00:05:00] time warp. And I'm like, I come to, and I'm like, "I got to go check on him," so I go back out. This time I get in the front seat, and my friend has one of those... It was a very popular car in the early aughts. It was, like, that bright yellow Nissan Xterra.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. So like an SUV.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. It was a really... I don't, I don't- you don't see them.

They're, they're not that attractive, but... I get in the front seat, I turn around, and he's staring at me. And I fly back up against the, the windshield. Yeah. And then I see, like, frozen snot. I see the face is blue. Oh, no. I see the pee stain. Terrifying. Adrenaline kicks in. I grab him. I sit him up, and it was the weight of that-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah

Sean Hemeon: that freaked me out. I let him go, and then the way he hit the door- Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man ...

Sean Hemeon: and bounced off the door was, "Oh, .

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: Seriously,

Sean Hemeon: he's dead. I run inside, and I'm like a chicken with the head cut off. "God, you got to come outside. You got to come outside." Because my brain up to that point [00:06:00] was not accepting that this person could be dead or was on his way to being dead, just could not accept it.

It just wouldn't go to that place. And so I needed a friend to come out, and I had to drag him out because he just thought I was being paranoid and crazy. I literally dragged him out. He got in the front seat. He turned around, had one look, and then just started screaming.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Oh,

Sean Hemeon: God. And I was like, "Okay, great.

That verifies that."

Jordan Harbinger: Confirms it.

Sean Hemeon: He kept screaming, and it was like a movie moment because I slapped him because he couldn't calm down, and I was like, "Drive."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my gosh.

Sean Hemeon: I called 911, and it turned out that the hospital was closer to where we needed to go. Okay. And so I got him to drive, and this is 5:30 in the morning during morning rush hour, and he's going up one-way streets.

We- we pass cars.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. Sure.

Sean Hemeon: And we get to the ER, and we screech to a halt, again, like another movie moment. We run in freaking out, you know, "Our friend, oh my gosh," and the nurses pull out the gurney, open the passenger door, and the way his head flops, the [00:07:00] nurses, you heard the nurses go, "Oh, ." And they put him on the gurney.

They take him in, and the doctor's like, you know, "Wait. Don't leave." And you could see in the window. You could see a nurse on top of him doing CPR- Yeah ... doing the whole thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

Sean Hemeon: My friend turned to me and was like... He gave me the keys to the car, and he's like, "Get out of here." And I was like, I didn't question that.

I just did. But then he called me, like, literally a minute later, and he ran away, too. He's like, "Come back and get me."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, of course.

Sean Hemeon: We went back to his place, paranoid as hell, thinking the cops were after us, all this other kind of stuff, and I got on a plane that night an hour later and got back to DC, where most of my story takes place.

Jordan Harbinger: Were the cops after you? Because I would imagine they're like, "Okay, they just dropped off a guy," because spoiler alert, this man passed away.

Sean Hemeon: He's basically dead on arrival.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: And the cops, unless they caught this guy, Steven, my connect, if they only got to him, then they would've gotten to me, but I don't think they got to him at all.

There's no way they would've ever found me in any connection to this.

Jordan Harbinger: They didn't have cameras that got his plates or anything?

Sean Hemeon: However The premise of my story is gay [00:08:00] Mormon drug dealing narc for the federal government. Pretty dramatic. My entire existence hinged on this moment that happened two weeks after this related to this incident because I grew up a good little Mormon boy, which we can go into.

I'm a good boy. I'm a good boy, right? And all these devastating things that happened, a lot by my choices, happened to me. Two weeks after this young man died, I completely forgot I was the last phone number on his phone bill. When he left that one moment, probably to drink alcohol, he called me before he was coming back, and he didn't make sense at that point.

I was like, "Oh boy, this guy's messed up." Yeah. So two weeks later, after this happened, I get a phone call. And it's this deep Southern drawl. She's like an older Christian woman. She's like, "Please don't hang up." I'm like, I'm like, "Who is this?" I immediately go into thinking it's the cops trying to trick me.

She's like, "Please don't hang up. This is the last number in my son's phone bill. I just want to know what happened."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man. That is [00:09:00] crushing.

Sean Hemeon: Bro, I was so paranoid it was the cops, which is insane to think in a sober mind. Like, what the hell? They w-

Jordan Harbinger: But also, you're probably also not wanting to go to prison for, I don't know, what would that be?

Like, manslaughter, I suppose?

Sean Hemeon: On top of the fact that I was already arrested at that point and working with the informant, and no, she was just a grieving mother that had no information other than probably a phone call from the ER that said, "Your son OD'd on drugs, and he's here." Like, no information how he got there.

Jordan Harbinger: Right, come pick up his body or something like that.

Sean Hemeon: I can't even begin to tell you how much this still... A year later after I got sober, I tried to find her. I tried to look at my phone bill. I've tried to look up the hospital. I've tried to look up obituaries. I tried to find this woman to make amends and to say, "This is what happened to your son."

I could never find her. I tried a year later after that happened. I tried 10 years later. I tried recently when I wrote this book. I wrote a book in response telling her, "This is what happened to your son."

Jordan Harbinger: Because on the phone when she called and said, "Don't hang up," you hung up.

Sean Hemeon: I hung up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Oh my God.

Sean Hemeon: Begging me, crying. I robbed this woman [00:10:00] of grief, of closure, of her son, and I can still feel it. 22 years later, I can still feel that. And it challenged what I thought about myself. I thought I was a good person.

Jordan Harbinger: Of course, yeah. This would rock the foundation. It's got to be almost impossible to believe you're a good person after hanging up on a grieving mother to s- protect your own ass, basically.

That's just, you need to process that for the next few decades, right?

Sean Hemeon: Decades, write a book about it, talk about it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, go on podcasts and talk about it. And I'm not making light of it. No, no, no, no, no. We're chuckling because it's such a im- poignant and crazy event here.

Sean Hemeon: Exactly right.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, yeah. So to understand how a person becomes capable of making these decisions-

we have to go back to a period when you believed that your very existence was dangerous to the people that you loved. Before you ever touched meth, what did you believe was wrong with you?

Sean Hemeon: There's definitely two major chapters of my life, and I feel like each of those chapters you could cut out and make into a movie.

There's up until when I tried meth that first time at 21, 22, and then there's that period of, like, age [00:11:00] 13 up until 21 because prior to 13, I come from a family, there's seven of us with my two parents. I grew up in northern Virginia, DC, which was a lot of the power Mormons. My mother was Mormon. My father was not Mormon.

Jordan Harbinger: What's power Mormon?

Sean Hemeon: The ones, the lobbyists, the ones that held the money.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay.

Sean Hemeon: There was a lot of power Mormons.

Jordan Harbinger: So the Walmart Mormons don't live in Utah, they live in Virginia?

Sean Hemeon: There's Walmart Mormons? One of them might be. I

Jordan Harbinger: don't know. I thought Walmart was a Mormon thing. The,

Sean Hemeon: I know the Marriotts, uh, that are- Marriott's

Jordan Harbinger: Mormon?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, there's the Marriotts. Titanium

Jordan Harbinger: Elite

Sean Hemeon: Mormon. There, there's a lot, and because part of prospering is part of being a devout Mormon and that kind of stuff. Anyway, my dad was not Mormon.

Jordan Harbinger: Your mom must have taken some shit for that, right? Or-

Sean Hemeon: Oh, I mean, her own story is brutal, too. I mean, my grandfather wouldn't even talk to her at first because that's how bad it was, but she was escaping an abusive Mormon man prior to that, and because she got a divorce in the late '70s, my grandfather wouldn't talk to her.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Sean Hemeon: So, a- and then in comes my dad, who was, like, this charming, hippie [00:12:00] man's man, just swooped in and just was like, "Hey, baby."

Jordan Harbinger: Grabbed a Mormon wife.

Sean Hemeon: They got... Yeah, and they got-

Jordan Harbinger: That's the more surprising, I don't know.

Sean Hemeon: They got married four months later.

Jordan Harbinger: What the heck?

Sean Hemeon: So I'm the middle child of seven.

Jordan Harbinger: So he might as well be Mormon.

He had seven kids.

Sean Hemeon: He came from a family of seven, Irish Catholic.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. Never mind. 'Because I was going to say, hippie charming guy with seven kids?

Sean Hemeon: I know.

Jordan Harbinger: Sheesh.

Sean Hemeon: He was such a... I don't know. I feel like all men that were kids in the '50s are all the same. All white men, kids in the '50s are the same. They just have this weird humor about them, and then just the entitlement.

It's so funny to watch. But kind of like I had to pick a parent, and I picked my mom. I was her favorite. He was unavailable emotionally. I became her, like, sponge in a way. I beat out my siblings. I won my mom, and part of that was being a really good Mormon boy. I had experiences early on in my childhood where I was physically abandoned.

My parents were just so involved in their own emotional BS stuff that, like, they literally forgot me somewhere, and I had to walk home.

Jordan Harbinger: I think I talked to you about this. She just forgot to pick you up from something.

Sean Hemeon: We were moving from the old house to the [00:13:00] new house, like a mile away. Oh, yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: yes. This is a great story.

Well, for me, not for you.

Sean Hemeon: It was just, I'm in my Spider-Man underwear. I'm four years old. I'm just playing around, and we're moving from one house to the other, and my parents are arguing. My mom, our entire life, was harassing our father to not drink, not smoke cigarettes, and come to church. It was like, of course.

Jordan Harbinger: Irish Catholic guy. Stop drinking. No.

Sean Hemeon: He'd be like, "Quack golden placed my ass." Like, he would be like, "Just bullshit, bullshit." Like, if you were a missionary that came over to our house, I felt bad for you. Anyway- But before we take off, one final time, I'm like, "Let me run inside to go to the bathroom. Wait for me, wait for me."

And, but they were so involved in themselves and stuff like that, when I came back out they were gone.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

Sean Hemeon: I'm, again, I'm four. So like-

Jordan Harbinger: You had your underwear.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. And the memories are just beginning to process. Like, we don't remember things before that age and stuff, but this was probably my first one because I come back out and you're like, "Where'd they go?"

Jordan Harbinger: Where's the car? Yeah. Where's the wood paneled station wagon?

Sean Hemeon: Exactly right. Just to say what I understood my, how I [00:14:00] understood my family, I was like, "Oh, they're playing a practical joke on me. They're going

to

Sean Hemeon: come back around the corner and I'm going to be really mad at them." But they never came back. And then the trees started getting bigger and the clouds scarier, and some neighbor woman tried to help me and it freaked me out, and I just, I started running towards the new house.

