Check Out Bobby Hubner’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bobby Hubner.

Hi Bobby, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Where to start… So, my name is Bobby Hubner, founder of Street Survivors Worldwide, which is my new social media enterprise, I’m trying to be a voice in the dark for people who, for whatever reason, have become stuck in their minds and need to believe change is possible.

From trauma to simple complacency, there are a million reasons people lose faith, separate themselves from others, feel shame or remorse, and it can be a very dark and unforgiving world to people stuck in that place emotionally. I want to be a lighthouse for these people, I have survived so much, I have CHANGED so much of myself that I was convinced would NEVER change… people need to know they can do it too, and I can definitely help with mastering a mindset of change and growth

When I say I survived, I mean it in every sense of the word: I have physically survived violent, life-threatening assaults, intensely traumatic addictions, suicide attempts, even stage 3 kidney cancer. My spiritual life has somehow survived through faith-shaking family circumstances, downright rejection of belief, and very personal loss.

Emotionally and psychologically, I have survived 45 years of silent, painful mental health issues. About 2 years ago I was tested and it was determined that I’m definitely on the high-functioning end of the Autism Spectrum, which helps to explain my lifelong battles with depression, self-defeating ideation, irrational emotional responses to everyday situations, attention deficit, and difficulty understanding neuro-typical social situations.

I grew up in a highly Christian family, and even with their unshakeable faith, they are still truly amazed by the way I have slid under death’s radar so many times in the past 40 years, and at the same time I am constantly astonished that my emotional and psychological growth not only survived, but has been honestly THRIVING since managing to escape the grips of a devastating, decade-long opioid addiction.

I suppose I’ll tell you about that, it was the biggest turning point for my life, and it might resonate deeply with those who have been through or are currently struggling with addiction. Hopefully I can provide a ray of hope for someone facing that particular darkness, because I’ll tell you: when you’re in the thick of it, there’s isn’t a more hopeless, self-defeating and shamed feeling in all of human experience.

When you’re hopelessly addicted to opioids, all you want is relief from the pain inside, (whether it be physical, emotional, or all of the above), and you tend to simply give up on ever getting out of that hole. It becomes this giant black space inside you, always empty, cold and isolated. I can tell you, it’s hard when you want to get free from addiction but you can’t find even a SINGLE PERSON that has ever been through what you’re going through and lived to tell about it.

In 2008, at age 29, I was an award-winning sales team leader for one of the longest-standing and largest direct sales companies in the world. I had been a drinker and smoker for a little over a decade, but looking back, my consumption back then was mainly a social lubricant to help me communicate with the world.

Unaware that I was living with Asperger’s, all I knew is that I always got ridiculed as a child for being too smart, so as a teenager I had to dumb myself down a little so I could be one of the “cool kids”, and up to that point, I thought it had been working swimmingly. Drinking and smoking pot were standard operation for cool kids, and I owned it like it was my career.

At the time, I was the lead singer for a Jacksonville-based metal band named AEVA in my spare time, and I was feeling like a real rock star. Boy, was I in for a seriously rude awakening…

One weekend, I left my apartment in Orange Park to go do a 3-day jam session with my guys, and had a great weekend, got way too drunk but I had considered it a success nonetheless. Upon returning home, my bandmates expressed that they wanted to come meet my roommate, an exotic dancer I had been telling them about for a month but they had yet to confirm existed.

As we were all sitting in my living room getting acquainted, there was a knock on my front door. It was my next door neighbor, a guy named Bo in his early 20’s, who was very clearly cut from a criminal cloth. He and I had never had beef, he had even invited me over for a beer once before when he was having a little party.

Bo asked me to come next door so he could “talk to me about something”. The next 4 minutes would change the direction of my entire life, and re-shape the lens through which I saw the world.

Upon sitting down in Bo’s apartment, I asked what he needed to ask me. He shuts the door behind him, and takes a long step across the living room, complete with a hard right hook that knocked me back. Instinctively, I tried to jump up and grab him around the waist, but his buddy that was standing to the right of me proceeded to kick me to the floor.

