Wolf of Wall Street: Part Deux

Wow. I wanted to get into, a little bit, the amount of time you served? Why did you receive a seemingly small amount while others got quite a few years of prison time, like Victor Wang?

There are three different ways to resolve something like this: one is to go to trial, another is to plead guilty, and the third is to cooperate. Almost everyone involved in my case cooperated, including Victor Wang (also know as the Chinaman). But for whatever reason, I don't know who his sentencing judge was or how the cooperation went.

My sentencing judge and the US Attorney on my case were very clear that they thought I was rehabilitated. If you read the minutes of my sentencing, the US Attorney says, you know, this is a guy who really gets it, he's not going to get in trouble again, he's got a bright future outside of stocks, whatever he's going to do, he's going to be well at, he's a different guy.

And the judge says yeah I know he was honest and truthful but he's still gotta go to jail. He could've given me probation, other people involved in the trial got probation. I think he felt that with the gravity of what I did, that I had to go to jail for 3 – 4 years. But he recommended me for the drug program, knowing you get 18 months off of your sentence.

So between that and time off for good behavior, I only ended up serving 22 months. And I think it was fair in that it was a long time, but it wasn't long enough that it destroyed me. I went in and experienced what it was like to lose my freedom, but it wasn't long enough so that my kids were irreparably harmed. I didn't come out a broken may, went in and I taught myself to write, ya know, I learned a skill that hopefully, I can use for the rest of my life.

Towards the end, when you're being taken up the courthouse steps and Nadine leaves you, do you think that there and then, at that point, had she really had enough or was it because you might have lost your fortune?

Well, listen, I don't know if people call it schools of thought, there are certainly different possibilities that I've struggled with and I'm sure she struggled with but probably not as much because she made the decision to leave.

But part of me said, you know what, here's a woman that married me when I was rich, stuck with me through hell, lived like a queen while we were going through hell, and had every right to leave me when I was addicted to drugs and when that thing happened on the stairs, me holding my child in my arms and kicking Nadine down the stairs.

If she should have left, she should have left then. So she stayed when she should've left and I went and got sober and was living clean and sober and then got indicted with the expectation that I would lose most of my money and go to jail, then she leaves. All of a sudden, oh now you can't take it any more?

It doesn't take too many leaps of logic to figure that certainly an aspect of this had to do with money. But I can't read her mind, that's just one possibility, one school of thought. In my angrier and more bitter days, I would call her all kinds of names and wonder, what kind of woman would leave a man like this after nine years of marriage , right on the courthouse steps.

If you ask her, she'll say, no it had nothing to do with that, at all. I just couldn't take it any more, I was done and this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I couldn't go through that after going through the other stuff all those years.

But you know what, talk is cheap. I'm telling you this from the man's perspective. Again, it took me awhile to come to terms with what had happened, wondering how I was going to forgive her. But then again, she's probably saying, how am I going to forgive this man.

It was a very complicated situation. Today, we get along fine. We have two children together and we coexist peacefully, more than peacefully. We're friends, we celebrated Thanksgiving together. We're still like a family, which is great for the kids, and I happen to like her husband very much, he's a terrific guy, which makes it a lot easier for me.

Have either of the kids ever come to you and asked what happened?

Sure, more my daughter than my son because she's older, she's 14 and he's 12, and also girls are more intelligent than boys – they end up evening out but girls certainly advance quicker. My daughter's very sharp and my son is a simple kid.

He's an amazing athlete, you give him a soccer ball and he goes off and that's that. He doesn't look too deeply into the world yet. My daughter certainly struggles with what happened between her mother and I. And it seems she asks herself the same questions her mother and I had to ask ourselves about the motives for our separation.

She knows how crazy I was and what I was doing and she knows her mother stayed as I was doing all these things and she knows the circumstances under which her mom left. My daughter is a very smart girl.

How has it effected them?

I think that if I had not gotten clean, then of course, they would be deeply damaged. But I think, specifically with my daughter, because I got clean and turned my life around that it is sort of inspiration to see someone do that. I think she's proud of me for that.