I don't remember or understand how I got to the new house or how I even knew the way, but after this treacherous journey, I arrive there, and the most damaging part about this whole story was when I arrived, it wasn't that they left me behind, it was that they didn't even notice I wasn't there. Oh my gosh.

And that was the damaging thing. And-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Sean Hemeon: God bless my mother, but she has her own stuff prior to that. Lots of depression, that kind of stuff. She has her own journey. We all, humans, we have our journeys, our own traumas and stuff like that. I was already getting that from her. This experience validated that core of, you know, I must not be worthy enough.

My parents don't even see me. Why is anybody else going to see me?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: And so what happens to a little kid's brain or anybody's brain is like our egos will start validating that [00:15:00] because that's, oh, that's my personality. I'm somebody who doesn't think they're enough. So let me do everything I can to perform to be enough.

And for me, what that looked like was being a good little Mormon boy. And I was like, "I have to believe this shit."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. And then at some point you realize that you like boys and not girls, and th- I would imagine that probably strikes you as a potential problem for being a good Mormon boy.

Sean Hemeon: Being a gay boy in the '90s, and then being a gay boy in the Mormon Church, do I need to say anything else?

Like, like-

Jordan Harbinger: The Venn diagram on stress is, like, pretty, uh-

Sean Hemeon: And then also on top of that, knowing that my mother had already made comments. My brothers called me faggot.

Jordan Harbinger: To be fair, everybody used that word in the '90s. Correct. We didn't mean it that way. Correct. It hurts more when you're actually gay, probably.

Sean Hemeon: 1000%. Yeah. And so 13, realizing that I might like boys, and they were still preaching in the '90s from the pulpit, what we called the altar, about the cancer that homosexuality is. They were still preaching that, at least in the early '90s. Enough for me to take it on and understand it and stuff. So when I started liking other [00:16:00] boys, the message I got that I believed was, "What did I do to God that was so bad that he would curse me with this disease of gayness?"

And I couldn't understand when they were preaching or you hear everybody else say like, "Why are you choosing this?" And in myself was like, "Yeah, why am I choosing this? What did I do? I'm a terrible fucked up person because I'm choosing this." Not even realizing that it's not a choice, yada, yada, that whole stuff.

I started to believe I lived in a world where even God hated me, where I'm being punished by God. And so that's at 13. And then it's sad because I'm 13 and I want to die. I want to die to get back at God. I want to die to get back at my mother. And it wasn't like planning suicide, but it was like, I could step in front of this bus.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so you just thought about it?

Sean Hemeon: It's ideation, yeah. And what actually saved my life, and this is so cliche but it's so true, one of my best friends in eighth grade, turned out he was like me. And this love, if you will, started [00:17:00] pouring out of me, and I was like, "How could this be so wrong if this feels so right?"

So he and I had this undercover relationship all through high school. I was a total cliché. I mean, I was football captain, homecoming court.

Jordan Harbinger: Really? That's hilarious

Sean Hemeon: you were doing that. I was a little bit of a bully probably-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Sean Hemeon: and not even realizing. You got it laying on thick, man. And then in the closet or behind the scenes, uh, you know, I had this boyfriend.

I was a total walking '90s cliché. That really

Jordan Harbinger: is like an Ep- After School Special.

Sean Hemeon: I had the cherry red Jeep Wrangler. I had the blonde frosty tips. I had the hemp necklace.

Jordan Harbinger: Does that... I don't think that... I think that's what everybody had except for the boyfriend.

Sean Hemeon: No, exactly. But could I s- Most high schools do superlatives, like most likely to be president.

Mine, you should give me the Oscar, because mine was most typical senior, which means I fulfilled that role of being an acceptable high schooler.

Jordan Harbinger: You were a good actor then, and you're a good actor now. Yeah. No wonder they picked you for NCIS.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, man. Exactly. So being able to handle a relationship in, uh, as a teenager, n- no teenager can do, but then also [00:18:00] handling one behind the scenes.

The thing that really started holding us together was alcohol, was drugs. My three older brothers drank, even though s- still trying to be good Mormons. And so by the time I was 18, I was already blacking out. I was the one with the fake ID. I was the one getting alcohol. I was, I was happy to experiment with all drugs.

So I was, and I was already smoking cigarettes. I was heavy into that because, obviously, I've already described most of this journey. There's an incredible amount of angst and dissonance and existential daily crisis going on inside of me. So yes, the alcohol felt fucking good, damn good.

Jordan Harbinger: Especially, you're probably worried about getting caught or found out, right?

So if you can forget about that for a little bit by drinking, that's probably a load off at any given time.

Sean Hemeon: Exactly right. That and it also meant I was acceptable by my peers, which means I was winning the game of being straight and accepted, and also my brothers, being accepted by them. I could out-drink anybody.

I was that party guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Who's the gay boy now, [00:19:00] Tim? You're the one who's unconscious on

Sean Hemeon: the couch. Yeah, bro. What's up, bro? Ex- exactly right.

Jordan Harbinger: I can imagine it.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So okay, so you're watching Star Trek with your mom, and then a news preview shows, I think, a gay rights march.

Sean Hemeon: They, yeah, so that's just a perfect example of the messaging I got from my mother, because I'm, like, 10.

I think it w- in '93 they were marching, ACT UP was marching against, right, for medication for... It was a gay march in DC, and it was on the news. I watched Star Trek: Next Generation with my mom all the time. It was her and I's thing. But on the 10:00 news, it was like, gay march in Hollywood, and it showed drag queens, leather daddies, lesbians, and I just clearly remember This is right before 13.

This is right before I knew what was happening. It was just more of a feeling. But just my mom just turning that off and just going, "Ugh, disgusting." And I don't know why. I didn't know why at the time. Could've

Jordan Harbinger: been the leather daddies.

Sean Hemeon: Probably. I was going to go drag queens, but I just melted into that couch, though.

Jordan Harbinger: That's like Mormon mother kryptonite, I think, some of that stuff. That's insane.

Sean Hemeon: Or just the drag... Why do the drag queens piss them off so much? They

Jordan Harbinger: still [00:20:00] do.

Sean Hemeon: No, it was just, they just argued at the Smithsonian Lady for putting RuPaul in there, and I was just like, "What is with you people and drag queens?"

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, no, they're, people are obsessed with drag queens. There's a subreddit called Not A Drag Queen. Subreddits are like little parts of Reddit with that are, I guess you'd call it subject matter. It's called Not A Drag Queen, and it's whenever anybody does anything that's perverted or weird, and because they always say, "Oh, drag queens are weird, perverted people."

And they'll put police officer caught with child pornography. And it's like, "Not a drag queen." You know, pastor caught, da, da, and it's like, "Also, not a drag queen." That's brilliant. That's brilliant. It's pretty funny. Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: That's good.

Jordan Harbinger: The drag queen thing, for like a guy like me, who's just a straight, white male, it's weird, but it doesn't freak me out.

It's just strange to watch somebody dress like that, but it's funny.

Sean Hemeon: It's performance art. It's performance art.

Jordan Harbinger: And I know I'm going to insult people with this, and I don't mean to. It's kind of like watching a Disney character or a clown at the circus. I know I'm going to take shit for this, but it, that's what it looks like.

It's perform- like a wrestler.

Sean Hemeon: 1000%. And there are some drag queens that actually do clowning, that make that part of the [00:21:00] thing. No, if you think of it as performance art, which is exactly what it is, then that's all it is. Actors that are dressing up in a certain costume and then putting on a show. It's just a culture of it that does it.

Jordan Harbinger: I think people who are, I guess you'd say

Sean Hemeon: are- They just happen to be gay.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes,

Sean Hemeon: and- There's some straights that are on, like, RuPaul's Drag Race, straight people that

Jordan Harbinger: come on and do it. That's, that I believe. And I also think people confuse trans people with drag queens, and it's not the same thing. And that's kind of an understandable thing to not understand if you're not paying attention.

And I think that really freaks people out, if you've read the news in the last decade.

Turns out an eight ball a day keeps literally everyone away. We'll be right back. Or will we?

This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. If I could wake up tomorrow and be better at one thing, I'd want to handle stress without letting it follow me into every part of my day. Sometimes one negative review, an unexpected problem, or a nasty email can take up way more mental space than it deserves.

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Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now back to Sean Hemeon.

Anyway, that's Mormon mother kryptonite is my point. She's just like, "Oh my God." And then you're like, "Oh no- Yeah ... my mom thinks these people are gross, and I think I might be one of them." And

Sean Hemeon: I'm disgusting. I'm horrible. What did I do to God-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah

Sean Hemeon: to be cursed with this? Also, you're

Jordan Harbinger: back to this.

Sean Hemeon: I fully believed that I lived in a world where the God that ruled it hated me so much, wouldn't even tell me that the horrible thing that I did. Instead, just cursed me with the disease of gayness, which made me not acceptable, not enough, and all that. So I just wanted to die.

I wanted to die all the time. And when that relationship ended at 19, I went right back to wanting to die. Like, and so I was overloaded with that feeling, and that's when I started heading into the drugs heavily.

Jordan Harbinger: You mentioned that your church leader compared homosexuality to cancer I found this part funny that you took extra pieces of sacrament bread because you thought you needed more Holy Spirit.

Like, I feel like if you're a pastor [00:25:00] or a preacher and you notice somebody taking extra wafers, like pull the kid into the office and ask what's going on. Yeah. Something's going on. Yeah. That's, and I thought that was kind of like, all right, if I have three of these, maybe I won't be gay next week.

Sean Hemeon: It's so funny because they cut up white bread.

It's such a white bread religion, but they cut up white bread, and that's what's passed around.

Jordan Harbinger: That's the most Mormon

thing I've

Sean Hemeon: ever heard. Yeah, white bread and, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: The wafers aren't white enough. White

Sean Hemeon: bread and water.

Jordan Harbinger: No wine. I forgot about that. Yeah, no caffeine, no wi- geez. Okay. So it's easy to probably make Mormonism the single villain here, but I mean, plenty of gay people who are raised Mormon don't become drug addicts, drug dealers.

So what combination was kind of uniquely yours, you think?

Sean Hemeon: That's a great question. There are a lot of gay Mormons that are actually still trying to be Mormon, so more power to them. And-

Jordan Harbinger: Can they? Is that allowed, or is it you have to keep it a secret?

Sean Hemeon: You... No, no, you're allowed to say you're gay, but you are not allowed to, like, act-

Jordan Harbinger: Be gay.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. But you know what? If that's their speed, more power to them. Sure. But then there's a lot of us gay Mormons that are really messed up as a result [00:26:00] of it because of all the repression and everything like that. My special combination just comes from the disease of addiction definitely comes down both sides but definitely came down my dad's side.

