#390: From Quarterback to Crime Boss to Keynote Speaker: Damon West’s Unimaginable Story of Hope

Kevin Lowe: At the end of six long days, the jury, they deliberated for 10 short minutes.

Kevin Lowe: At the end of 10 minutes, they came back with a verdict. 65 years in prison, 65 years for Damon West in a maximum security prison in the state of Texas.

Kevin Lowe: Again, where is hope when you're handed down a sentence like that?

Kevin Lowe: That is what makes today so powerful.

Kevin Lowe: Now, what makes today's conversation so powerful is my friend, maybe you've not been given 65 years in a prison.

Kevin Lowe: But maybe you're living in a prison in your own life, keeping yourself held back from the dreams that you want to achieve, the things that you believe in.

Kevin Lowe: You're keeping yourself locked away from living the life that you're meant to live.

Kevin Lowe: Well, my friend, today, I pray more than anything else that today can be the spark of hope you've been needing.

Kevin Lowe: This is an interview with Damon West. And yes, if you caught our last episode, this is the guest I was talking about, A guy who I first learned about on an ordinary morning while listening to the Ed Milet Show.

Kevin Lowe: Today, Damon West is a man who is one of the most in-demand motivational speakers there is.

Kevin Lowe: A guy who's absolutely phenomenal.

Kevin Lowe: But more than anything else, he's just a guy.

Kevin Lowe: A normal person, just like you or me, who he's been through some stuff.

Kevin Lowe: But more than anything else, he's come out the other side. and he's proof that you can make a difference in your life and in the lives of everyone around you.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, if you need some encouragement, if you need to be inspired, motivated, and of course, if you could use a little bit of hope in your life, well, my friend, this is exactly where you were meant to be.

Kevin Lowe: My friend, I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I welcome you to episode 390 of Grit, Grace, & Inspiration.

Podcast Theme Song: I got Grit, Grace, & Inspiration on my mind...

Kevin Lowe: What's going on and welcome back to great grace and inspiration today i have the absolute pleasure of being in the studio today with none other than a guy named damon west damon man what a pleasure to have you here welcome to the podcast kevin.

Damon West: Dude i'm so excited to be here with you brother your story inspires me and when you reached out to me about doing your podcast it was an honor man I jumped at it, and yeah, I'm ready to do this today, brother.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, man. Well, I appreciate you making it clear that I did not have to threaten you or twist your arm or anything. No, sir.

Damon West: Just being an inspiring human being is all you had to do. And usually that's enough in life, right? We need inspiration.

Damon West: Everybody needs it. Even the motivators need motivating. So you do that for me, brother.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, man. Well, I appreciate that. Well, David, I'm excited to get to dive into your story.

Kevin Lowe: And I think what I want people to understand as we get started here is that as much as we're going to hear about your story, it's really the honestly the life lessons that you literally have to share, which is what I think makes you so powerful.

Kevin Lowe: And so where I would love to start is honestly by asking you from somebody who's gone through hell and back, where do you feel like your story really begins?

Damon West: Good question. I think the best place to start my story is somewhere right, we'll say in the middle.

Damon West: And I got a date we'll start with. The date is July 30th, 2008.

Damon West: So 17 years before this recording right here. On July 30th, 2008, I'm sitting around this little rundown apartment in Dallas, Texas, and I'm sitting on this little ratty old couch.

Damon West: And sitting next to me on the couch that day is my meth dealer that's got new tags. because 17 years ago, I'm not the clean-cut, polished-looking guy that everybody knows today.

Damon West: I'm a full-blown meth addict. I'm the head of an organized crime ring that operates throughout the entire city of Dallas.

Damon West: I'm the top criminal in this criminal enterprise, the shot caller, the boss.

Damon West: So I'm on the couch that day with my dope dealer, Tex. And I'm telling Tex, we're passing this pipe back and forth, you know, Tex, you don't want to be here, man.

Damon West: The cops are closing in on me. The end is near.

Damon West: Ten days before this, Kevin, my partner in crime was a guy named Dustin.

Damon West: Dustin knew everything about our criminal enterprise and Dustin was in the custody of the Dallas police department.

Damon West: They picked him up 10 days before. So they've got my partner in crime in custody, which means it's only a matter of time before they're going to have me in custody.

Damon West: Because here's the truth about crime, Kevin.

Damon West: Everybody talks, everybody talks. And just as I pass the pipe back to Tex, the window on my right blows out and shatters.

Damon West: And then tumbling across my living room floor was a little canister going end over end, and it was smoking on one side.

Damon West: Kevin, I've seen that movie before. I know what that canister's about to do.

Damon West: And I tried to get out of the living room as fast as I could. Too late.

Damon West: Boom. The flashbang grenade blew up my face. Bright white light, loud noise.

Damon West: Blows me back on the couch. And when I came to, when I can see and hear again, there's a cop standing over me in full SWAT riot gear. His boot is on my chest.

Damon West: The barrel of an assault rifle is sticking in my eye socket.

Damon West: And he's screaming at the top of his lungs, don't move, don't move.

Damon West: And man, I looked up at this cop and I was like, man, don't worry. Don't worry, right?

Damon West: So the cops, the Dallas SWAT team, they flood into my apartment.

Damon West: And one of them screams out loud, we got him.

Damon West: We got the Uptown Burglar. The Uptown Burglar, Kevin. That's a name I live with for the rest of my life.

Damon West: About a dozen other meth addicts and myself, young and old, male and female, black and white, and everything in between, we indiscriminately and without reservation broke into the homes of dozens and dozens of people in the uptown neighborhood of Dallas and beyond to feed our insatiable meth habits.