You've lived, you've most certainly have lived, I think you said in the book, you lived like ten lives. You probably have right?

Oh yeah. Definitely.

And obviously there are things you regret, as far as hurting other people, but do you regret living the life that you did?

Obviously I regret that people lost money, that's an obvious regret, okay? But outside of that aspect, outside of that, my biggest regret is that a lot of the things I did and places I saw and the activities I participated in, they were muted because of the drugs.

In other words, I can't look back and say, Oh my god, that was so great, because I was high at the time. Everything was always blunted, the colors weren't as bright as they should have been, the memories aren't as clear as they might have been. So when I was scuba diving or flying or seeing the world, things would have been so much better had I been sober.

So that's my biggest regret, I did all these amazing things but was stoned most of the time so I didn't get to enjoy them. All these great dinners in these great restaurants, I fell asleep in every restaurant in the free world, almost drowned in 8 bowls of soup. It got to the point where my ex-wife, as I was about to pass out, she'd put a piece of bread, so I'd hit the bread and not drown. Bread pillows.

It got really good there at the end. I was sleeping on bread.

Nice.

Yeah. That's my regret, but I guess, I also have some regrets about the stuff with the hookers, but again that was tied into the drugs and soon as I stopped with the drugs, I stopped with the hookers.

There are so many levels of madness here. What's up next, what's the next book going to be like?

The second book is different. Not quite as mad. It basically covers, the beginning shows me when I was normal. It shows you how I basically went from being this normal kid to like, imploding, but it doesn't really cover the implosion because I believe that was adequate covered in book one.

There's enough in there for people who didn't read book one so they can get a little flavor of it. It's not really the basis of the book. It's more about the break up of a marriage and falling in love again, I got engaged later on. It's about me dealing with my reality coming crashing down on me.

It's what a lot of the book deals with, cooperating with the government, so it's a bit different. But you're right, the first book is like a wild ride. Which I guess is why it appealed to Hollywood, I'm sure they looked at it like, Jesus, this goes on and on and on, pick your spots. Pick the highlights.

So writing for you now, that's it? That's all you're going to do?

Yeah. I mean, look, the key to success for me, is doing one thing and doing it well. And not to try to do nine things at the same time. Where does writing lead me? Maybe to motivational speaking, which I have done in the past and would love to do. Maybe it leads me to producing some movies or directing some movies. But that is not something I am contemplating today.

I'm not at that point yet, I have to put my head down and pay my dues, write 4 or 5 more books and garner a following. And that doesn't happen overnight. When you roll up your sleeves and do the work, you ultimately achieve all your goals. When you constantly looking for instant gratification, I fall flat on your face.

Motivational speaking I think would be the first natural thing for me. I enjoy doing that. Writing for me is a struggle. It doesn't come easy to me. I think I do it pretty well, but it's not like I pick up my pen and BAM, I write these perfect pieces.

But by the way, that is in some way what gives me joy. That it doesn't come easy. After I finish a really good chapter, I look at it and I go, great, because I know I've worked really hard on it, it doesn't come easy to me so it makes it that much more enjoyable when it's done.

Someone once told me a very great thing about writing, the guy who reviewed me from the London Times, “I hate to write but I love to have written”. I love to have written but I hate to write and I get this amazing joy in having people read what I've written and like it.

And when they don't like it, it hurts me because its a reflection of myself. Fortunately, I haven't had too many people say that, I've had more people bash me but not the book.

I have family in medicine and hear pharmaceuticals nonstop, reading about the shear amount of drugs you ingested on a daily basis, it amazes that you're still alive. I want to show my sister (a pharmacist) the book just so she can look at the quantities.

Yeah it's amazing. The body is amazing because it completely rejuvenated itself. And I think it helped that I was mainly doing pharmaceutical drugs, I would do coke and smoke pot but not heavily. So yeah, it is amazing.

One last question, what happened to your nemesis, Agent Coleman?

He and I are friends, we had dinner not too far from here about 3 weeks ago.

Sounds pretty typical of Jordan Belfort's life.

Pictures provided by Jordan Belfort and Rogers and Cowan