You can see a long line of them. Like, I have a ancestor, an Irish sea captain, that passed out on the way home from the pub and froze to death because he was so drunk. Like, just stories like that- Yeah ... just trickle down. So I have that, and then that core belief of not enough, depression from my mother's side.

So I was ripe. I came into the world believing I was powerless, and then suddenly believing I was in this Mormon god world that gave me even less power as well. I was perfect. I was the perfect candidate to try crystal meth for the first time and to feel, like, superhuman because that drug makes you feel powerful.

It's not true, but it makes you feel powerful, and I just took to it. I always had the fantasy of, like, I loved acting. I used to go to the movies with my dad. That was our thing. We would go to the movies. We wouldn't tell my mom we were seeing a rated R [00:27:00] movie, but he would- Yeah, God forbid ... sneak me in. Yeah, he would s- sneak me into Die Hard or like- Yeah.

Oh, cool ... oh, I loved Young Guns. Yeah, of course. You know, all the '90s classics. Sure. Loved all of them. And the way my dad looked at that screen- I would marvel at it because he wouldn't look at anything else like that. He would just be swept away in the movie, and I think I fell in love with movies then. I think I fell in love with wanting to be an actor then.

But I fell in love with wanting to be a '90s action hero, and I think that comes from that place of I feel so powerless in this world. I want to be powerful like that toxic macho dude up there, but whatever. So when I got to meth, and also being gay and repressing that, when I got to meth, this sense of powerlessness was overcome by this sense of power that I got from this.

I felt invincible, and that's what that drug does to you.

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, you see people do crazy things while on it, so that totally makes sense.

Sean Hemeon: Uh, just to put some context in this, the way it was described to me, you know, we have a normal dopamine drip in the back of our heads. It drips like an IV thing. Let's compare it to that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'm getting some every time I take a sip of this cold brew. Correct.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. Correct. And so when you do a drug [00:28:00] like meth, it literally opens up that drip and drops it down like an ocean while creating more dope. Some drugs will open that up and just pour it in. I think like cocaine will do that. It would just open it up and pour it in.

But meth will open it up, pour it in, and create more at the same time. And so-

Jordan Harbinger: It sounds so awesome, so I feel like we- Correct ... need to say something about how it's not a good idea.

Sean Hemeon: Just listen to the rest of the story, guys.

Jordan Harbinger: True. It's also cardiotoxic and neurotoxic.

Sean Hemeon: Yes, and also to put a damper on it even more, 20 years ago, the strength of the drugs is 50 to 100% stronger today, and now they really do cut it with all these other things.

It's insane how strong meth is today, that you fuck with it once or twice, you're screwed.

Jordan Harbinger: Those are the commercials, right? "I'm only going to do

Sean Hemeon: meth once." This is your brain on drugs.

Jordan Harbinger: And then it was meth not even once.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. Now it's so strong, and if you're primed for it, like with me with addictive tendencies and just this not enough-ness and this powerlessness, like when I was introduced to meth, I was also introduced to drug dealers [00:29:00] at the same time.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, dang. So it's not like you couldn't get more.

Sean Hemeon: It's not like I couldn't get more, but it's also like I saw the drug dealers and I was like, "What is that?" I was fascinated with the power and the seduction and the glamour that these drug dealers had, and they all loved me because I was in my prime. I was a little Twinkie boy in my 21.

I was like they wanted a piece of this guy, and I was like- Fresh,

Jordan Harbinger: fresh meat ...

Sean Hemeon: total fresh meat. I should have been like, oh gosh, Johnny Depp's girl in Blow when she had like the fur coat and the high heels. Like I should have been that. I was that for a minute.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, for gay drug dealers.

Sean Hemeon: For gay drug deal- Yeah.

Give me more meth. You can't keep up with my habit. Like I'm going to get us arrested, you know. Look, I was young and like 21, 22. I was young. I thought I was invincible, because most people think they're invincible at that age, and I can do a few drugs on the weekends at the DC clubs and I can get out of here.

And I'm, I was in theater school in Richmond, which was 90 miles south. And so I was just being a young idiot, just messing about.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm a drug user on the weekends, but during the week I got my head down and work.

Sean Hemeon: Correct. That's a lot of people.

Jordan Harbinger: I think it is a lot of people. It's

Sean Hemeon: a lot of [00:30:00] people.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Nothing was wrong at that point. Yes, I started getting later to classes. Yes, the weekend crept into Tuesday and I'd get to, you know-

Jordan Harbinger: Oof. That's what I was going to say. Once it's Tuesday-

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: doing a couple lines just to see if you or whatever.

Sean Hemeon: D- I was dating this one drug dealer from New Orleans. He called me Sherry.

And he was living in different hotels, and I would just go around with him. He'd pay for everything. I should have taken it as a sign that one time when he was out of meth that I had a like an emotional raging reaction to that. Like, "I have to go back to class. What do you mean you don't have..." Like I should have taken that as the first sign, but of course I didn't.

I blamed him for all these things. I'm not paying attention to the, the addiction signs at this point.

Jordan Harbinger: You're not clocking how much of this you're consuming probably.

Sean Hemeon: Correct. And then- I used that resentment as justification one night, because this is where the story really pivots. Because one night, he loved ketamine at that point, and before- now it's everywhere and people are doing it for therapy, but back then it was the new party drug that people took and went into K holes and this kind [00:31:00] of stuff.

And so he would do that and, like, kind of zone out and do K holes. And he w- I just was around him enough and realized he was a terrible drug dealer.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Like, he just had bad business sense or something?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. And look, I said that with a smile and a laugh, but, like, I am taking this serious. Like, I'm laughing at myself because I thought it was so amusing to myself that he was terrible at drug dealing.

That was my reasoning one night when all of his clients were blowing up his phone, and I knew some of them at this point, and I'm like, "Sorry, he's passed out." And they were like, "Can you come deliver it?" And I would have never thought of that.

Jordan Harbinger: And you're like, "Bro, the product sells itself. It's sitting over there.

All you have to do is stay awake and you can't even do that?"

Sean Hemeon: I had this rebel energy inside of me because the drug dealers I would see would make you do this song and dance, and we were beholden to them, and we have to run around and do this, and on their timing. I got so resentful at all the drug dealers that I met at that point.

Just give me the fricking party drug so I can go to the club and dance for a couple hours and go home.

Jordan Harbinger: Don't make me hang out with you and kiss your ass for

Sean Hemeon: three hours. All this stuff, I hated every single second of it, and I vowed that if I was ever dealing [00:32:00] drugs, I would never be like that and that kind of stuff.

So I was already s- set up to, like, hate all the dealers I dealt with.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm going to have good customer service.

Sean Hemeon: A thousand percent. I'm going to be reliable. I'm going to, like... Again, I know I'm laughing at this, but it seems innocent at this point.

Jordan Harbinger: It's also funny to be like, "I'm going to be the reliable drug dealer that sells meth."

Sean Hemeon: I was the good one. Yes, I was the polished Mormon boy. I was going to, like, respect you and do this whole thing, and this was my first tryout. I made the choice to take his stuff and I made deliveries that night. I got to cue the fireworks behind me and the rock star music because I felt like a badass.

Jordan Harbinger: You're probably a hero to these people who've been calling for three hours- A thousand percent

and they can't get ahold of Frank or whoever it is.

Sean Hemeon: The relief, half of them are already full-blown addicts, so the amount of relief you could see, like visible relief, was like there. The others were just partiers, but, like, the relief for them. And I made him all of his money, and I came back. I was so proud.

But, like, the second I walked in the door, there's like a, the, one of those cheap-ass hotel coffee machines flying by my head because he's freaking out. He's thinking I'm trying to steal his business. He's thinking all these crazy paranoid things like, "You're just in this for the drugs. You don't love me.

You're trying to steal my business. You [00:33:00] suck at th-" Like, all these horrible things. And out of a resentment, I was like, "You don't think I can do this?" And I was like, "Watch me do it." Your

Jordan Harbinger: job's not that hard, Shuri.

Sean Hemeon: Watch me do it. Yeah. Yeah. And so terrible last words because I then vowed, I was like, "Okay, I'm going to steal all of his clients."

And again, I'm 22, I think I'm invincible. I don't think any of this applies to me. "But I'm going to steal all your clients and I'm going to prove to you that I can do this. And I'm going to get out of this because now I feel like I'm deep in this. So I spend a few months and I, I have some other drug addict friends who are helping me run drugs and I'm transforming.

I sell drugs. I buy myself clothes. You can tell my attire's changing. I'm around my family high. I'm high all the time. But, but-

Jordan Harbinger: How are you around your family high? Like, they don't know? They can't tell?

Sean Hemeon: Uh, they absolutely know. They absolutely can tell, but they have no idea what to do.

Jordan Harbinger: So they just ignore it.

Sean Hemeon: Correct.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh,

Sean Hemeon: man. Denial's a very powerful thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: I [00:34:00] came back, like for example, in the middle of this, I went to my grandmother's funeral A Mormon grandmother out in Oregon. And I had a campaign finance manager client. I had a pop star client, and that pop star had a Gucci suit, loaned it to me for this funeral.

Jordan Harbinger: You, you showed up to a funeral in a Gucci suit?

Sean Hemeon: I did, and that's all I talked about. Just very Mormon, by the way. They're all wearing floral dresses, and the guys are wearing shirts that are too big and ties too big, and I had this sleek Gucci suit. I'm like, "You like my suit?" And it's like, my grandmother's dead body's right there.

Jordan Harbinger: God. People must have been like, "What is wrong with this guy?"

Sean Hemeon: Correct. And then at lunch afterwards, I threw down the money to, like, pay for the lunch of all 15 of us, however many people were there, and they're like, "How do you have money?" I was like, "Dealing some party favors." My mom's very naive. She's like, "What are you talking about, party favors?"

My dad sold, he called it hashish, back in his younger years, too. He would get weed in Europe and ship it back. So he knew what I was talking about. My brothers knew what I was talking about. And I was like, "Yeah, you know what? I'm selling drugs." And they all just rolled their eyes [00:35:00] at me. They were like, "Is there, like, a gay mafia or something?"

And then they started just making a joke about the whole thing, because they were like, "Do you guys all have matching pink guns?" Like- Ah ... what is this like? That kind of stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: Nice one.