Damon West: But on July 30th, 2008, the uptown Burger and Crown Street comes to an end because they've got their man.

Damon West: They've got the mastermind of the entire thing, zip tied on the floor of a dirty old apartment. They took me to Dallas County Jail that day, Kevin.

Damon West: They processed me in, fingerprints, mugshot. They throw me in a holding cell, and they set my bond at $1.4 million.

Damon West: This was the biggest bond in Dallas at the time, Kevin. There's 9,000 people in Dallas County jailed. No one's got a bond this high.

Damon West: The trial takes place about 10 months later.

Damon West: The date is May 18, 2009. On May 18, 2009, I'm standing in front of a jury in Dallas.

Damon West: And the jury, these 12 men and women in this jury box, they've just set through a six-day criminal trial.

Damon West: And Kevin, six days for a trial and crimes where no one got hurt.

Damon West: It means the evidence of my guilt is overwhelming.

Damon West: And at the end of that long six-day trial, the jury goes to deliberate for 10 minutes.

Damon West: 10 minutes, Kevin. That means you're in serious trouble because a jury coming back that fast, it means they smoked you.

Damon West: And the crime that I'm standing trial for this whole six days, it wasn't a burglary case anymore.

Damon West: It was the highest level case the prosecutor can bring against you.

Damon West: It was an organized crime case. It was a RICO.

Damon West: And they brought me back in the courtroom and the judge read my sentence out loud.

Damon West: He said, Damon Joseph West, you are hereby sentenced to 65 years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Damon West: 65 years in Texas is a life sentence in Texas, or as they say in prison terms, six dimes and a nickel.

Damon West: The jury gave me life that day, Kevin. So that's where I think we should start this story off.

Damon West: This guy that gets sentenced to life in prison in 2009, but it's sitting in your podcast in 2025.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Now, Now, the question that came to mind when you started to share this story, you had this, premonition, this smarts about you to realize that things were about to end.

Kevin Lowe: Did you ever think about running, getting out of town?

Damon West: It's a great question. Here's the answer to why I did not run.

Damon West: I stayed in Dallas, Texas because I was a meth addict and my meth dealers, every one of them that I knew were in Dallas, Texas. I didn't have another meth connection.

Damon West: And the fear of being separated from my meth, the addiction part of that stayed, it kept me grounded in Dallas, Texas, where the most danger was to my life.

Damon West: Yeah. If I run, you know, I'm not arrested that day.

Damon West: There's no doubt about that. I don't know how long I'll last on the run, but I certainly have a better chance at evading capture if I run, but I can't run, Kevin, because my dope is in Dallas. Very good question.

Kevin Lowe: You were already imprisoned by the drug. Oh, yeah.

Damon West: That's a good point. Yeah. I tell people, you know, this is a this is a fact about prison.

Damon West: And look, we're going to hear from the story.

Damon West: You know, I go to a level five maximum security prison, the highest tier level prison there is. I do my time and we're going to hear the story about how I got out.

Damon West: And one of the things I did when I got out of prison, as I went back to school, I got a master's degree in criminal justice.

Damon West: And since I got out 10 years ago, I became a professor at the University of Houston teaching a class called Prisons in America.

Damon West: Like I became the only professor on the planet to teach a prisons class who lived in prison.

Damon West: So I'm going to tell you what I understand about prison. And this is from the guy that spent almost 10 years in the joint or the professor who teaches about the joint.

Damon West: The hardest prison to do time in is the prison in your mind.

Damon West: I meet more people out here in the free world that are locked up than I ever did when I served time in a real prison because more people are in prison by their thoughts, by their things, and by their prejudices than by steel bars and barbed wire and concrete combined.

Damon West: So, yes, I was absolutely a prisoner. I was enslaved by my drug.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, such a valid point in this realization of what prison can mean in its many different forms and definitions and circumstances and situations.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Very, very powerful. Now, before we proceed, I would love to understand how did you even get to that point to be in that apartment that day to even be hooked on meth in the first place?

Kevin Lowe: Because we tend to think of somebody in that situation. Well, then you've probably always been into drugs or you've always been on the wrong path in life. But I know for you, that wasn't the case.

Damon West: Yeah. You know, I got into substance abuse at a young age. I was 10 when I had my first beer.

Damon West: I snuck in the fridge and got my dad's, stole my dad's beer out of the fridge.

Damon West: I remember watching my dad and his buddies drink beer. And I thought to myself, you know what, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get a beer one day.

Damon West: You know, when I was drinking at a young age and I tried marijuana when I was 12, I was touching my toe, dipping my toe into the waters of addiction.

Damon West: I didn't know it back then.

Damon West: And nothing serious had happened in my life. No adversity had ever hit me until I was 20 years old.

Damon West: And I had a really good high school football career in the state of Texas.

Damon West: And as you know, you're in Florida, Texas and Florida. High school football is a really big deal.

Damon West: So I was a real big star quarterback in Texas. So good that I got a scholarship to play football at the University of North Texas, Division I college football.

Damon West: And by the time I was 20, I was a starting quarterback on a Division I team.

Damon West: But on September 21st, 1996, when we were playing Texas A&M, I separated my shoulder on the third play of the game.

Damon West: And it was the last game I would ever play in college.

Damon West: The injury was the last game I ever played in college.

Damon West: And I was at a giant fork in the road in life when football was gone because more than just football was gone that day, I lost my identity, Kevin.

Damon West: Everything in my life identified around being a college quarterback or being the star athlete. And once that was gone, I spun out and I got into hardcore drugs at that point. I got into cocaine.

Damon West: I got into ecstasy. I started popping pills, but I was a pretty functional addict, Kevin.

