
Shaka Senghor served 19 years in prison for murder. Today he is a writer, entrepreneur, and resilience expert. His new book, "How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons," will be out on September 9. www.shakasenghor.com Visit https://squarespace.com/ROGAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day what's up pleasure to meet you oh such a pleasure to be here my yeah it's um i heard your story why don't you tell everybody your story because the story's it's pretty wild
Yeah, so I grew up in Detroit. Working class neighborhood. Dad was in the Air Force and worked for the state. Mom was a homemaker. So on the outside looking in, it really looked like a household where the kids should make it. But unfortunately, it was a very abusive household. And I ran away when I was about 13 years old.
And at the time, prior to that, honor roll, scholarship student, dreams of being a doctor, artist. I wanted to be a doctor because I felt like that was an occupation where I felt like you can help people. And unfortunately, when I ran away, I thought that...
I would basically just kind of get welcomed into the home of someone who would see this kid and be like, oh, you know, this kid just deserves love or whatever. But I found myself on the east side of Detroit in an apartment with a gun to my head. And it was my introduction to the street culture. I was being robbed. And I was being robbed by this guy who later we would learn his name was Tiny.
Even though he was like big, fat, probably about six feet tall. And him and his partner Lily robbed me at gunpoint, took my drugs, took the money. And I think that was like one of those moments where the innocence of being a kid just was shattered. You know, it's like, you know, now I'm in this world where my life is in danger. But I stayed in that culture. My childhood friend was murdered.
I was beaten nearly to death. And despite that, I just continued to sell drugs. You know, it's one of the things when I think back to, you know, even that part of my life, you know, there's the glorification of like the hustler, right? It's like, you know, we're out here making money. We're doing things. But the reality is it's a kid navigating a very dangerous adult world.
at the time that crack is just penetrating the community. And one of the things that always go back to this image of the first time I made a lot of money, and I just had this wad of cash, like it's like all singles, $5 bills, $10 bills.
And I went to the store on the corner and I bought all the cereal that I can think of, like all the cereal that I could not, you know, my parents, they, even though, you know, my dad made decent money, like we couldn't always get all the cereal because it was like all these kids. And then I bought like chocolate milk and strawberry milk. And then I went back to the crack house. Wow.
And you were like, what, 13?
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