They Said He'd Be Dead or In Jail by 21. Today He's 44.
They Said He'd Be Dead or In Jail by 21. Today He's 44.
Brent LeGrave was born deaf, pigeon-toed, and always the last one picked. He found fentanyl, lost everything, and then picked up his son's laptop and wrote the truth down — not for publication, but for the three people who deserved to know where he'd been.
In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda Lentz sits down with Brent LeGrave — first-time author, demolition derby driver, bowler, and survivor — for one of the most raw and unflinching conversations this show has ever held.
Brent grew up in Malone, New York, a small town where fentanyl doesn't make national headlines but quietly dismantles families one at a time. He was born deaf and pigeon-toed. He found identity in a bowling alley and behind a skull mask in the demolition derby ring. And then a workplace injury in 2015, a pulled prescription, and a turn to the streets set in motion a years-long battle that nearly cost him his life — and did cost him nearly everything else.
This is not a comfortable conversation. Brent doesn't offer it as one. But it is an honest one. And for anyone who has lived inside addiction, loved someone who has, or simply wondered what it actually feels like — it is essential.
The Boy Who Was Always Last
Before fentanyl. Before the demolition derby. Before any of it, there was a kid in Malone with hearing aids, leg braces, and a lot of doubt. Brent describes his early years with directness: he didn't believe in himself until around 12 or 13, when bowling became more than a game.
His mother taught him early: you can only bowl one frame at a time. You can only throw one ball at a time. You live for today, not tomorrow. It's a philosophy that would return to him decades later — in recovery, in writing, in trying to piece a life back together one slow and steady day at a time.
"If I can stop somebody else from doing it, I'm going to. No matter the cost."
— Brent LeGraveThere was also The Dead Man — a persona Brent wore in the demolition derby, complete with a skull mask. He describes the transformation of putting it on: suddenly he wasn't the kid with the braces, the hearing aids, the doubt. He was someone people came to watch. One year he forgot the mask. The applause wasn't the same. The mask, he jokes, was more popular than he was. But underneath the joke is something real — for a long time, Brent found himself most fully when he was something other than himself.
How Fentanyl Entered
August 12, 2015. Demolition derby, last heat. A brutal hit. Brent thought he'd broken his neck. The hospital found spinal stenosis and degenerative bone disease — the doctor was stunned he'd driven at all, let alone three heats that night. He was put on pain management. Then, in a dispute over a drug test, his prescriptions were pulled.
To be able to move through the day, he went to the streets and found fentanyl patches. He cut them into strips and chewed them. Not for a high — to function. To sit down without agony. To get through the hours.
"I wasn't chasing a high. I was chasing quiet."
— Brent LeGraveWhat follows in his telling is a portrait of how quickly a person stops being themselves. The screaming matches with his girlfriend that had no place in the life they'd actually built together — fishing at the lake, drinking beer, just being people. The pauses, as Brent calls them, where a fentanyl user goes still for ten or fifteen minutes and wakes up thinking nothing happened. The body aches when the supply ran out. The withdrawals that feel like the flu but worse, and that nobody talks about honestly enough.
Brent is clear about something that often gets lost: the cycle doesn't end simply because someone wants it to. The physical reality of withdrawal is brutal. The replacement medications offered are their own trap. And the people around addicts — however loving — often make the mistake of saying "I know how you feel." Brent's message to anyone who has ever said that: please don't.
"Your thoughts aren't my thoughts. My thoughts aren't your thoughts. You're not in my shoes."
— Brent LeGraveThe Hardest Part
Addiction, as Brent tells it, doesn't destroy only the person using. It destroys the people who love them — and then it destroys the ability to ask for help from the only people left.
He describes the moment things had passed the point of no return: calling his mother, having what sounded to her like a normal conversation, while on his end he was crying so hard he couldn't speak. He couldn't get the words out: I need help. Everyone else had already hung up. She was the last one.
And his sons. All of this, Brent says over and over, is for his kids. The book, the interviews, the website, the willingness to say things out loud that most people bury — all of it comes back to them. He cannot stand the thought of his boys hearing "your dad was a drug addict" as the final word on who he was.
"I don't want to leave that legacy behind. I want them to say — yeah, your dad was a drug addict. But look what he did with the rest of his life. That's my dad."