Damon West: I mean, like I graduate college in 1999. I move off to Washington, D.C. I have some of the best jobs you can have. I worked in the United States Congress.

Damon West: I worked for a guy running for president of the United States.

Damon West: And in 2004, I moved back to Dallas to be a stockbroker for one of the biggest Wall Street banks of the world, UBS, United Bank of Switzerland.

Damon West: And it was at that job as a stockbroker at UBS in 2004 that my life and the lives of so many other innocent people would forever be changed.

Damon West: Let me take you back that day in 2004. I was passed out of sleep at work.

Damon West: This other stockbroker comes in. He sees me sleeping. He wakes me up.

Damon West: He's visibly shaking. He's like, Damon, wake up, man.

Damon West: He said, you can't sleep on this job. The markets are up. You're messing with people's money. They'll fire you if they catch you sleeping here.

Damon West: He said, come on down to the parking garage.

Damon West: I've got something that will pick you up.

Damon West: So I followed this guy in the parking garage that day. We get into his nice little sports car. He hands me this glass pipe with these crystal rocks in it.

Damon West: Now, I'd never seen a glass pipe before. I'm like, man, what is that?

Damon West: He said, Damon, just relax. It's crystal meth. He said, you're going to love this stuff.

Damon West: Kevin, truer words never been spoken because I fell in love with crystal meth that day.

Damon West: Meth is the most evil, most destructive, most addictive drug ever created by man.

Damon West: It's made in a lab, made to get you hooked. I smoked it one time.

Damon West: Instantly hooked just like that. And I started giving everything away for that drug.

Damon West: I gave up my job, my home, my car, my savings account, my family, my tethering to God.

Damon West: And at 18 months, I go from working on Wall Street to living on the streets of Dallas.

Damon West: And that's when I became a criminal at that point, when I was homeless.

Damon West: Started breaking into cars, breaking into storage units, and eventually I started breaking into people's houses.

Damon West: And these burglaries, these are very serious crimes, Kevin, because I didn't just steal people's property when I broken their homes. I stole their sense of security.

Damon West: That's something I can't give back to them. And my victims live with that for the rest of their lives.

Damon West: But after three years of committing property crimes against the people of Dallas, Texas, the Dallas SWAT team on July 30th, 2008, put an end to the uptown burglaries.

Damon West: The day that they arrested me, or as I tell people all the time, I look back, Kevin, at July 30th, 2008, that's not just the day I was arrested.

Damon West: That was the day I was rescued.

Damon West: I got pulled out of a situation in life I couldn't get myself out of.

Damon West: The Dallas SWAT team saved my life that day, Kevin.

Kevin Lowe: Wow, what a powerful, powerful, powerful perspective. During this time, and this kind of leads into the next question I want to ask you, your family, your parents, their son, I mean, you just told us, Division I quarterback, you get this injury, you continue, though, on with life, You get involved with crystal meth and everything starts to spiral down.

Kevin Lowe: What is the impact on them during this time?

Damon West: Oh, man. Yeah, they're devastated. Like, they know something's wrong with me.

Damon West: They don't know what it is. But, I mean, they know something's wrong.

Damon West: My mom is constantly trying to get me to move back home to Southeast Texas where I grew up.

Damon West: But, again, Kevin, I'm not moving from Dallas. My dope dealers are in Dallas, you know?

Damon West: So there's absolutely no way I'm going to move back to Southeast Texas.

Damon West: My mom, she tries and tries and tries. She pleases me to come home.

Damon West: They don't know really what's wrong, but they know something's wrong.

Damon West: But they're so far away that I just lie to them because that's what addicts do.

Damon West: We lie. We cheat. We steal. We manipulate.

Damon West: We do what we have to do to stay in our behaviors. Here's what I learned about addiction.

Damon West: Addicts give up their goals to meet their behaviors.

Damon West: In fact, that's the definition of addiction, Kevin. when you give up your goals to meet your behaviors, you're an addict.

Damon West: It doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol, right? It could be food, money, clothing, shopping, sex, pornography, the internet, social media.

Damon West: But my family knew that something was wrong. And here's the deal.

Damon West: Addiction touches everybody in this country, Kevin. It touches everybody.

Damon West: No one is immune from this epidemic of addiction in America, whether you're the addict, the victim of an addict, the friend of an addict, the family member of an addict, or you're just a taxpayer paying into an overburdened criminal justice system.

Damon West: Addiction touches every single person in this country. And my parents were not immune from that. And I'll tell you this even further.

Damon West: The cycle of addiction that took me into prison, no one goes to prison alone, Kevin. You take a lot of people with you when you go to prison.

Damon West: You take your victims, you take your family, you take your friends who believed in you, you take everybody on the ride, the taxpayers, they pay for it.

Damon West: No one goes to prison alone in country.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Speaking about your mom, will you share with us the story of the day that you were sentenced to 65 years in prison and the advice that your mom gave you?

Damon West: Yeah, man, this is a very pivotal conversation on my journey.

Damon West: My mom, you know, my mom is a woman of strong faith. My mom and my dad were married for 55 years, too.

Damon West: I had a very privileged life, Kevin. I grew up with two parents in the home.

Damon West: I didn't know anything but have mom and dad there.

Damon West: So my parents are there for the whole trial. And right after the trial is over, my mom and dad are escorted in to this little side room. There's a bulletproof glass dividing us.

Damon West: And my mom has this conversation with me that day. She's like, Damon, debts in life demand to be paid.

Damon West: And you just got hit with one hell of a bill from the state of Texas.

Damon West: But she said, you did everything they said you did. So you have to go and pay that debt to society.