Sean Hemeon: Great. I laughed, but then I was really resentful. I was like, "F you guys. Watch me do this." But I knew I was so far in. I knew I was being a effing idiot.

I knew my heart was in acting, at theater school. I knew this was pulling me away from that. I knew there was a problem here. And I was like, "Listen, I am getting out of this. I'm just proving that asshole ex-boyfriend that I can do this. I'm going

to

Sean Hemeon: take his clients and I'm going to get out." It was the end of February 2003, and, um, very successful weekend.

I did a good job of finding new people that could bring drugs from New York and other places that... Whatever. I'm not bragging about drug dealing, but I figured it out.

Jordan Harbinger: You cracked the code to making this work.

Sean Hemeon: Made the money, that kind of stuff. I even confronted him and been like, "Look what I did." And I threw money at him just to eff with him even more.

Then I went out to my car. I won. I was so proud of myself, and in the alleyway next to the [00:36:00] apartment building that he was staying, with a friend or something, I passed out. I totally passed out. Now, I didn't say in this story so far that two months before, racing down to Richmond from the DC, Northern Virginia area, 90 miles down 95, after partying all weekend and still being awake, I made up a bullshit essay for art history or theater history or something, and I'm racing it down to school so I can at least keep my grades.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, sure.

Sean Hemeon: And I fell asleep.

Jordan Harbinger: While driving?

Sean Hemeon: While driving. Ooh,

Jordan Harbinger: shoot.

Sean Hemeon: And before I fell asleep, there was no Mack truck in front of me, and then my eyes blinked and woke up and I'm going under a Mack truck.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, my gosh.

Sean Hemeon: They have the suicide bars that kind of stop you from doing that, but I think this is at the time, this truck really didn't have it, because my car was going under it.

And so the back of the truck was coming through the windshield, and it was, like, this far from me.

Jordan Harbinger: So you rear-ended the Mack truck, not f- head-on? Okay.

Sean Hemeon: Oh, yeah. Oh, God, no.

Jordan Harbinger: I was thinking, "How are you standing here?"

Sean Hemeon: I'm behind him, but I'm behind him and I'm going right under him.

Jordan Harbinger: Gosh, that's also [00:37:00] obviously quite terrifying.

Sean Hemeon: To wake up to that, to wake up to that crunching noise and something hitting my reflexes braking and la, la, la. My dad owned a gas station and a service station and sold them and this kind of stuff, so this was his arena. So I just straight up said, "I crashed the car. It's on that side of the highway." And I was so paranoid of the cops coming, I called another friend to come pick me up, so I just got out of there.

As a result of that, I never showed up to court, so my license was suspended and I didn't know it, or failure to appear at court or something like that. So when I fell asleep in the alleyway and I wake up to a tap, tap, tap, and I look up and it's the DC police, they're like, "License and registration," I don't think anything of it as I open the window, like, this much, like a crack, and I feed the license through and I light a cigarette.

I think nothing of it because I don't know anything about that. Two minutes later, he opens my door and he's pulling me out. I'm like, "What the..." You know? He's like, "You failure to appear in court. We have the right to search you," and this kind of stuff. And I'm just like... It's such a blur. It happened so fast.

Other cop cars [00:38:00] pulled up. You know, I was cornered. And they start searching me, and they pull out thousands of dollars, my bounty for the weekend. I still have a lot of drugs on me, a lot of baggies and baggies of meth, scales, empty baggies, and they didn't know GHB as much. There was a gallon of this stuff in my trunk, but it was in a water thing, so I think they just thought it was water.

Because when I got my car from impound- The

Jordan Harbinger: GHB was still in there?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. Oh, my God, dude

Jordan Harbinger: But you got caught with a ton of money and a ton of meth and a ton of paraffin and what, intent to distribute? Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, and other drugs. I had ecstasy. I had a pharmacy at that point. You know, you wanted Xanax, you wanted Viagras, you wanted whatever, I had a whole pharmacy.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you need Viagra when you're on meth? Asking for a friend.

Sean Hemeon: 1,000%.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you do, okay.

Sean Hemeon: You don't need it, but of course.

Jordan Harbinger: Why not?

Sean Hemeon: Well, look, meth is broken up into categories. There are those that hyper-focus on like plucking their face and tinkering with their beauty. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: I've seen that. That's so gross.

Sean Hemeon: There are those that-- I have had a few clients that were obsessed with bugs in their arms, so they have [00:39:00] scabs on their arms.

I had one client, if you will, he had a room like this size filled to the top with power drills and power tools and was just obsessed with carpentry and this weird renovating-a-house-that-never-got-renovated.

Jordan Harbinger: At least he was using the tools. I thought you just meant he kept them in boxes.

Sean Hemeon: No, no, he was...

Whatever he was doing with those things. And then there's a large majority that's obsessed with sex. It's all about sex.

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like that's the category I would fall into if I used meth.

Sean Hemeon: Well, again- '

Jordan Harbinger: because it seems like the most interesting thing to do

Sean Hemeon: when you're high ... ocean of dopamine where it's just like a piece of chocolate becomes the most orgasmic thing.

Jordan Harbinger: If I have to pick between picking invisible bugs under my skin and plucking out all the hair on my face and getting those pockmarks or banging all the time, like it's an easy choice.

Sean Hemeon: Correct. Yes. I'm just going to say this about my community, and we're going to move on from it. But gay men are free to have sex as often as they want because they don't have this barrier of like feminine intuition of just being like, "Hey, maybe we should talk more."

There are gay men like that. I'm not generalizing. I'm not just saying like... But it's just a free-for-all.

Jordan Harbinger: Also, what's the reputational [00:40:00] damage from a man having too much sex? It's pretty minimal.

Sean Hemeon: Correct. And now, because it is to be expected, a lot of people just slip into that kind of personality. That's its own thing as well.

But for a lot of men and stuff, this is early 2000s, so it's like a lot of repression. So this is, again, the power that comes. You know, you feel wanted, you feel sexy, you feel all these things, so it's very alluring at first. But then it just becomes this whole other thing. Anyway, so those are the categories people fall into.

Mine happened to be drug dealing. I was obsessed with bagging and rebagging and weighing and reweighing and organizing and not... I was very organized with my drugs. I just- Yeah, your

Jordan Harbinger: Google Docs are highly encrypted. Yeah. Google

Sean Hemeon: Spreadsheets. So that was where my obsession manifested itself. I was arrested.

I was taken to some DC police station. I remember being put in their cell. I'm already-- I'm starting to come down, so I'm just kind of like in this haze. I remember a big book. Big book is a reference to Alcoholics Anonymous. That's, that's what they call the Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember a big book and a Bible.

And then Monday morning, they throw me in a white [00:41:00] van with some other dudes. I don't know where I'm going. Open me in an underground garage, put me in a big elevator lift, and then shuttled up, and then it opens onto this floor with a giant cell, and there's probably, like, 50 other men in there. I'm very clear on this now, but then I didn't see it.

But when I have told my story now, I recognize the amount of white privilege I absolutely had. Because also famously, DC was very racist. The judicial system in DC was very racist at that point. For example, in this cell of 50, I am one of three white dudes. And it is a huge African American population in DC as well.

Jordan Harbinger: There's still plenty of white people committing crime that didn't happen to be in that cell that day. Yeah, okay.

Sean Hemeon: So they brought me in. There was no place to sit or anything, and I'm just... I'm huddled in the middle. I just sat down and kind of just passed out because I'm passing out, right? And then an hour later, they may have called my name and got my information.

Then an hour later, I'm carted down again to some [00:42:00] other room. I'm put in this other waiting room with 10 other men. One at a time, we're brought out. And then I'm brought out finally, and you watch courtrooms on TV. They're very clean and very courtroom-like. But a lot of courtrooms are like offices. They don't look like an office, but they're run like an office.

There's filing cabinets and printers and people typing, and it's just like a, just a conveyor belt. But the courtroom is a courtroom, but like an office. And I come in, and the judge is this short white man, balding, and he's just looking at these two young Black men, probably my age. I'm, you know, I'm 22 at this point.

And he was ripping into them. And he was saying stuff like, "Your community this. Your community that." And I think they only got caught with, like, a dime bag of cocaine. I'm behind them. In my head, I'm like, "Oh, fuck."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. "I got caught. I'm a dealer."

Sean Hemeon: I'm possession with intent to distribute. I'm effed. I'm effed.

I'm effed. This is terrible. Oh, man. I'm terrified. I don't know what to do. I'm like, "Just don't tell him anything." He puts their bail at, like, $1,000. And you could tell on their faces they didn't have that money, so they got carted away. I step up. The judge looks at me. [00:43:00] They say whatever official stuff. He looks at my file, and he looks up at me, and he goes, "Son, are you in school?"

And I'm like, "Yes, sir. I go to Virginia Commonwealth University." Now, I didn't know this, but my school's men's basketball team was actually, like, doing the best it ever has, like the VCU Rams, and they could make it to the Final Four. It was a big year, huge. So I say, "Yes, sir, I go to VCU in Richmond." And he looks up.

He puts the file down. He goes, "How about them Rams?"

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man. Geez.

Sean Hemeon: I put it together. I didn't even know that was the team name. And I was like, "Oh, yes, sir." He's like, "Man, I think they could go all the way." And I'm like, "Yes, sir."

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. How many years am I going to prison for? Cut to the chase, pal.

Sean Hemeon: And, and he said some other things, but his demeanor changed.

He's like, "Son, are you still in school?" And I'm like, "Yes, sir." And mind you, it says possession with intent to distribute.

Jordan Harbinger: Meth: an ocean of dopamine followed by a desert of teeth. Sponsors!

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We're happy to surface codes for you. Yes, it's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Sean Hemion. Yeah, and it says methamphetamine. It doesn't say marijuana or some basic-ass shit.

Sean Hemeon: Just to be clear- Jase ...

Jordan Harbinger: at

Sean Hemeon: the time, I'm like, I'm just, I'm shocked. I'm dumbfounded. I don't know what's happening.

Now I can see the privilege. I can see all of that. But at that moment, I'm just, I'm terrified, and I got off because of the privilege, then I'll make up for that. I don't know. I wasn't taking advantage. I didn't know. And so he looks at me. He goes, "All right, I'll tell you what I'm going to do, son. I'm going to release you on your own recognizance," which means no bail, "but you're banned from DC because we're going to keep you in school unless you have some judicial work [00:47:00] down here," you know, lawyers and that kind of stuff.

So he released me, and then I immediately-

Jordan Harbinger: Realized how lucky you are and stopped dealing drugs forever? No. Oh, cute.

Sean Hemeon: This is just the beginning of the story. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: I know, I know.