From where I landed, I could see the hallway to the kitchen, and the 4 other pairs of feet running into the room. These guys beat me within an inch of my life, doing full-on mud-stomps on my back, soccer kicks into my side, they even broke an oversized glass ashtray across my face.

As I was trying to crawl to the door on my hands and knees, someone stomped directly on the base of my spine, making an audible crack, and I screamed louder than any of my metal songs.

My band members heard that scream from next door, and they came running to my rescue, calling the police and an ambulance. Thank God they stayed for that extra 5 minutes, the surgeon told me if I’d have taken another blow to my spine, I’d have likely ended up paralyzed.
In that couple of minutes, these guys caused more lasting physical damage than anything I had experienced. They damaged two of the vertebrae in my back and neck, bruised both kidneys, and caused an abrasion on my spleen that would end up bursting a week later in the hospital.

What I wasn’t expecting was the psychological damage that random act of violence would cause. It was like they had burst my safe little bubble in which I was the center of my own world, and woken me up to reality: I was small and weak in a giant ocean of sharks, and so oblivious to what was going on around me that I blindly walked into a trap and almost died.

It took almost 3 months to recover from the physical damage enough to start getting back to life, during which time I met the woman who would end up being my daughter’s mother, Michelle, but that’s an entirely other traumatic story I’ll save for another time.

Where I had been drinking socially before the attack, I began drinking significantly more afterward, as it helped me not notice the ever-present back and neck pain I now had to live with. But more than that, it kept me from having to face that scared, weak little fish I was hiding from everyone. I was Bobby Brownz, (my friends nickname for me at the time), and nothing could phase me, I was a metal singing, hard-drinking badass… or at least I wanted everyone to think so.

About 3 months after meeting Michelle, she called me from Indiana where she lived and let me know that I was to be a father. I made big decisions over the next few months, I quit doing direct sales, (the sales culture was really grimy and I decided my kid was gonna have a better dad than the one I never had), I cut back my drinking, and for the last 2 months of the pregnancy, I moved up to Indiana to help Michelle.

6 months after my daughter Mackenzi was born, I moved all of us back down to Florida.

When we started living together, Michelle and I rapidly adopted a seriously toxic dynamic, and it became a house divided almost immediately. I stayed in my little studio at the end of the house and watched Kenzi, and her and the other 2
kids kept the rest of the house.

I realized pretty quick that drinking around Michelle was a BAD idea, we just ended up get vicious with each other, and neither of us wanted to expose the kids to that. So without the alcohol doing it’s thing for my back, combined with now working on my feet all the time, the damaged vertebrae started becoming a serious problem.

Well, Michelle received WIC and Medicaid benefits for herself and the 3 kids, and being the biological father of one of them living in the house with them, I was covered by Medicaid as well. I decided I needed to go to pain management.

This was during the pill mill crisis in the South, and I went to a county facility for treatment. Man, if I had known then how devastating that little script of Lortab would end up becoming… it’s unreal. It was a rapid progression of upping my dose, switching me to oxycodone, upping my frequency, then my dose again… and again.

So for the first 3 years of my kids life, I was her primary active parent, a functional addict not realizing what was actually happening in my body, and becoming progressively more withdrawn as the relationship between Michelle and I became seriously dangerous for me. I know now that it was the autism in me that had no idea how to emotionally handle the attitudes and arguments I was constantly a part of, but at the time… I genuinely thought I was finally losing my mind, like, completely.

I began having really dark outbursts in response to Michelle, so dark in fact, that the final straw was when we screamed each other into a manic psychosis, so I put my .410 shotgun in my mouth, cocked it, and had my thumb on the trigger, screaming between my teeth and the barrel, “Is this what you want? You want this?”

I apologize for taking this story that deep into the dark, I realize that kind of explicit imagery could be triggering, but I want to establish just HOW dark things were getting. When Michelle made the decision to take the kids to “visit” the family in Indiana and just never come back, it destroyed me… but she was right to do it.
Things were insane and unsustainable, and when she moved back to Indy, her life and the kids lives improved.