Damon West: She said, Damon, you owe Texas that debt. But now you owe your father and I debt too. You see, we gave you all the opportunity to love and support, to be anything you want to be in life.

Damon West: And that's how you just repaid us what we saw in that courtroom.

Damon West: She said, that's not going to work.

Damon West: So here's the debt you're going to pay to us. When you go to prison, you will not get in one of these white hate groups, one of these Aryan Brotherhood type of gangs, because you're scared because you're the minority.

Damon West: She said, that's not going to work, Damon. You were never raised to be a racist.

Damon West: You're not starting that stuff now.

Damon West: She said, you will not get any tattoos when you're inside that prison.

Damon West: She said, no gangs, no tattoos. She said, you come back as the man that we raised or don't come back to us at all.

Damon West: And man, Kevin, I was stunned, right? I'm floored because I don't know how I'm going to deliver on this promise to my mom.

Damon West: But my mom told me, she said, Damon, this is the debt you owe to your father and I get to work.

Damon West: So I'm running around Dallas County Jail. I've got two months before the prison bus comes to get me.

Damon West: And I'm frantically asking every guy that's been to prison before, how am I going to survive?

Damon West: What am I going to do? And every guy I'm talking to, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, they're all telling me the same exact thing, that you've got to get into a gang.

Damon West: You can't survive without a gang. The gang is your family now.

Damon West: But there was this one guy that was so different, this older black guy named Muhammad.

Damon West: Now, Muhammad was what you call a career criminal.

Damon West: He's been in and out of prison his entire life. But, you know, he was the most positive guy I've ever been in my life, Kevin.

Damon West: This guy had a smile on his face everywhere he went. You couldn't knock the smile from Muhammad's face.

Damon West: And every morning, he would come to my cell, to my bunk, and he would pick me up like a ray of sunshine in that dark place with his positive energy.

Damon West: So one morning, Muhammad comes up to my bunk.

Damon West: He's got a cup of coffee in his hands. He had a smile on his face.

Damon West: He said, Wes, I've been watching you, man.

Damon West: I've been watching how you're dealing with these knuckleheads and these dummies talking about you got to get into a gang.

Damon West: He said, man, don't listen to these fools. You want to keep that promise you made to your mom and your dad?

Damon West: Then let me tell you what prison is really going to be like.

Damon West: And so he told me, Kevin, he said, the first thing you need to understand about prison, he said, prison's all about race.

Damon West: He said, race runs the whole institution side of a prison. And that's the way all the inmates want it. He said, everything's broken down by the racial code in there. Everybody separates by the races.

Damon West: So what I'm telling you is when you walk in the door, the white gangs get the first dips in you because you're white.

Damon West: The Aryan Brotherhood, the Aryan Circle, the white knights, the woods.

Damon West: He said, you fight all the white gangs first. If you survive the white gangs, then you fight the black gangs, the Crips, the Bloods, the gangster disciples.

Damon West: They're going to be happy to tee off on this independent white guy who won't get with his own race and his own kind where he belongs.

Damon West: He said, but if you survive all that, and you can survive all that, You will earn the right to walk alone.

Damon West: He said the strongest man in prison always walks alone.

Damon West: He told me the truth about fighting. He said you don't have to win all your fights, but you do have to fight all your fights.

Damon West: Some days you win, some days you lose. He said it's okay when you lose as long as you get back up and you keep fighting.

Damon West: You know, he's telling me, get back up.

Damon West: But when he's telling me it's back 2009, Kevin, I'm looking back at this guy like a deer in headlights, man. All this violence and terror I'm about to walk into.

Damon West: That's when he's like, West, he said, let me break this down for you a different way.

Damon West: He said, I want you to imagine prison as a pot of boiling water.

Damon West: He said, anything we put into a pot of boiling water will be changed by the heat and the pressure inside that pot.

Damon West: He said, I'm going to put three things in this pot of boiling water.

Damon West: And watch how they change.

Damon West: A carrot, an egg, and a coffee bean.

Damon West: So he tells me the story that coffee bean came. He said, if I put a carrot in a pot of boiling water, he said, what happens to the carrot?

Damon West: And I was like, the carrot turns soft, Muhammad. He said, that's right.

Damon West: But the carrot goes in the water really hard and firm. But the water of the prison turns the hard carrot, soft and mushy and weak. He said, you don't want to be a carrot.

Damon West: He said, what about the egg? What happens to the egg in the pot of warm water?

Damon West: I'm like, the egg is going to turn hard, like a hard-boiled egg.

Damon West: He said, that's right. He said, the egg has a shell that will protect it physically.

Damon West: But inside that shell, that soft liquid core, the egg's yolk, the heart becomes hardened.

Damon West: He said, now, if your heart becomes hardened, you become incapable of giving or receiving love.

Damon West: He said, if you're incapable of giving or receiving love, you've become institutionalized, and you do not come back as someone your parents recognize because your eggshell has swastikas all over it.

Damon West: Then he asked me the question. He said, what about the coffee bean, Wes?

Damon West: He said, what happened to the coffee bean in the pot of boiling water?

Damon West: And Kevin, I didn't have an answer from Muhammad on that one.

Damon West: I didn't know what happened to a coffee bean in a pot of boiling water.

Damon West: And that's when Muhammad, a man who looks nothing like me, a man who doesn't come from the same America that I come from, a man who doesn't believe the same things I believe in my own life.

Damon West: This is a black Muslim man from the streets of Dallas, Texas.

Damon West: I'm a white middle-class Christian from a little town called Port Arthur, but this man who is so different than me, he's about to share with me one of the most important and transformational messages I've ever received in my entire life. And the moral to that is this.