Sean Hemeon: I do have to shout out to Dennis Braddock. That is his true name, the actual heart of gold court-appointed lawyer, because I was standing there, and the judge asked me if I had a lawyer, and this guy appeared out of nowhere.

He was like, "Do you accept him?" I was like, "Sure." And then this guy brought me out. It's like 9:30 AM Monday morning in the middle of downtown DC. Rush hour's happening around us, and the guy walks me out, and he's saying things. I'm just not really registering what happened, and then there's a hotdog stand.

He's like, "Can I buy you a hotdog?" I'm like, "Sure." He buys me a hotdog , and I'm just eating this thing. He's, like, telling me all the stuff that I need to do, what he needs from me, and then he looks at me. He's like, "Do you need money? Do you have travel fare, like Metro fare?" And I'm like, "No," and he gives me 20 bucks, and I'm just like, "Okay."

He's like, "Okay. Well, just be in touch," and then he goes back inside and does his next case. I'm just like, "Who is this man?" I called the [00:48:00] ex-boyfriend, the drug dealer one. Yeah. And at that time, it began to grow suspicion that he came out and called the cops on me. I didn't know that. I talked to him since then.

He hasn't, but at that time, the suspicion continued to grow that he did. So I began to believe that he did, but at this moment, I needed help, and I needed meth, too. So I called him, started doing more meth. Quickly, everybody found out that I got arrested, and so suddenly in this scene, if you're arrested, you're like- Toxic.

Totally. Don't trust them, get paranoid, this kind of stuff. And then I was about to get out, so I was like, "Shit, I'll go back to school. I don't know what I'll do." Like, I was getting out. And so I didn't know-- Okay, possession with intent to distribute truly at that time gets you three to five years, something like that, right?

And my lawyer, Dennis, wanted me to plea. Oh, and I called my parents.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah. Oh my God. How did they react?

Sean Hemeon: My mom reacted in a very typical naive way. "What do you mean arrested?" She freaked out, which I expected her. My dad was very grounded in the reality of it. He's, he got to business right away. And he was like, "Where's my [00:49:00] car?"

"It got impounded, Dad." "Okay. Well, all right." He was very official about it. And my dad was, imagine trying to support seven kids. My poor dad, dogged, working all the time, and as emotionally available as he could be. So there's a lot of things he missed out emotionally, but he showed up. That man showed up, and he showed up for me here.

And so I remember we started getting files together, and my lawyer was going to do a plea, and I was like, "Oh my God, am I going to-" How

Jordan Harbinger: long am I going to prison? Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: I was really facing that. The federal prosecutors entered a plea to us. "Hey, you say guilty, we'll do however many years," that kind of stuff. And as we were negotiating it, literally, this is so weird, half an hour later, they sent another fax, "Cancel that," and then sent another fax that said, "You have a mandatory debriefing," which means I had to go get interrogated I remember clearly when I was arrested at the scene, when I was being pulled away in the cop car, black suburban SUVs pulled up and plain-clothes dudes got out.

I think they were Drug and Alcohol.

Jordan Harbinger: DEA?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. And they looked like band roadies, because they were wearing cargo shorts.

Jordan Harbinger: That's either [00:50:00] ATF, DEA or FBI. Like-

Sean Hemeon: I remember seeing that. I remember seeing that very clearly because when I went to my mandatory debriefing, my dad drove me. It was like go to work with your dad kind of day.

My dad felt like Superman to me that day. But I went to a federal building back downtown, all marble and huge and massive, and I remember waiting in this massive lobby. It wasn't a police station. It wasn't an FBI building. It was a federal building. And up walk, like, two band roadies. One of them looked like Will Ferrell.

I swear to God, looked like Will Ferrell with the curly hair. The other one looked like '90s bassist, like he should've been in, like, Nine Inch Nails or,

like, Rage Against the Machine. Like, he should... He had a Fu Manchu, and they both had cargo shorts and band roadies. And they came up. I didn't regard them because I was waiting for somebody with a suit or, like, a uniform.

Jordan Harbinger: Excuse me, I'm here to be interrogated- Yeah. ... by professionals.

Sean Hemeon: And then they came up to me, and I was like, "What's happening right now?"

Yeah. And they just- Are you guys

Jordan Harbinger: really cops? I don't think so ...

Sean Hemeon: casually walked me out. They said my dad had to leave, and then they brought me into this boardroom. It was, like, a, a 30-foot boardroom table with a giant US seal on the [00:51:00] wall. I

Jordan Harbinger: see. So you're not cuffed in, like, a weird kind of police situation at all.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, obviously, when I was arrested and that kind of stuff, but they had such a casual kind of demeanor about it. But I think it was all part of the act because when they sat me down, they sat me down across from them, like you and I are right now, and they were like, "We're going to ask you some questions." I made up that the backpack was found.

I was like, "Uh, this guy Brian left it in my car." I made up some bullshit, and they could tell I was making up some bullshit. They started asking me if I knew certain people. They, like, gave me, like, 10 names, and what blew me away was, like, I knew some of those people on that list. Or some of the names, or the last names and first names were mixed and not...

were split up and that kind of stuff. And I started getting paranoid because I was like, "Oh my God, how many people do they know about?" Because I knew most of these people.

Jordan Harbinger: This is one of those situations where they're like, "Do you know Reginald Timmons?" And you're like, "Shaky's name is Reginald?" Yeah. Huh. I just,

Sean Hemeon: I wanted to say, "That's the wrong last name.

That's the right first..." And they said my ex. They said his name, too. And then the whole time I'm like, "Do I say yes? Do I say no?" A lot of the answers were like, "I heard that guy in the club. I heard of this. Didn't [00:52:00] know that person," that kind of stuff. And then while they were doing it, one of them was asking me questions.

Will Ferrell was asking me questions. Right.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Sean Hemeon: Fu Manchu was sitting here, and I remember him leaning back, and I remember his hand was gripping the side of the table. And then I would say an answer. I'd say, "Yes," and then I'd hear, like, a... I'd literally hear a tap. So I did drugs that morning. So I was like, "Am I hearing the AC?

Am I hearing things? What's happening?" That kind of stuff. Mind you, I did the drugs so I could have courage to walk into this thing. Not- because I was a full-on drug addict at that point.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, right. Whenever I'm going to get interrogated by the DEA, I make sure that I'm super high.

Sean Hemeon: Super high. Anyway, I heard the tapping, I saw his forearm twitch, and then I realized, oh, he's like human lie detecting me.

He's, like, watching me. And so I felt so proud of myself because I was like, "I figured out their system." Not that it mattered. I didn't know if I was going to beat their system, but they were like... So then it came to the point where they slipped a paper across, and on the top it said, like, informant number, da, da, da, da.

They told me 10-plus years, and later I found out that would've never happened. I didn't know anything about [00:53:00] how the judicial system worked.

Jordan Harbinger: And they know that, so they're going to scare the shit out of you.

Sean Hemeon: Correct. And I didn't know that they can only suggest to the prosecutors and then suggest to the judge how much time...

I thought they said it. I just didn't know anything. So when they said 10-plus years, I was like, "10-plus years." And they were like, "Listen, help us help you," that kind of stuff. And I, in so many words, looked at them and I said, "Nobody's dealing with me. If I were to do that, I'd have to do the dealing-"

Jordan Harbinger: I have to go back and do crimes again.

Sean Hemeon: Correct.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That's how this works, dumbass.

Sean Hemeon: And then I said, "But everybody's paranoid, so I'd have to do it larger."

Jordan Harbinger: You got to do what you did in high school, where you were the jock, masculine extra guy, so that they believe that you're straight. You've got to do the drug dealer version of that.

Sean Hemeon: Oh my God, that's exactly right.

I've never had anybody put that together, but it's exactly right. They, in so many words, told me that I need to go back in and I need to continue dealing in order to get them the information. And I said, "I need to deal in larger amounts to [00:54:00] get you the information that you want." And they, in so many words, were like, "Mm-hmm."

Jordan Harbinger: Great. Cool.

Sean Hemeon: So I signed the agreement. I had the blessing of the federal government. As far as I was concerned, I felt invincible to go deal drugs.

Jordan Harbinger: That actually... God, I shouldn't say this, sounds kind of fun.

Sean Hemeon: It's awful. It's absolutely-

Jordan Harbinger: You're under pressure because you'll go to prison, but I don't need that part to be motivated.

What if you just tell me to go sell drugs that's totally legal and they're going to arrest the people that buy them from me? That's awesome.

Sean Hemeon: Okay. Yes, but now coming from a world where I felt incredibly, profoundly lonely, right? Being the gay Mormon boy, being closeted, nobody understood me. I was alone in this world.

Now I'm an outcast with the drug addicts. I'm even more alone, but now I'm outcast from the outcasts. The profound sense of loneliness that I felt was lower than I thought any human could go. So I started smoking the meth because I needed to eclipse any feelings I had in order to continue [00:55:00] finding out information, and then it suddenly became like I already was feeling compassion because every friend I had that was a drug addict, they all have horrible stories, and I started seeing like, oh, we're all drug addicts because we have got horrible stories.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you were abused by all 10 sets of foster parents. I kind of understand why you're a mess.

Sean Hemeon: My best running mate, she was brutally raped at American University and then hid out in the gay drug scene because she couldn't face life or the university. She felt safe with us, and she went to meth. Wow, she went to

Jordan Harbinger: American, so she was, like, doing well in life and then-

Sean Hemeon: Very well in life, and she became my most trusted person, but I couldn't even tell her that I was, like, infor- Nobody knew I was an informant, right?

So now the question became of who am I narcing on? Am I narcing? I've seen enough movies. All those movies I saw with my dad in the '90s, we know what happens to rats. Can I live with that shame the rest of my life? I don't know if I can do that. So I'm buying time, I'm buying time, and then I also know that nobody in the city would deal with me, so my plan was to wait for the city to be dry when they needed to deal with me.

So that means I needed to go find drugs in other cities.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:00] So the DEA doesn't give you the meth to deal. You have to go buy it yourself?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. They were, in so many words, were hinting at it. They could never directly tell me that go do what I was going to do. They couldn't-- They could never, ever do that. Can you imagine if I'm sitting here and they literally...

They gave me the meth to go deal. Can you imagine?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the defense attorney would love this.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, it's like- But

Jordan Harbinger: also, at that point, you're an agent of the state, right? You're an undercover-

Sean Hemeon: I- as far as an informant is, yes. But they're not going to assist. That's going to get them in trouble. So in my cell phone, the agents' numbers were just put in as yes and no, and I don't know why, but I think it was like, "Yes, I should narc," and, "No, I shouldn't."