Mine took a SHARP turn downward. When she left, my insurance got canceled, therefore, this 3 year opioid dependency turned into an absolute nightmare.
Naturally without insurance, there was no rehab or any treatment that I could access… I started buying pills off the street. When there were no pills, smoking heroin would keep the monkey off my back. In the endless search for pain pills, I ended up getting involved with some other addicts, and they had the bright idea to get off of the opiates… by making and using meth.

Within 3 months of Michelle leaving with my daughter, me and 4 other people got arrested for manufacture of methamphetamine and sentenced to a minimum mandatory 5-year prison sentence.

So in all reality, the idea had a little merit… we did meth and got clean shortly thereafter, just not the way anybody expected, right?

I didn’t waste my time in prison. I did my own time, I avoided the 3 G’s, (“girls”, gangs, and gambling), and I spent as much time as possible reading, writing, and working out. I tutored the camp’s GED program for 6 months, helping at least 5 guys to get their diploma, as well as helping another friend with his college courses while he was in.

I helped out the other guys as much as I could when it was called for, I discovered just how many grown American men never learned how to read or write, so that was one of my hustles: writing letters or personalized poetry for the other guys to send home to their people. I got more respect in prison for being a considerate and helpful dude than I ever got on the street, it’s kind of amazing to think about.

I was old enough at 33 to understand there was never going to be a better opportunity for me to figure out my dysfunctions and try to get right with God. So I did, I came out of prison in great physical shape, (I had turned working out into a habit to keep my back from torturing me all the time), I mended fences with the whole family, including Michelle, and I had a “head-up”, unstoppable mentality. I had reconnected with my Higher Power, I felt like I really had figured it all out.

The last year of my incarceration was spent in work release in Jacksonville, where I started working for Tijuana Flats as a line cook. By the time that year was up, they had lined me up to become a corporate trainer, sent me for high-volume training at another location, and a month after my release I was sent to St Augustine to open the new location as kitchen manager and team trainer. I was excelling and I was happy to be productive.

 

I’ll fast forward to the cancer, I had spent a month getting clean in rehab before the diagnosis, and Laina was doing the same at her mother’s place in Georgia. About 3 years ago I had a lot of things happen at once, I got diagnosed with stage 3 renal carcinoma in both kidneys and we moved in with my mother for a year to recover from the surgeries. At the same time, my daughter moved back in with me due to her mother having her own struggles with drugs.

The doctors put me on morphine almost immediately when I came in with the severe back pain and they discovered the tumors. I hadn’t told them my history, and by the time I realized what they were doing, the addict in me said, “it’s okay, they’re doctors, it’ll be fine”.

The following year was the most intense relapse and most dangerous year of my life, it was the year that nearly killed me numerous times with the strongest of the street drugs, fentanyl. Laina and I ended up homeless, and had to perform CPR on one another more times than any two people in love should EVER have to, I still shudder when I think of some of the heart-wrenching terror we put each other through just trying to stop feeling the sadness we couldn’t seem to get free from.

We finally saw relief when we each got picked up on possession charges and couldn’t get out of it. After nearly 3 weeks of the worst physical withdrawal I’ve ever experienced, (seems like without most of my renal system, the addiction just broke my body down), I finally started feeling a little better in jail. My daughter had to move back to Indiana, which was heartbreaking to me, and that was the primary thing that snapped me out of it once I was sober. She needs at least ONE parent to figure it out and get it right.

Decisions were reached for both Laina and I, and we have worked together to hold one another accountable and support each other as we started figuring out life after living at the bottom. She has started working in the local sober hangout as a kavatender, and pursuing her modeling aspirations.

I have started trying to figure out a new kind of life, working out in the Florida heat is MUCH harder now, so I’m looking into how to use my mind and my strengths to help others and make the money I need for life. If all goes well, my socials will catch as I improve my content creation and finish my life-coaching certifications, and i just might be able to give my daughter a better teenage and young adult life. I’m in a growth mindset now, always looking for opportunities to help others with their hangups while building my personal brand.