Damon West: If you ever shut yourself off to other people because of their differences, different race, different gender, different ethnicity, different religion, different opinions, different political views, if you close yourself off to people because of their differences, you're going to miss some of the most important lessons and some of the best friendships in this life because Muhammad told me that day he said if I put a coffee bean in that same pot of boiling water we call prison he said now you're going to change the name of the water to coffee

Damon West: because he said the coffee bean west the smallest of the three things he said small like you has the power to change the entire atmosphere inside that pot because the power's inside the coffee bean he He said, just like the powers inside of you.

Damon West: And he said, everything else in life is changed by the water in life.

Damon West: Carrots are changed by the water.

Damon West: Eggs are changed by the water, but not a coffee bean. He said, the coffee bean is the only thing that changes the water because it's the change agent.

Damon West: He said, if you want to come back to someone your parents recognize, you got to be like that coffee bean too.

Damon West: In fact, the last words he ever said to me, he said, West, be a coffee bean.

Damon West: And that was it. That was the message right before I got on the prison bus.

Damon West: Be a coffee bean. The four words that changed my life, Kevin, because you know what those four words did for me?

Damon West: They put the power back inside me. And if the power was inside me, it could be the world around me, right?

Damon West: The criminal justice system, the guards, the other inmates. It wasn't me.

Damon West: And if I could keep the power inside me, I don't survive prison.

Damon West: I thrive in that prison. And that's what I'm telling your audience today, because I want your audience to know that the power is inside you, too.

Damon West: It's not what goes on around you where you live, the town you're from, the state you're from, or the crazy politics and social problems this country has right now.

Damon West: It's in you. And if you can keep the power inside you, you don't survive adversity, you thrive in adversity.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow, the coffee bean.

Kevin Lowe: What a powerful, powerful imagery that is.

Kevin Lowe: I guess, though, what I wonder, though, is when you went into prison, did you have any idea that you would not serve all 65 years behind bars?

Damon West: You know, that is a good question. The answer to that question is like, I know because my crimes, Kevin, my crimes were non-aggravated.

Damon West: And in Texas, they've got two different categories of crimes you can commit.

Damon West: An aggravated crime is a crime where someone is physically hurt and commissioned the crime.

Damon West: Think murder, rape, child molesters, those kind of things. Robbery, when you put a gun in someone's face.

Damon West: Non-aggravated crimes are where you have no physical victim.

Damon West: These are property crimes. These are crimes that you commit, like theft and stuff like that around drug addiction.

Damon West: So my crimes were non-aggravated. And in Texas, if you have non-aggravated crimes, you don't have to do as much time before you see parole as someone that has an aggravated charge.

Damon West: So I know going into this thing that I'll be eligible for parole in seven years.

Damon West: But do I think I'm going to make the first parole?

Damon West: Absolutely not. No one makes the first parole in prison, not on a life sentence.

Damon West: In fact, just to get out on a life sentence, most people do about 10 or 15 years, best case scenario, before they get out.

Damon West: So I'm going into this thing. I don't think I'm doing 65 years, but I think I'm doing about 10 or 15.

Kevin Lowe: And I guess when I think about it, 65 years versus 10 years, it's in prison, maximum security in the worst place in the world and in a place where I think hope can't exist.

Kevin Lowe: And I can't help but I guess think even thinking, OK, I'll be in here for 10, 15 years, even say seven years.

Kevin Lowe: How do you maintain, though, hope in such a place as prison?

Damon West: Yeah, that's the thing, man. Hope is the thing you have to have.

Damon West: You ever seen the movie Shawshank Redemption, Kevin?

Kevin Lowe: Embarrassingly, no.

Damon West: Well, I didn't know before you went blind if you had ever seen that movie.

Damon West: But it's one of the most incredible movies ever.

Damon West: And the movie Shawshank Redemption is about hope.

Damon West: And in the movie, there's two main characters. One of them is a guy named Andy Dufresne.

Damon West: The other is a guy named Red. A lot of people think the movie Shawshank is about Andy, the innocent guy that went to prison and escaped.

Damon West: But the movie is really about Red.

Damon West: He's the incarcerated guy that Andy befriends in there. The reason why the movie's about Red is because Red has no hope, and Andy represents hope inside the prison.

Damon West: In fact, so much so that the last scene of the movie, when Red and Andy unite outside the prison walls, because Andy has escaped, and Red has finally made parole after 40 years.

Damon West: He did 40 years of prison before he walked out.

Damon West: Red's final sentences Red's final he has the final line of the whole movie and that last scene of the movie they're on this beach in Mexico Zihuataneo, Mexico And Red's dialogue at the end is the culmination of the whole movie. He says this.

Damon West: He says, I hope I make it across the border. He's going into Mexico, right?

Damon West: I hope I make it across the border. I hope I see my friend again so I can shake his hand.

Damon West: I hope the Pacific is as blue as it was in my dreams.

Damon West: I hope. Every single sentence starts off with the words, I hope.

Damon West: In fact, the last two words of the movie were one sentence. says, I hope prison was the hardest thing I've ever been through because it's the most hopeless world I've ever walked into.

Damon West: And that's why prisons are so dangerous in America, Kevin, because when you have a void of hope, negativity, evil, and darkness fills the void.

Damon West: And you don't have to live in a physical prison to be in a world with no hope, do you, right? Because there's a lot of ways to not have hope in this world.

Damon West: But hope is the thing that we must have because hope gives us the belief that there are going to be better times.

Damon West: You know, one of the things that I found that would bring me hope inside prison, and I still use to this day, remind myself of the times when I succeeded in life.

Damon West: When you're having a tough day and you're struggling, Kevin, do you ever sit back and think about the times you won and focus on those wins?