I don't know. It was such a battle back and forth, but I just put their numbers in my phone as yes and no.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yuck. Oh my gosh. So you wait for the city to be dry. You've got your emergency stockpile of meth?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. Well, I start-- No, I started traveling to other cities, so, like, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, New York, New Orleans, looking for other connects, meaning other drug suppliers, and the closer you get to [00:57:00] Mexico at that time, the cheaper it would be anyway.

And I found the most luck in Atlanta, which now gets us to Steven, the guy who got it from the cartel people. And there's about a six-month stretch before, you know, when I'm arrested and before my sentencing that I have kind of this window to do this thing in. And prior to going to Atlanta, one of my runners, he was a hairstylist, and he would do house calls and sell my drugs at the same time.

Jordan Harbinger: So he's going and cutting some lady's hair or some guy's hair-

Sean Hemeon: And yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: and he's like, "You need any meth?"

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. Correct.

Jordan Harbinger: And they're like, "Sure. Thank you." How weird is that?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. No, it was perfect for what we were doing, and he would always be doing my hair, and I was ruling the roost at this point. I'd have my hotel suites and just have my little minions running around, and Danny Had one client, and she had a boyfriend who was getting meth.

Either he was in the Russian mafia or getting it from the Russian mafia. [00:58:00] And so when I'm, like, before Atlanta and Steven, I'm, like, talking to them like, "How do I do this? What am I doing?" This kind of stuff. Danny offered, "Hey, actually, this client of mine, this girl who we run some drugs to, her boyfriend's trying to get in."

I'm like, "Great. Hook us up." And Danny's like, "But he might, may or may not be affiliated with the Russian mafia." Sheesh. And I was like... Exactly. I was like, "Fuck that. No. Go away." Sounds a

Jordan Harbinger: little dangerous.

Sean Hemeon: Terrible. Hard

Jordan Harbinger: pass.

Sean Hemeon: Not going to happen. And that's when I went to Atlanta, and I met Steven, and then the horrible story happened about the young man dying, and then me coming back, and then me being like, "I am not traveling anywhere.

F, F this." And then the mother calling, and then I just went into this terrible pit of depression even worse. Even, like, the drugs weren't working. And so when you get arrested, you're first presented to the judge, and he releases you on bail or not bail, and then you have the plea hearing where you say guilty, not guilty, and then you have the sentencing, and those could be months apart.

And we already had the sentencing hearing, and I, what, I don't even re- what did I say? Not guilty or... I said not guilty because I was doing the [00:59:00] informant thing, and this was after that. And-

Jordan Harbinger: The prosecutor knows you're doing the informant thing? I guess they might know this?

Sean Hemeon: They mi- I don't know what to say to my face.

Jordan Harbinger: Probably shouldn't do that in court.

Sean Hemeon: Exactly. But after the poor mother, I am just getting drugs where I can just to get by because I'm just in this pit of despair. I don't know what I'm going to do. One saving grace was, like, I loved to go to the club and dance. I would dance for hours and hours. And I very specifically remember this one morning, we're talking, like, 4:00 AM in the middle of downtown DC with the only 24-hour CVS.

This is down by all the federal buildings, so nothing's happening yet. So it's all quiet, just the buzz of the CVS sign. And I'm standing there drinking a Gatorade, and I don't know, there's a homeless man near me, and a Crown Vic fishtails down the street as I'm crossing the street, fishtails. That happening kind of freaks me out.

I have my backpack of drugs, whatever drugs I do have. I'm like, "I'm going to toss that. This doesn't seem right." But then it [01:00:00] fishtails and stops in the aisleway, blocks me off. Out pop the two agents, Will Ferrell- Yes and no ... Yes and No.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Sean Hemeon: Yes and No pop out. And I hadn't been texting them. I made up something at one point, but I hadn't been in contact. How they find me that morning, no idea.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm going to go ahead and say they're used to drug dealers and addicts being a little unreliable, and they have ways of keeping track of you guys.

Sean Hemeon: I actually thought they tracked my phone. I don't think they went that far. I truly think exactly what you said, could've just been driving. But it was enough to grab-- They pin me, freaked me out, yelled in my face.

They were trying to scare me into giving them more information. "Do you want to go to jail? You're going to go to jail," threatening all these things that'll happen to me in prison. "You got to help us, kid," da, da, da. Drop me to the ground, get in the car, speed away, and I'm just like, "What is happening?" So that happens, and then I need to do something, so I tell Danny to contact the Russian mafia guy.

So I stupidly decide to go meet this guy Again, may or may not be affiliated with the Russian mafia. What matters is [01:01:00] at that time I absolutely thought he did, and he did at that time. In later retrospect, he could have just been saying that, but here we are. We're with this guy. So I pull up and I meet the girlfriend first.

They're staying at some Embassy Suites thing, just meeting me there, and she just is some common college white girl that I just wasn't expecting her to be like that. And then out comes Vadim. That's what we're calling him.

Jordan Harbinger: The maybe

Sean Hemeon: Russian mafia also. Yeah. Maybe Russian mafia guy. Okay. And the dude is dark hair and very Russian.

Tank top, tracksuit. He's that guy. Gosh,

Jordan Harbinger: these guys, man. They think they're all different.

Sean Hemeon: Look, and the other thing is, I might have been really high because I was like, oh, I was really struck by how attractive he was. I was like, "Oh, this is great. I'm attracted to Russian mafia guy." Anyway, he and I talk some business, and he has a lot of drugs.

He pulls out a drawer, and there's ounces of pink methamphetamine, which is just a stronger variant at that time. So he's got a couple pounds there. And I'm like, I'm salivating, and I'm like... And I know I can sell [01:02:00] the ounces very fast. I know where to take that and stuff. But I don't have money to pay for it, and so I'm like, "You got to front me this thing, and I'll show you.

I can do this really quick." So he's like, "One second." He goes in the other room, he comes back, and then he puts down this very pearl inlaid tacky gun, but it's a gun, and I've never had a gun in my face or anything like that, or just very casually puts it down. And I'm looking at it and I'm looking at him, and I'm so high that I'm cocky, that I'm just like, I loved the spirit of being a drug dealer, just that lean back like...

But I also, I wanted to die most of my life, so whatever.

Jordan Harbinger: So if you get shot by a hot Russian mobster- Done and

Sean Hemeon: done ... no big

Jordan Harbinger: deal.

Sean Hemeon: My life is over. I might be going to prison here. But I had that energy, so I was just like, "Okay, man. You know what? Just front me the ounce. I'll be right back." And I did. I came back an hour later.

He was amazed that I could do that because he's been struggling to sell these things. And then he front me more and more, and then in trying that, it was extremely good, the best the city's ever had, the best I ever had. So it just shot my addiction through the roof. [01:03:00] And what ended up happening, it was so good that I got in this time warp of just using drugs and not selling.

The mother's voice was haunting me. I can't rat people out. Okay, maybe I should rat out the Russian mafia guy, right? That seems like the right get. Like the, oh wait, are they going to go after my family now?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's kind of the idea, right?

Sean Hemeon: Do I rat out the ex-boyfriend? No, he's not big enough, and he's being weird, and he's sending people to try to beat me up, so I'm fighting them.

He's being like threatening, murderous, and it's just this whole like free-floating of voices around me. And at this point, I can't even get up from the mattress. I'm doing an eight ball of meth a day. I'm not bragging about that. How

Jordan Harbinger: much is that? I don't even know.

Sean Hemeon: At that time, like $450 an eight ball.

Jordan Harbinger: That's an expensive drug habit. Are you paying for the drugs?

Sean Hemeon: Well, I'm doing the product now. I'm, now I'm doing more product than I'm selling, so now I'm owing him money. And so now I'm having to go to him to re-up and give me more drugs, and now I'm owing him more and more money, and then more and more money to the point where now when I go see him, he [01:04:00] pulls out that gun and he pins me to the wall and he puts the gun to my face and he's like, wants his money.

Jordan Harbinger: Where's the money? Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: He's like inches from my face. And I am disassociating to the point where I'm like, "Just make out with me, man." Just kiss me. Just, just make out with me.

Jordan Harbinger: He's like, he's like, "I scared him a lot." But

Sean Hemeon: I, I- You're like, "

Jordan Harbinger: Now I'm aroused."

Sean Hemeon: It's funny, but I'm sharing that to like the degree of disassociation.

Jordan Harbinger: He's like, "Do you pay attention

Sean Hemeon: to the gun?" This murderous guy is in my face, and I'm like, "Let's make out." Stop

Jordan Harbinger: triangle gazing on my lips and eyes and look at the gun that I have pointed at your brain.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. And he started also like connecting, like he, like his brother just had a ba- like he started being a human to me.

Then suddenly I'm like, I can't-

Jordan Harbinger: He offered the Russian meth dealer installment payments. Nothing says rock bottom like asking the mob if they take Klarna. We'll be right back. Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. It is something specific, practical, actionable that'll have an impact on your decisions, psychology, and relationships.

It's an under two-minute read just about every Wednesday, and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It's a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com/news [01:05:00] is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Sean Hemeon.

You're not going to shoot me, Vadim. You kind of want it. You want a piece of this.

Sean Hemeon: And I can't turn you in. I can't turn you in. Like, I can't.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah. Oh, this is so funny, but also not because this is your life falling apart-

Sean Hemeon: Correct. Yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: in real time.

Sean Hemeon: The fact that I can laugh about it now means I'm healing from it. That's the value in laughing now, but again, I've said this a few times, I'm not making light of my awful choices.

People have died, and it's haunted me. Again, the mother's voice has haunted me, and this, the reason I'm sitting here even being willing to tell the story is because I'm still trying to reach that mother. Metaphorically and in reality, I'm trying to reach her. The sentencing was coming up. I haven't reported anything.

Again, I made shit up. Like, I sent them stuff, and it wasn't good enough. And now I, I just don't know what to do. And it didn't matter how much I was smoking or whatever I was taking. It just seemed like it, none of it was working. I just, I gave up. I nobly sacrificed myself so that [01:06:00] none of these people, these other drug addicts, who were just hurting as well as I was, they shouldn't suffer because of me.

So I said that to myself. I was like, "I owe Vadim money. If I rat him, I'm worried about my family." So that felt like a noble thing to do to not rat on him. So I got nothing. And at this point, it's really obvious that I can't stop using, like really obvious, so it's, I'm going to prison. I'm going to prison. I didn't want my parents to see it, so I lied to them.