I’m back in good shape again, but I can definitely feel the physical effects of my life’s crazy experiences taking a toll on my body. I figure with only half an operational kidney and no spleen, I need to actually take it a little easier on myself, I’m sure I have quite a lowered life expectancy.

I also feel drawn to try and get more of my story out there and maybe help some people with it, I can’t deny that it feels like I’ve been kept alive for something big, I’m just not sure exactly what it is yet. I’m an excellent communicator, and I know things about life that not every person is privy to… I genuinely feel I can be a powerful voice for personal change, as long as I can figure out how to properly organize my skills into a format that allows me to help others while also paying my bills.

I’m certain it will become more clear as I go along. I intend to keep moving toward my goal of using my experiences to help motivate or inspire others. I have spent a lot of time studying how to effectively change my entire mindset, and after 2 years of sobriety, (one day at a time), I feel like I’m finally secure enough with my own growth that I can help others master their own minds.

In my pursuit of a better life, I’ve taken to content creation as a means of starting an online community of fellow survivors and those who would draw strength from their stories, those who need hope. So if you’re reading this, make sure to come follow me on Instagram and YouTube, I promise to become a shining example of overcoming adversity and succeeding, regardless of station in life.

I have a history of being somewhat tech-savvy, I attended ITT Tech in 1997, for electronics engineering, programming and networking, and while I eventually decided against finishing that particular education, the inclinations are still there.

I’m currently putting together a gallery website called “A Life Like Mine: The Outrageous Life Of One Bobby Joe Hubner”, which is a photographic look back at the last 20 years of my life, complete with stories, wisdoms, and humorous experiences from my life at large.

In addition to my website, Instagram and YouTube endeavors, I’m also looking into various different types of online income, learning as much as I can about them without spending a fortune… I’ve been looking into e-commerce, air bnb, leveraging ai growth infrastructures, life-coaching, freelance copywriting, and I do paid user generated content on the side, such as unboxing videos, reviews, etc. I’m slowly learning about all of these, and dipping my toes into all of it to see what feels the best.

I felt called to help others with my words as a child, and now as an adult, I still feel that way, stronger even. I figure, if I’m running on borrowed time, I need to get it in high gear and start building some sort of lasting thing that I can give to my only child when I finally do kick the bucket.

Somehow, throughout all the madness, I have managed NOT to lose my daughter’s respect, so I owe it to her to show her the potential in her DNA. She has the makings of greatness within her, she just needs a guiding hand to find that potential for herself.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Has it been a smooth road? Absolutely not. Knowing what I now know about my brain though, and having a clear context to put behind all the confusing thoughts and overwhelming, conflicting emotions I’ve dealt with my whole life, I can look back now and see how all that adversity I seemingly put MYSELF through was leading me to the very clear understanding I NOW have about the world and my place within it.

Overcoming my own misconceptions has been by far the most difficult self-improvement. When I was in prison, I understood that I wasn’t going to get rich, so I needed to place my value upon something besides material wealth. I focused all my energy into improving my health, my patience, my education, my spiritual connection, my family….

I thought I was ready for anything then, and I taught myself a great deal of self-discipline, but I found that maintaining that mentality in the outside “World of Plenty” was much more difficult than I had expected. Then when we ended up broke, addicted, and homeless, I basically lost ALL hope in myself, throw in the cancer and I was certain I was going to die, I welcomed it because I was so utterly ashamed of myself. I can’t tell you HOW MIRACULOUS it is that I’m sitting here writing this story now…

I found the answer to my happiness by living in these states of forced, EXTREME minimalism. I discovered that I actually require VERY little to stay alive and smile, and now that my head is clear, I am able to see the larger lesson I’m supposed to be learning: Happiness is found ONLY inside myself. It’s up to me to decide how I want to feel about things, and life is so much easier when you focus on helping others MORE than you focus on income.