Damon West: I mean, that's really kind of a way that a tool that I found even in prison and even out here, that I could get past It's the moment where I see myself in this bad situation.

Damon West: And I just remind myself, Damon, you've won before. You've done this before.

Damon West: You've been able to accomplish big things. And you'll be able to get through this thing too.

Damon West: In every situation of adversity, there's an opportunity in the adversity.

Damon West: I tell people that all the time, Kevin. It's important to understand.

Damon West: Opportunity is in the adversity. And on the other side of the adversity is the best version of us. But the trick is this. The catch is this.

Damon West: You have to go through that adversity. You have to go through that difficult thing in front of you to meet and shake the hand of the man or woman you're always destined to be.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah. Wow. In prison, though, while you're there, you're in a world of adversity.

Kevin Lowe: You're in a world of no hope.

Kevin Lowe: You've been given this powerful message by your mom.

Kevin Lowe: You've been given this amazing life lesson by Muhammad.

Kevin Lowe: But was there a moment in time when you're laying there in the bunk at night thinking, I can't do this?

Damon West: Oh, yeah. Yeah, man, of course. I mean, look, I live in a dungeon. I live in a cage.

Damon West: So, I mean, you're living in a dungeon and it's a very drab place and there's all this misery around you, right?

Damon West: So, yeah. Do I ever think I can't do it? Yeah.

Damon West: Here's what has to happen, in my opinion, for a person to recognize the kind of gains that I recognize in life.

Damon West: I think you have to have a spiritual awakening.

Damon West: And I said spiritual, Kevin. I didn't say religious, right? I'm not talking about any one religion out there. I'm a Christian, So I believe in Christ.

Damon West: But I believe anybody can believe in anything they want to. Whatever it is you believe in, whatever higher power, believe in that, dig into that, and give into that.

Damon West: Because here's why you have to have a spiritual awakening.

Damon West: A spiritual awakening allows you to turn this idea of control over to a higher power.

Damon West: Because there's only four things you can control in life, Kevin.

Damon West: This is it. This is the whole ballgame, really. You control what you think.

Damon West: What you say, what you feel, and what you do.

Damon West: What you think, what you say, what you feel, and what you do.

Damon West: And it's not one of those four things. You don't control it.

Damon West: I mean, so what I'm telling you is the world goes on around you, Kevin. You can't control the world around you, but you can't control the world inside you.

Damon West: Unless you allow another person, another group, a political party, a politician to get inside your head.

Damon West: And of course, when you allow people inside your head, that's when you become a prisoner of your own mind. But so to free yourself, to free yourself from the thoughts that I can't do this or this, it's too big, it's impossible.

Damon West: You turn the other parts of your life over, the parts you can't control, to a higher power.

Damon West: And that's when you say, hey, you know, higher power. In my case, I would say Christ. Hey, Christ.

Damon West: I can't fix or control those things that you can control, but I'll go work on the things that I can control and you work on those things over there.

Damon West: And while I'm working on my stuff over here, I'll make the best version of whatever I can do with what you get me to work on every day.

Damon West: And that spiritual awakening gives you the freedom to let go of the things you can't control.

Damon West: And once you let go of the things you can't control, you start to have a better life because now you're focusing your time, which is the most precious resource there is, Kevin.

Damon West: Once time is gone, it's gone for good And all the money in the world can't buy one more second of that stuff they call time, right?

Damon West: But once you're focusing your time on things you actually can control, your life takes off.

Damon West: And that's what happened in my life. I had a spiritual awakening and I let go of the things I couldn't control, the worry, the doubt.

Damon West: You know, there was a lady in the chapel, a volunteer lady in the chapel.

Damon West: Her name was Miss D. Doucette. And so Miss D.

Damon West: Told me one day, she said, if you're going to pray, don't worry.

Damon West: But if you're going to worry, don't pray. She said, you can't do God's job and your job, Damon.

Damon West: She said, you're either going to let God drive the car or you're going to drive the car.

Damon West: But the last time you drove the car, you parked it in a maximum security prison.

Damon West: So choose who gets those keys, but choose wisely.

Damon West: So, wow. Yeah.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. You, you mentioned earlier when we were talking about the coffee bean, being a change agent, an agent of change.

Kevin Lowe: How do you, how do you do that though inside of a prison?

Damon West: I learned about this thing called servant leadership. Servant leadership is helping other people reach their goals in life, helping to raise other people up to a different station life.

Damon West: Cause I believe Kevin, when we help other people grow, we grow too.

Damon West: That's what the secret to life is, right? Helping other people reach their goals.

Damon West: And whenever you are struggling and when you're trying to reach your goals, someone's going to be there to help you reach yours too.

Damon West: Whenever I learned about servant leadership, I asked myself, Damon, how do you serve these guys around?

Damon West: How do you serve men you're doing time with in prison?

Damon West: And the answer came to me. I had a very privileged life, Kevin.

Damon West: I had a bachelor's degree when I went to prison.

Damon West: Most of the guys around me in prison, their education stops around the seventh grade or eighth grade. You know, that's the reality of incarceration.

Damon West: Most people in prison, the lack of an education is one of the biggest reasons they got into prison, right?

Damon West: So what I did when I was in prison, as I opened up a free tutoring service, I taught guys how to read and write.

Damon West: I get them ready for the GED test. So if they ever got out of prison, they could be a better husband or a better father one day.

Damon West: Through my acts of service in there, through my acts of teaching other people, I was also teaching these men about the importance of building a community.

Damon West: So many of the people that I was locked up with, Kevin, they didn't come from the same background I came from. I had two parents in my home.

Damon West: You know, most of the guys I was in prison with, they had one parent in the home, if they even had one, right?