— Brent LeGraveTwo Weeks in Bed, and a Son's Laptop
The book, Bulletproof, did not begin as a book. It began with two weeks in a room, arguing with God, screaming to be taken, declaring he wasn't strong enough to keep going. When he finally stopped fighting, he made a deal with himself: Fine. I'll settle this score. I'll tell everybody my story.
He picked up his son's laptop. He hates reading and writing, he says — always has. But over two and a half years of self-isolation, he taught himself to write a novel. He cried through every page. Every letter. Every space.
He is not proud of what's inside the book. He is proud that he finished it. There is a difference, and Brent is careful to honor it.
"If I miss any of it, what good is it? I've got nothing left. This is what I've got. I'm giving everything I've got."
— Brent LeGraveThe book opens with a letter to the reader — written the morning of this recording. Brent thanks them for picking it up, then warns them: if they're looking to get cozy on the couch, this isn't the book for them. This is a reckoning. He tells them to buy something else if they'd prefer. But there's no other story like it.
The Numbers, the Great Army, and the Grandfather Who Never Left
Threaded through Bulletproof are three numbers: 86, 89, and 94. They emerged from an EVP session Brent was conducting, and when he ran them through a research tool, something stopped him: 1986 was the year his grandfather passed. 1989, his grandmother remarried. 1994, his grandfather moved back to Malone.
The same numbers, mapped to Brent's own life: 1986, he got his leg braces off — let go of everything they told him he couldn't do. 1989, his ear surgery — a new beginning. 1994, he turned 13 and finally understood the game of bowling.
His grandfather, Brent believes, has never fully left. His girlfriend — who survived a near-death experience during their addiction — came back from it with knowledge she couldn't have had: details about his family, impossible questions answered correctly, arguments she had with Brent on behalf of his grandfather. The story of how Brent tested her, and how she passed, is one of the most quietly extraordinary moments in this conversation.
The Great Army — a community Brent is building around the book — is for anyone who has been to hell and come back with a scar. Anyone who knows what the mental game of addiction costs, which Brent insists is worse than the physical one. That's why, he says, so many people go and don't come back.
What the Second Book Says
Brent is already writing Bulletproof II. The first book brings you through his addiction and survival. The second one looks forward — and backward, all the way to his sixth great-grandfather, who came to North America with Jacques Cartier in the 1600s, lost his wife and daughter to the plague on their voyage over, and still did not give up. He lived to 102.
Resilience, Brent is saying, is not just personal. It is inherited. It runs through bloodlines. The men and women who came before us endured losses we can barely imagine — and kept going anyway. That thread connects to the man writing a book in a bedroom in Malone, New York, for three boys who deserve to know the truth.
"We all have a path, a divine path. Some of us take longer to realize what that path is. But we do have one. This, unfortunately, is mine. I had to forge into that fire to save others."
— Brent LeGraveTo Anyone In It Right Now
Amanda closes by asking what Brent would say to someone in the worst of it — who can't see any way out. He pauses a long time. Then:
He's sorry. He's sorry they're going through it. He wishes there was a tomorrow for them, because the way things are going, there might not be. He was down to 120 pounds. His girlfriend was down to 90. They were slowly killing themselves and didn't see it. Three years out, he's still climbing back.
He doesn't pretend there are easy words. He doesn't offer a tidy solution. What he offers instead is presence — a website with an anonymous space to leave anything, anything at all, without a name attached. Just to get it off your chest. Just to have somewhere to put it.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, Brent has created a space at his website where anyone can share anonymously — no name, no login, just a place to be heard. Visit Bulletproof86.netlify.app or find him on Instagram at @Bulletproof20268.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) helpline is also available 24/7: 1-800-662-4357.
Why This Conversation Matters
Brent LeGrave is not a motivational speaker. He doesn't package his story into something comfortable. He describes a man who was counted out before he had a fair start — deaf, pigeon-toed, always last — who found something worth living for in a bowling ball and a skull mask, lost it all to a painkiller, and chose at 44 to tell the truth about every last bit of it.
Not because he's proud. Because if it stops one person, it will have been worth it.
As Amanda puts it in her closing: survival is not the same as recovery. And sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is write the letter we're afraid to send.
Who are you writing your letter to? And what are you still waiting to say?
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