I said my prison date was, or my sentencing date was moved. So I showed up all alone August 8th, 2013.

Your lawyer was there, I hope. Yeah.

Dennis Broderick. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So I show up and unlike all the other courtroom experiences, this one is empty. There's the judge, there's me, Dennis, federal prosecuting attorney.

Jordan Harbinger: Probably seems way more serious now.

Sean Hemeon: And it had more of a weight to it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: I was expecting to see the two agents, but those dudes were pissed at me. I ran into them during the plea hearing, and they were pissed at me. Pissed. I was thinking they were going to show up and [01:07:00] hammer into me, but they weren't there.

So I was like, "Everybody gave up on me." Like, I'm expecting to hear the 10-plus years. And we get up there, and the judge, he looks frothing at the mouth to do as much damage as possible. He just does not look like a nice guy. And they start. He starts deliberating. It's a quick thing. But as he starts, the federal prosecuting attorney, who I think was a junior because I look over and this guy's, like, my age, 22, 23.

Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: he's, like, 25, fresh out of law school.

Sean Hemeon: No, like, he's a pup. And he cuts off the judge, who didn't like it, and he says, "Your Honor, the United States government is asking for this case to be dismissed."

Jordan Harbinger: Ooh. Okay.

Sean Hemeon: And Dennis is just confused, and the judge is confused, and he goes, "Are, are you sure?"

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, he was looking forward to handing you your ass, I think.

Sean Hemeon: He was so ready for it, just looking at me because I looked some punk-ass kid. And the prosecutor affirmed, and he said, "Yes, Your Honor, we're asking for this case to be dismissed." And the judge was like, [01:08:00] "Okay. Case dismissed," right? Bang. And that gavel just sort of like echoed through the room. I didn't move.

Dennis didn't move. Dennis was like grabbing my arm. He's like, "Don't say anything."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is the point in, if it's a movie, it plays that high-pitched ear ringing sound when the gavel hits, and you're confused, and it gets like blurry, and you're looking around. Your lawyer's like-

Sean Hemeon: That's

Jordan Harbinger: exactly right

saying something, but he's underwater, right? "Don't say anything."

Sean Hemeon: That's exactly right.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah. So he actually pulled me out of there. I felt like I was on a bank heist. I was like getting away with something, that if I looked back or if I said something, it would- Right ... He found a side room, pulled me in the side room, sat me down, and this dude, he was like, he looked at me like I just walked on water, because he was just like, "I have done thousands of these.

Hundreds. I've never seen that before. What did you do?" And I was like-

Jordan Harbinger: Literally nothing correctly?

Sean Hemeon: You know what? Actually, one of the clients early on was a former federal judge, by the way. Like, one of the biggest dealers in DC was a former federal judge.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Sean Hemeon: And I learned a lot. That was a whole other part of the story that it wasn't for today.

But [01:09:00] again, I had campaign finance managers. I had other politician people. I had pop stars. Like-

Jordan Harbinger: Do you think somebody was like, "Hey, that's my dealer"?

Sean Hemeon: Could be, but not in my story. But I definitely know that's there. I definitely know a lot of the tweaker dealer boys also hustled a little bit, too. And so meaning sex for money and stuff for drugs.

I see. I see. So a lot of them knew people who knew people, and I believed that, but not enough to like get my case dismissed. So that was in talks.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you have any idea why they dismissed your case?

Sean Hemeon: Well, Dennis was like freaking out asking me, and I was like, "I have no idea." And he was like, he just looked at me, he's like, "You have a second chance here.

You are one lucky SOB." And then I ran out of there. But No.

Jordan Harbinger: I suspect, just based on what you've told me, those two agents that gave you the informant assignment, they did something incorrectly, and that's why they were super upset. Because an informant not producing for you, okay, that happens all the time.

They're literal drug addicts. They did some weird thing where they either said you did [01:10:00] something or they were supposed to do something the proper way and it didn't happen, and then when the prosecutor asked them, they were like... And the prosecutor's like, "Shit, we cannot let this get out. I got to dismiss it."

Oh my God, they were

Sean Hemeon: covering up their tracks.

Jordan Harbinger: Something like that, yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Oh my God, they were covering up their shit.

Jordan Harbinger: Something like that.

Sean Hemeon: I've never thought about it that way, because for me it was like I just imagined case files this large. We, l- we got to get rid of some of this.

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe, but they could have also been like, "Yo, plead guilty.

By the way, we have a ton of evidence that you did this." You were at your sentencing. There wasn't going to be a trial. That's not the time where they go, "We don't have the resources to stand here for eight more minutes while you get sentenced. Come on."

Sean Hemeon: True. Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. No, the case was going to fall apart.

Something bad was going to happen on appeal or something like that.

Sean Hemeon: That-- I want to believe that because I genuinely either have made myself feel bad or I felt bad because I refer back to the white privilege. And now I'm not going to disregard that.

Jordan Harbinger: That happened with your bail hearing, that's for damn sure.

Sean Hemeon: That for sure was there, but I like to think people, regardless of privilege or no privilege, like [01:11:00] still treat the system... Like, I didn't get out of jail because I'm white. Maybe in some counties, but I don't think in the DC. I think they were very serious about the law. So I like what you're saying for that reason.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm guessing yes and no were already in custody for some shit. That's what I think happened.

Sean Hemeon: I do have that federal prosecutor's name, and he's still working. One of these days I want to email him and be like, "Hey, can you just fill in the gap?" Because it would make a lot of people more understandable to my story, and me as well, because I've done these podcasts and people in the comments do not like that my case was dismissed.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, because they wanted you to go, go down or something or?

Sean Hemeon: Not to lay too much judgment, but I was acting in criminal behavior, but it was almost like people when they're joining a cult don't realize they're joining a cult. Like, when you're doing criminal behavior, you know you are, but I never thought of myself as a criminal.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. Most people probably don't, yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Exactly, th- thinking of themselves as a bad person. I remember in the courtroom around the sentencing hearing, the way people looked at me. I was like, "Why are they looking at me like that?" And I was like, "Oh, they think I'm a criminal."

Jordan Harbinger: I'm the bad guy. Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Not everybody thinks that, like, people can change.

People grow. [01:12:00] People, like, live in the gray. People, all these other kinds of things, and it's like I broke the law. So many people break the law. Yes, my case got dismissed, but do I feel bad about what I did? Sure, but most of that damage was towards myself. Do I feel like I could have acted sooner for the young man that died?

Yes, I do. Is there a lot of context to understand why I didn't act sooner? Yes, there is. It still doesn't disregard that this young man died. I can't take that back. My behavior added to the possibility that this young man died. It's very clearly evident what I did to his mother. I can't take that back. Do I deserve to go to jail for 10 plus years for hanging up on her?

No, but I definitely deserve, like, finding her and listening to her and hugging her and crying with her and telling her like, "Hey-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a tough thing to carry. I mean, I hope you're able to find her through this. It seems like a, maybe a Southern Christian woman's not listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show.

But you never know, man. Somebody could hear that and go, "Hey, didn't your [01:13:00] son pass away from drugs in this area, this time?" Like-

Sean Hemeon: Spring of 2004 at an Atlanta area hospital.

Jordan Harbinger: There's probably a lot, but it's not tens of thousands.

Sean Hemeon: He was extremely attractive, and he looked like an Abercrombie model.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's very possible when you start hitting the numbers.

What made you finally choose to give up the drugs and go to rehab? When they dismissed your case, did you say, "Oh good, I was getting clean anyway," or was it like, "Let me go do a bunch of drugs and celebrate the fact that I'm never going to prison for this terrible crime"?

Sean Hemeon: You would think getting your case dismissed would be your wake-up call, would

Jordan Harbinger: be your bottom.

I don't know. I don't know, man.

Sean Hemeon: I was a damn good drug addict, let me just tell you that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, you're persistent, disciplined.

Sean Hemeon: No, it turns out being an informant for the federal government and going to jail wasn't enough of a bottom for me. That running mate, that girl who was at American, I, she was living in an abandoned apartment, and so I needed to go live with her in this flooded-out abandoned apartment.

I needed to do drugs just for myself. I needed to do whatever I could do to get those drugs, and [01:14:00] I just couldn't stop. That's all I knew. I just couldn't stop. And I used the excuse like, "Yeah, I'm celebrating," that kind of stuff. But what changed was two weeks before my 23rd birthday, which was the end of September. She came to me, and she was, like, really nervous to tell me.

She was like, "Hey, I think I want to get help, and I think I'm going to go to rehab." And listen, again, referring to the '90s movies, I watched Trainspotting. I watched the heroin addicts in The Haunted Hill or, like, whatever, or Requiem for a Dream. So in my mind, truly, rehab was for heroin addicts, like really down and out.

Clearly, I wasn't down and out living as a fa- yeah. Like

Jordan Harbinger: I'm fine living in an abandoned apartment with another drug addict.

Sean Hemeon: I'm fine because I'm not shooting up meth yet.

Jordan Harbinger: So you can inject meth. I didn't know that.

Sean Hemeon: Oh.

Jordan Harbinger: Somebody

Sean Hemeon: just told me you couldn't do it. That's their

Jordan Harbinger: favorite way.

Sean Hemeon: No, no, everybody does...

No, no, no. I was a full-blown addict, but I resisted shooting it up because that meant I was a true addict, which is a complete and utter lie. You can be a full-blown addict just by [01:15:00] snorting it. Like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how you take it. It's just when you're shooting it straight into your veins, you-

Jordan Harbinger: It's hard to say that you're a casual user at that point?

Yeah,

Sean Hemeon: now it's like Five Oceans. Like, it's very obvious at that point. So I thought that was rehab was for heroin addicts or people who actually shot it. But when she said rehab to me, I genuinely looked at her, and I was like, "You can do that?" Did not know. She's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll do that.

Hey, two weeks is my birthday. We'll have a going away party."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, sure. Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: So geez. She lied in the back room depressed and staring at the TV screen for two weeks. I partied for two weeks like a maniac. So part of the clubs, DC had a club called Velvet Nation, not there anymore. The baseball stadium is there.

By that point, o- of course, all the clubs knew me. I was the dealer. I was the guy. So they gave me space to have a going away party, and I was like, "I'm going to get sober." Like, I don't know what the hell I was saying. But then it was supposed to be that next day, that Sunday morning, and I was supposed to call.

And when all the friends left and I was finally [01:16:00] alone, I was suddenly staring at the pipe, and I was like, "This is when I make the call." And then my body picked up the pipe and started smoking. And then watching that happen was the first time truly physically realizing that I have no control over my body.