Damon West: So they weren't taught the importance and lessons about building a strong community.

Damon West: A strong community looks like this, Kevin.

Damon West: In a healthy community, we have this mindset that my success is your success and your success is mine.

Damon West: And I want to see my community thrive. And in a healthy community, everybody goes out in their community and say, hey, this is my talent.

Damon West: This is what I have to offer to the community.

Damon West: And if anybody can use my talents, I'm here to be a part of this community.

Damon West: In prison, everybody's always fighting for themselves, man. I got mine, go get yours.

Damon West: In prison, I taught people how to have a good community. So an example of this.

Damon West: Whenever I was teaching these guys how to read and write in prison, everything has a price on it, Kevin. Nothing is free.

Damon West: You can't give somebody something. Everything has to be transactional in prison.

Damon West: So these guys that I'm tutoring, teaching how to read and write, they would come to me with wanting to pay for the tutoring services.

Damon West: And money in prison is in the form of food that you get from the commissary or stamps off the commissary.

Damon West: You know, think about coffee, think about pastries, think about stamps, think about soups, things you would pay for stuff with in prison.

Damon West: So guys would come up to me with this bag of food, trying to pay me for teaching them how to read and write.

Damon West: And I'd tell them, you can't pay me for this. This is my service to you.

Damon West: So instead of paying me, pay it forward.

Damon West: Find someone else that needs something in life. And when you find that person, remember this favor I did for you. do them a favor too.

Damon West: So now I'm watching. I'm teaching this guy how to read, right?

Damon West: He's a prison artist. This guy can draw really well.

Damon West: And there's another guy on the pod that's indigent.

Damon West: Indigent meaning he's poor. He doesn't have any money. He doesn't have any access to funds to go to the commissary.

Damon West: He has no one in the free world that'll help him with his life out of prison.

Damon West: But this indigent guy really wants to send somebody on the outside of the free world a Christmas card.

Damon West: And these prison artists, that's their big time of year.

Damon West: Birthdays, holidays, stuff like that when people are requesting them to create art for them. That's how these prison artists make a living in there.

Damon West: I watched this guy that I'm tutoring that's a prison artist go up to the other guy that's indigent when he found out that this guy was wanting to make a Christmas card but had no money.

Damon West: And he said, hey, I'm going to make this Christmas card for you.

Damon West: And I'm going to do this for you. And you're not going to have to pay me a dime for it. and it's going to be the best Christmas card ever.

Damon West: I'm going to put the best work into it as if you paid me full price for it.

Damon West: But what I want you to do instead of paying me is pay it forward.

Damon West: Then I watched that guy that received the Christmas card found another inmate that was a handicapped guy that was in a wheelchair.

Damon West: And a person inside of a prison, you live with a handicap, a physical handicap, Kevin. You're blind.

Damon West: So a person with a handicap is going to need help to do certain things inside of a prison. I mean, just think, and there are blind people inside of prison too, Kevin.

Damon West: So when you think about navigating a world where you have a physical handicap inside of this very difficult world already, and I watched the guy that received the Christmas card go up to this guy that's in a wheelchair and said, hey, I tell you what, for now on, you don't have to push yourself to the chow hall every day.

Damon West: I'm going to be your ride. I'm going to push you there and back.

Damon West: So man, you're seeing this evolution of these guys when they learn about a good community. And that's how I changed prison, Kevin.

Damon West: Taught these men how to find the best version of themselves.

Damon West: And I taught them about a better way of living. And that transferred into like making more coffee beans and making coffee.

Damon West: So when the prison becomes this more positive place and everybody's got this attitude that we're going to help each other out, the people in prison took notice of this, Kevin.

Damon West: I mean, the wardens saw it, the majors, the captains saw it, and the parole board saw it. I came up for my first parole vote in 2015.

Damon West: Now, I've been in prison for seven years at this point. It's my first parole on a life sentence.

Damon West: Again, I've told you before, my expectation is that I'm going to do about 10 or 15 years before I go home.

Damon West: But they call me up for parole in 2015.

Damon West: The lady calls me into the interview, and she's got my criminal file in front of her cabinet. And it's a pretty thick file.

Damon West: I mean, it's got my whole life story in there. It's got every arrest, every felony.

Damon West: They call it your jacket. So my jacket is sitting in front of this lady, and she's flipping through the pages of my jacket for about 20 seconds.

Damon West: And she slams the big file shut.

Damon West: She pushes it away from her. She said, Mr. West, I came here today to ask you one question for your parolee hearing.

Damon West: She said, this is a one question test, Mr. West.

Damon West: The answer to my question determines whether or not you go home or you stay in this prison.

Damon West: But the answer to my question is not in the file about the guy that I'm reading about who committed all those crimes in Dallas, Texas all those years ago.

Damon West: She said, we don't see a lot of Damon West inside the prison system because you had it all, Mr. West.

Damon West: You had every advantage. You had every privilege. You had every opportunity over everybody your entire life.

Damon West: She said, you're the definition of a privileged person in America.

Damon West: And she read the file, right, Kevin? I did. I had it all.

Damon West: Remember, I come from this incredible two-parent home, middle-class background, good student, great athlete, had it all.

Damon West: Best jobs anybody could have, but no substance abuse.

Damon West: But that's what she's saying. She said, you had it all.

Damon West: But you threw it all away. You became a drug addict. You became a criminal.

Damon West: You became a thief. A jury in Dallas gave you life in prison for the things you did.

Damon West: But instead of letting that license define you, you changed yourself inside this prison, Mr. West.

Damon West: She said, there's no doubt about the change you made to yourself.

