Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given - Duane Dog Chapman [99]
One day, Beth found a burn hole from one of Justin’s cigarettes in one of the cup holders in her car. When Beth went off on him, Justin decided to fight back by very aggressively mouthing off.
Mouthing off to Beth is never a good idea.
Justin started calling Beth all sorts of names before storming off and punching a wall right in front of Leland. As a trained boxer, Leland knows better than to show his temper by hitting a wall, so he confronted Justin. He told him how immature and destructive Justin’s behavior was, reminding him that Beth had told him not to smoke in her car countless times. When Beth came outside and saw Justin’s swollen broken hand, she essentially told him he was no longer useful to us on bounty hunts. She explained that he wouldn’t be able to drive a car, make a fist, or grab his can of Mace on a hunt until he was fully healed. He hurt himself, which meant he was off the show.
Leland drove Justin to the hospital to get his hand fixed. We thought he’d get it set in a cast and hopefully be on the road to recovery so he could quickly rejoin the team. Several hours later, Beth noticed that Justin still hadn’t come back from the hospital. She began calling around to find him, but none of the hospitals had had a patient with his name come through their doors. Finally, the last place Beth called told her Justin had checked himself out hours ago. They had given him some pain pills and let him go without any other medical attention to his hand.
We didn’t see Justin again for quite some time and didn’t hear from him for weeks, and then months. This was devastating to Gary Boy because Justin had become his confidant, friend, swimming partner, surfing pal, and all-around buddy. We called Justin’s mom, Moon, who had worked for our family for years but wasn’t employed by us at the time. We asked if she had heard from him, but she said she hadn’t. We all knew Justin had done something really dumb—he relapsed back into his old life of getting high and hanging out with the wrong friends who were enabling him further by encouraging him to do more drugs. The second the hospital gave him the dope, he was back to his old addict ways.
Many addicts slip back into their addictions after something happens in their lives that causes them to take painkillers. They get that old familiar feeling again and slip right back. I’ve seen it a thousand times. And that’s exactly what happened with Justin.
It turns out he went to visit some relatives in upstate New York. Unfortunately, those relatives weren’t the stable influence on Justin that Beth and I had been. They were enabling Justin’s habit. Worse yet, they began filling up his head with stories of how he should have been getting paid a lot more money to be on my show. They told him our ratings would plummet without him and the show would inevitably fail if we didn’t bring him back for season two, because he was the “real star” of the show.
If enough people start telling you something, even if it isn’t true, chances are you’re eventually going to believe whatever it is they’re saying. So Justin bought into their rhetoric—hook, line, and sinker. He started playing the money game with our producers. When they asked him where he thought the show could take him professionally, he said he wanted to do BVD underwear commercials, become a model, or become a singer.
Wrong answer.
You see, when the producers asked each of us the same question, Leland, Duane Lee, Beth, and I all answered exactly the