My body was doing it. And I started crying because then I was like, "Okay, I'm an addict, and this is a life I have to accept. There's no stopping this." And I went through everything. I grieved the loss of my parents, my family. When I got to being an actor, I was like, "Oh, my dreams of all that stuff," like just shattered me.

And it was the weirdest experience because suddenly Letting all those things go, it was as if like I got punched in the stomach. I fell backwards. The pipe fell to the ground. It was like sizzling. And then, oh, it, I remember the little boy that was abandoned when he was four. That's what did it. I remember that little boy walking home when he was four.

It felt like nobody was there showing up for him, and he showed up for himself, and he walked all the way there, and he did that. When I got to him, grieving him, that I'd have to give up him, that's when I got the gut punch. I fell back. I got up. I don't know how to describe this other than [01:17:00] saying it was as if I woke up from a long slumber, a coma, and I came to.

I literally touched my body. It was like ... And I looked around, I was like, "Where am I?" Realizing the whole story that just transpired, and I was like, "What the ? What the ?" I was dumbfound- like all disillusion shattered. Whatever denial I had shattered. And this tiny window of clarity opened up, like clarity of like-

Jordan Harbinger: Is this the rock bottom thing people are talking about or whatever?

Sean Hemeon: This is the window of clarity that comes from an absolute shattered rock bottom because At that moment, I couldn't connect any thoughts. I couldn't connect a thought, and I couldn't speak, and I thought I actually went crazy. Then I was like, "You done it. You done the worst thing. Now you are going to be a muttering man on the, homeless man on the street corner."

I thought I had done it. And but in that was this moment of clarity that came from that. And I remember crawling to the bathroom to look at myself and just sobbing. And then I fell down the twisty stairs, and I crawled back to her in the back. Her name is Kate. In my book, I call her Lexi, but [01:18:00] Kate, I remember she was lying on the blue mattress, and she turns over to look at me, literally crawling in there.

Girl took one look at me and then just said, "Oh my God," and just started crying, and we just held each other and cried and cried and cried, and we knew what it was all for. And then it was like, "What do we do?" Because we could feel this moment, this window, like barely holding open, and we're like, "What do we do?

What do we do?" We opened the Yellow Pages and just picked any rehab. We didn't know what to do, and this voice of an angel was, like, so sweet, and she was like, "We have beds tonight. Can you make it to tonight?" And I'm like, "Sure. Okay." We hang up. We're like, "Yay." And then I go back upstairs, and I'm, like, packing, but then I'm looking at the pipe, and I'm like, "I'm going to use all these things."

So I called the ex-boyfriend. I'm like, "I'm getting sober. Come take all the drugs. You need to come over here and take this right now because I want to use these things." And then Kate, she's like, "I'm not going to make it. I need to call my parents." And we're in DC. Boston is eight to 10 hours away.

Jordan Harbinger: Where she's from?

Okay.

Sean Hemeon: Where she's from originally. And she called her parents and then hangs up with them, and she's sobbing because [01:19:00] she's just said, "I need help." And her parents were like, "We're on our way." And they got in the car like 20 minutes later. So they're shooting down. They're coming down. So he's coming over to get the drugs.

All the other... For some reason, I don't know, it was like zombies. All the other drug addicts and people I used to deal with, they start showing up because I think he started telling people. So it's like these zombies- Free drugs ... are outside. Yeah. Oh, gosh. It's just like, "What's happening?" So I don't know what to do, and so I'm like, "I should call my parents."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. How did that go?

Sean Hemeon: Man, I had been struggling with my mother, struggling. But Sunday morning, 8:30, she's rushing for church. The phone rings. She picks it up. I swear to you, all I said was, "Mom?" And she goes, "Where are you?" That's it. It was like the mama bear waiting for that call. Told her where I was. They knew exactly what the call was, and my mom and my dad were, like, on their way.

So they're coming, and Kate's parents are coming. The ex shows up, grabs the drugs. He's like, "Why are you leaving me?" All dramatic like. Then I realize I owe Vadim money.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, [01:20:00] shoot. I forgot about this guy.

Sean Hemeon: In real life, this was a phone call. In my book, I made him actually show up in person, but what we said to each other was exactly the same.

C- he had been harassing me for six months. For sure, yeah. Six, six weeks harassing me, threatening me, "Now I'm going to hunt you down. I know where you are," and, like, murderous. He's been ringing this whole time. Finally, I just pick it up, and I was like, "I got nothing left to be honest." And I pick it up, and he's surprised I picked up, but he's breathing heavy.

He's pissed off. He's, "Ah, ah." And I'm like "Vadim, I'm going to rehab." Pause. "You can do that?"

Jordan Harbinger: He said that? This is so funny.

Sean Hemeon: My editor for the book, even though it was true, like he truly said that, he's like, "You can't have you both say that in the book because it sounds so unbelievable."

Jordan Harbinger: It works in a movie.

Sean Hemeon: It's swear to God.

He said, "You can do that." And I said, "Yeah, man, you can do that." And then a long pause, and very wistfully he goes, "I've always wanted to sell real estate in Baltimore."[01:21:00]

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Exactly. Follow your dreams, bro. I

Sean Hemeon: said, "You can do that."

Jordan Harbinger: You might have to put on a shirt for the first time in 10 years.

Sean Hemeon: And then there's another long pause, and then he goes, "You know what, man?" And I owe him thousands and thousands. And he goes, "You know what, man? Forget about the money."

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. '

Sean Hemeon: Because I said, "Hey, I'm going to go to rehab, and then I'll get a job, and I can pay you back in installment plans."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and he's like, "Dude, I don't need to be taking f- checks for 79 cents from a drug addict."

Sean Hemeon: I just think it's so funny I'm telling this massive drug dealer like, "I'm going to pay you in installment plans." Like-

Jordan Harbinger: Do you take Klarna?

Sean Hemeon: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Whatever. What are those things, like-

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, exactly. Like- ... yeah, on

Jordan Harbinger: Amazon.

Yeah,

Sean Hemeon: yeah. You pay in

Jordan Harbinger: installments.

Sean Hemeon: So he just said, "Forget about the money. Best of luck." I don't know why he was feeling so inspired, or maybe I gave him the window for his out. I don't know. I've never talked to him ever since then. I have no idea what he's up to and that kind of stuff. And then my parents arrive, and then we drive off into the sunset.

I slept for two weeks straight in their basement, and then I went to rehab for 28 days.

Jordan Harbinger: Gosh. Actually, is Kate okay? Do you know her?

Sean Hemeon: Um, yeah, no. Out of the entire story, some people have died, [01:22:00] as expected, but Kate's in Vermont. She's doing very well. She's still sober. Even the ex took a while, but he eventually got sober, and he's been in a long-term relationship with another dealer from that time period who's also sober.

They're over there. I don't know. Sometimes we Facebook. But she's doing well. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: What about your relationship between you and your mom? Because you're married now to a man, spoiler alert, right? Yeah. So is she like, "Okay, I accept this, and I love my son," or is it still, "God wants you to be, marry a woman and have eight kids"?

How's that going?

Sean Hemeon: I will say the Mormon Church overall, they have so far to go. They've been a little bit more open now, but early sobriety days, I clung to my mother and just the help that she gave me, rehab, moving to LA, this kind of stuff. It was all I had. But then we had a schism around 2008 because in LA, Southern California, or all of California, we had the Prop 8, which was the amendment to the gay marriage that is great because it was like, "Yay, Obama won. Whoa, California just made it so we can't get married. Okay." And the Mormons were behind that campaign, and so it [01:23:00] caused a schism with my eldest brother, who's not Mormon anymore, but at that time he was, and with my mother. So at that time, my mother finally left my father. I joke it took her 28 years, but she did, and all for the better, and she came out to California, where she had some friends.

And she was like, "Yeah, I think I may vote on it," which to me was just her saying, "I don't believe you should ever get married to the person you love." And that drew us apart. I got more recovery, you know, a lot of 12 steps, a lot of therapy, a lot of support. I just healed and stayed sober and healed and stayed sober, and I had a lot more clarity about the situation with her and I, and then it came to a head around 2015, and I was like, "I'm going to keep some distance from you for a while," and then, which rocked the family, but it was all for the best because we all came back together and in such a new, loving way to the point where my mother walked me down the aisle at my very gay wedding.

Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Which was allowed because she f- apparently lost the, uh, vote on Prop 8. Yeah,

Sean Hemeon: exact- the irony of that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Sean Hemeon: Yeah, she [01:24:00] genuinely was, like, tearing up and grateful and happy, and however she's reconciled her faith with her favorite son- However deep that goes, I don't know where that is. I do feel the love.

I do feel the support. I do feel the compassion from her. I feel all of that. So it's a beautiful journey that she and I have been on.

Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of mothers, if that young man's mother contacts you tomorrow and says, "Look, I want the entire truth, but I want it face to face," what is the first thing that you do, and what is the question you're most afraid she's going to ask you?

Sean Hemeon: I would immediately get on a plane and go to her physically. I would fly to her. I don't know if I'd have the words at first. I do feel like a well of tears. I probably would just hug her and cry with her and then just be open to any and every question that she has for me and any and all resentment, hatred, or any kind of thing that I, like, I'm ready and willing to take all that.

Just I'm open for [01:25:00] that. I'm not saying I as a human deserve that, but I'm saying I have the capacity to receive that for my choice of actions, regardless of how paranoid, high probably on day three of being awake, regardless of my choices. I still get to take responsibility for them.

Jordan Harbinger: Sean Hemeon, thank you so much.

Sean Hemeon: Yes. Thank you very much. This was such a joy.

Jordan Harbinger: Big thanks to Sean Hemeon. He went from good little Mormon boy to meth dealer to federal informant to owing a Russian supplier thousands, then tried to settle the tab with installment payments because apparently even the drug underworld has semi-reasonable payment terms.

The easy ending would be case dismissed, rehab, twenty-one years sober, mom walks him down the aisle. Clean little redemption bow. But the honest ending is messier. Sean still can't undo the young man's death or the call from his mother that he hung up on. He can only tell the truth, stay available, and get on the plane if she ever asks to hear it face to face.

That's the difference between shame and accountability. Shame [01:26:00] says you're a monster forever. Accountability says you did harm, now become someone capable of facing it without running. All things Sean Hemeon will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com/deals.

Please consider supporting those who support the show. Six Minute Networking also always free and always available at sixminutenetworking.com. I'm @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, and this show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in redemption stories like this or might even know the person that Sean is searching for, definitely share this episode with them.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next [01:27:00] time.