I’m not well off financially yet, but for the first time in my life, that’s not my GOAL. I’m so engaged and satisfied with the new way I am processing the world around me, and I now understand that if I focus on things that help my fellow man, I’ll find a lot more fulfillment in what I’m doing. From what I understand, if I just keep moving forward with this intention, the money will work itself out. I’m cool with that.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a little torn on this question, what am I most proud of professionally? Even in the midst of all the craziness of my life, I do actually have quite a few accomplishments in my work life that I’m proud of:

• At 27 years old, I became the top salesperson in the 10- state region for the largest direct sales company in the country, breaking 93-year standing sales records and winning all sorts of awards and recognition as top team leader within the company in 2008.

• I trained as a Corporate Certified Trainer and kitchen manager for Tijuana Flats through my last year of incarceration, and became an excellent leader in the various North Central Florida high-volume kitchens I worked in for them. Upon leaving work release, I was sent to Saint Augustine to train an all new staff in a brand new store, and for about another 3 months after opening, I stayed to ensure quality processes were being observed. I then relocated to one of the highest-volume locations, on the UF campus, to get their kitchen in shape. It was an intense but rewarding experience.

• At 40 years old, I started my own mobile detailing business, OneWash Mobile Detailing, with nothing more than a 5-gallon bucket, a deck brush, and a water hose. I was an immediate celebrity in my area, known for my professional level of work, at lower prices than other detailers in the area. I combined my newfound talent at photography with my ability to write solid, persuasive sales copy, and successfully did all my own marketing, client acquisition, upselling, and closing. Using nothing more than YouTube videos, I taught myself how to properly polish vehicles and professionally install genuine ceramic coats and paint sealants. I designed the look and ethos of the whole brand myself, even through the beginning of a major relapse I kept the business operating at peak proficiency and never let my standard of work drop. I demanded quality over speed, and my clients LOVED that.

• Now that I’m down a spleen, a left kidney and half of a right one, with 2 damaged vertebrae in my back and neck, I’ve gotta get away from the physical work in the Florida sun, it just kills me now. I’m studying into content creation, life coaching, recovery consulting, as well as things like e-commerce and leveraging A.I. growth infrastructures to grow small businesses. I have worked hard at all my professional endeavors, now it’s time I learn to work SMART to make money. I’m always open to opportunity, I’ve come to believe in myself since learning that I’m actually on the spectrum. I realized that I have a unique ability to focus and push for excellence, which is a powerful force in the world if honed and developed properly. My content creation is fun and rewarding, and I feel like I’m getting a chance to share the big life lessons I’ve learned with a world that desperately needs hope and guidance. I can’t wait to see where my professional life is in one year’s time, I have a feeling I’m headed toward my actual calling, whatever that might look like.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
A lot of things make me happy, I took it to heart when I was young and all the older folks kept telling me to slow down, stop and smell the roses, if you don’t enjoy your life it will pass you up…. I grew up in a Christian home, so I learned to appreciate the beauty of creation at a young age, and that has never left me. I ignored it for a while during my darker days, but I welcomed it back once I decided I was done trying to quietly kill myself.

Since surviving all this stuff and reconnecting with my faith, EVERYTHING is beautiful now… I don’t even mind that I’m not financially secure yet, because I know I WILL be, and just knowing that gives me space to appreciate all the little things that are going to help me to help others, if that makes sense.

I get happiness from being alive, from getting the opportunity to interact with other living creatures, human or non-human,(I’m a big animal lover). I love learning and watching the world evolve.

I enjoy fighting against societal expectations of me, by all means I have beaten the statistics.

Looking at the life I’ve lived, nobody would logically expect me to be doing what I’m doing now. I should be dead, back in prison, or still strung out on drugs. I take a strange little satisfaction in knowing that I am, in all reality, an anomaly, and that I have BEATEN the odds so far. God willing, I’ll stay that way: one of many unique voices of experience the world needs to help guide them to self-realization and actualization.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/streetsurvivors_ww
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobby.hubner
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyhubner
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@streetsurvivors_ww
• Yelp: https://m.yelp.com/biz/onewash-mobile-rv-wash-service-st-augustine
• Other: https://linktr.ee/onewashmobiledetail

Image Credits
All of these are shots of mine, with the exception of the watch modeling shot with me wearing my hat. That was taken by my friend Troy at Malibubu Photography (Instagram: @malibubuphotography)