Damon West: But what got our attention, the reason why we're here today is you didn't just change yourself inside this prison.

Damon West: You changed the entire prison around you.

Damon West: One man changed this whole prison. So my question for you is this, Mr.

Damon West: West, and think very hard about this answer because your life depends on it.

Damon West: She said, if you could be remembered for being anything in life, anything at all, she said, tell me what that one thing would be, but give it to me in just one word, go.

Damon West: And Kevin, I remember thinking to myself, man, I don't have to think about that answer.

Damon West: I know the answer to that question because I'd been living that answer the whole time I was in prison.

Damon West: And I fired her answer back at her immediately, and I said, useful.

Damon West: I said, I just want to be useful because, Kevin, don't we all want to be useful?

Damon West: Doesn't everybody want to feel like they have a purpose in life?

Damon West: And that's what I told that lady that day. I said, ma'am, I just want to be useful.

Damon West: And I can be useful inside this prison, as you've already seen, or I could be useful in that free world finding more coffee beans.

Damon West: November 16, 2015, Kevin, a day I'll never forget.

Damon West: Because on November 16, 2015, I walk out of a Texas prison, but I'm not a free man.

Damon West: You know, I remind people all the time, I'm not a free man in front of you right now. I got a little more time left on parole in the state of Texas.

Damon West: I'm on parole in the state of Texas, Kevin, until the year 2073.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah.

Damon West: 48 more years from the day this recording. But I'm going to tell you something, Kevin. I'm not worried about being on parole because I'm a coffee bean.

Damon West: And as long as I'm a coffee bean, the only way I'm going back into a prison is when I walk in the front gate of a prison.

Damon West: Every month, somewhere in America, I voluntarily walk into a prison, voluntarily walk in, I share the story, the message of the coffee bean with the inmates in there, and I walk out the front gate. A free man today.

Kevin Lowe: Wow. Wow. Damon, you have one of the most...

Kevin Lowe: Transformative, most empowering stories of anyone I've ever heard.

Kevin Lowe: And when I listened to you getting to tell it to me firsthand, I'm just left literally in awe at what somebody could do inside of a prison to make a difference, not just in their life, but in the lives of who knows how many.

Kevin Lowe: You taught people how to read. You taught people how to write.

Kevin Lowe: And at the same point, you infused in them this mindset of the coffee bean to help others.

Kevin Lowe: You created a community in the prison.

Kevin Lowe: How can people take what you've done in a prison and do it in their world today, just in their normal life, their neighborhood, their town?

Kevin Lowe: What can we leave with them today that they can start doing?

Damon West: Man, that's a great question. Here's the answer to that question.

Damon West: Look around you. And I don't mean that like in a sense where I'm talking to a blind guy, tell him to look around because you did this, too.

Damon West: You did exactly what I'm about to say to everybody else out there.

Damon West: Look around. You look for ways to serve other people. Find out what your way is in life to make the world a better place.

Damon West: How can I best help other people around me and pitch in? Do that.

Damon West: Find that path for you. You found that path.

Damon West: This is why you're the inspiration for me. This is why of all the people that requested to do a podcast with me after Ed's podcast, you're the one I picked because you're the inspiration for me. You're blind.

Damon West: You have a physical handicap that would make most people tap out and quit.

Damon West: But you said, no, I have something more to offer. And I'll put this podcast together. And I'll reach people because I have something to give to society.

Damon West: And that's what we all have to do. Find out what you have to put in.

Damon West: It's not about you. It's about what you can do for other people.

Damon West: Help other people reach their goals in life. And you don't have to do this on a global scale like me going around speaking of impact and affect the world around you first and use positive body language to do that.

Damon West: Positive body language, positive language, everything you do, be positive about it because you either infect the world around you with negative energy or you affect the world around you with positive energy.

Damon West: So I would remind people out there, man, you have three choices every day.

Damon West: And that's, you can be the carrot, let life beat you down and make you sad.

Damon West: And you can be the egg, let life make you hard, make you mad.

Damon West: Or you can be a coffee bean and change the pot of boiling water into a pot of coffee. And I believe we all have the power inside of us to change the world around us, Kevin.

Kevin Lowe: Mr. David West, man, you are an amazing man, a servant leader, a change agent, a fricking coffee bean.

Kevin Lowe: It has been a pleasure to get to have you on the podcast today.

Kevin Lowe: And for the person who is in awe as much as I am, and they want to stay plugged in on your world, they would love to read your books.

Kevin Lowe: Where is the best place that we can send them?

Damon West: Yeah, DamonWest.org is my website where people find me for speaking and stuff like that.

Damon West: And then my social media stuff, Instagram and X, it's at DamonWest7, D-A-M-O-N-W-E-S-T, at DamonWest7.

Kevin Lowe: Fantastic. Well, I will be certain that all of that is in the show notes for anybody interested.

Kevin Lowe: Damon, from the bottom of my heart, man, I appreciate your time today.

Kevin Lowe: And it's a true, true honor to get to share a minute of your time today. So thank you.

Damon West: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate you, man. And thank you, Kevin. Thank you so much for the opportunity today. And like I said, you're an inspiration to me.

Damon West: And it was an honor to do your show today.

Kevin Lowe: Oh, thank you. For you, my friend listening today, I hope you're in awe as much as I am.

Kevin Lowe: And more than anything, I hope today you don't just leave feeling inspired or entertained, but I hope you leave feeling empowered that, you know what?

Kevin Lowe: If he can do it, then why can't I?

Kevin Lowe: So take that motivation, that inspiration, and turn it into empowerment to make a difference in your life and the life of someone else.

Kevin Lowe: I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and this is Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: Get out there and enjoy this beautiful day!