Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - High-Functioning Alcoholism Almost Destroyed Him: Manny’s Road to Sobriety

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Manny grew up in New Orleans surrounded by alcohol, but after watching the damage drinking caused in his own family, he wanted nothing to do with it.That changed later in life.After marriage, business success, cocaine, alcohol, Hurricane Katrina, divorce, depression, day drinking, and eventually drinking four to five bottles of wine a day, Manny found himself isolated, physically broken, and barely able to walk. What started as social drinking became full-blown alcohol addiction.In this episode of the Sober Motivation Podcast, Manny shares his powerful story of addiction, rehab, relapse, recovery, forgiveness, and what it really takes to quit drinking and rebuild your life.We talk about high-functioning alcoholism, losing everything after Katrina, the fear of who you are without alcohol, relapse after years sober, repairing family relationships, and why sobriety has to become more than just not drinking.If you are questioning your drinking, trying to quit alcohol, sober curious, in early recovery, or coming back after a relapse, Manny’s story is a reminder that it is never too late to change.Sober Motivation Mobile App: https://apps.apple.com/app/sober-motivation-app/id6759266291Sober Motivation Website: https://www.sobermotivation.comSupport the Podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivationContact me anytime: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Great to have you back for another episode, Brad here. If you've been living under a rock and haven't heard about the launch of the brand new sober motivation app on the Apple App Store, now you know. Head over to sober motivation.com, download the app today, track your sober days, join the community, connect to daily meetings, journal your thoughts with over 100 prompts to keep you engaged. Join us over at Sober Motivation. This isn't just another Facebook group where you're going to share your wins and what you're

struggling with. The vision behind this is to build real connection because with all the years that I've been doing this, I know that that's what truly makes the difference. Head over to suburbotivation.com, download the app, and I'll see you on the inside. My bottom story happened in Mississippi. I was probably drinking four to five bottles of wine a day. I was constantly isolating. I hardly was talking to anybody. I was really missing an action. Lifehanded Manning more than a share of heartbreak, loss, and adversity. Through it all, he kept moving forward, building businesses, raising a family, and convincing himself he was doing okay.

But behind the scenes, alcohol slowly became the way he cope with life. What followed was a journey through addiction, rehab, relapse, and ultimately learning that recovery isn't just about quitting drinking. It's about finding yourself again. At 66 years old, Manny story is a powerful reminder that no matter where you've been or what you've been through, it's never too late to change the direction of your life. and this is Manny's story on the sober motivation podcast. Welcome back to another episode of the sober motivation podcast today.

We've got Manny with us. Mani, how you doing? How you doing, Brad? Nice to see you. Yeah, you too. Thanks for being willing to jump on here and share your story with all of us. Yes, sir. So what was it like for you growing up?

It was like growing up. So I grew up in New Orleans. And so New Orleans is a unique city. You're surrounded by alcohol and New Orleans. is just a party town, 365. So growing up in New Orleans, I grew up in this city. Normal family, man, I'm one of five siblings. I'm the youngest of five.

My siblings are older than me. We grew up in a neighborhood where my whole family was kind of on the same piece of property, believe it and not even though we're in the city of New Orleans. So my grandfather, my dad's dad, my uncle, and us, we all grew up on the same piece of property, a big piece of property. And so, man, I had a really kind of interesting childhood. My dad, my father never drank. I never saw my father drink.

My mom, she liked her beer. And I don't know if my mom was, say my mom was an alcoholic, Brad, but my mom was a problem drinker. When she drank, she caused trouble in our house. And so as a kid growing up, I despised alcohol. And I wanted nothing to do with drinking or any of that sort of stuff because I was watching just the drama play out in our house. Yeah.

As a young guy, my mom ultimately ended up my mom and dad separating and my mother leaving the house. I was about four or five. That was traumatic for all of us. So that I even added to the fuel to the fire. I was very angry at my mom about all that for many a year. And so I just kind of decided I was taking a different path. So when I was 15 years old, our family really had an upheaval.

My grandmother died and then my dad's mom passed away. And then my father died. We're eating dinner. My dad passed away while we're eating dinner. And then his dad died. So within 15 months, we lost three big pillars of our family. And our family just kind of went haywire for a while. And my mom, of course, suffered through all this.

And my mom, her drinking continued. So it really became a problem for as a family, right, when my mother's drinking. I never really drank as a kid in high school. I probably drank like any other high school kid drank. But I was never an alcohol kind of guy, didn't smoke pot. I mean, I probably dabbled. My friends like pot. I just didn't like it.

And I went to college, marched in drumming bugle core, and so I was very committed to drumcore, which is a very organized and very athletic sort of environment in the summers. So I was always kind of the kid that really didn't drink and didn't do drugs, right? Even in college? Even in college. For me, school was work, doing a day. Work, go to school, then come back and go to work. So I went to the University of New Orleans.

and it's a local college. So you live at home and you go to school and you come back and do your job. And so I always had a full schedule. And I just wasn't a drinking or a drug kind of guy. That stuff really didn't start until later in life, actually. So I was a late bloomer to the party. Yeah. A lot of stuff you shared there.

Thanks for sharing that too, by the way. What do you notice? So sort of when you grow up, it's an interesting story. I mean, one I've heard a lot, right? family member, somebody's struggling with drinking. So you see the effects and you say, well, I want nothing to do with that. Or I think people further down the road say, well, it'll be different for me, right? I mean, I'll, I'll drink, but I won't let it get to that point too. Right. I don't think anybody starts out thinking, I just want this thing to derail my life.

I don't think any of us start there. But you see that growing up when your parents separate, where do you go to live? I mean, five, you're one of five. Do all of you go and live with one of your parents? Well, it's interesting because my, so it's, I think my parents fought as hard as they loved. And we always saw that in our, with my parents, right? So my dad allowed my mom to come back home and she came back and then they worked things out. And those last years of my dad's life after he and my mom kind of got their marriage back together, things kind of calm down, right? When you have five kids running around a house, and I'm the youngest of them, and my sister was, my oldest sister was 16 years older than me.

So we had a big span in our family, right? Things kind of calmed down. My siblings started moving out and getting married, and my mom and dad started to have this really kind of little life where things were not so crazy. And of course, my father passed and my mom lost her pillar, right? Her rock, as she would say. And so she kind of just had a hard time balancing her life back to that. But my mother and I end up moving from that, from New Orleans, into a suburb, a bedroom community.

And then so I was with my mom, gosh, most of my, all the way through college. My mom and I kind of lived together. So at some point, she really stopped the drinking totally. And my mother became a whole different woman after the fact. And there was a lot of forgiveness on my side with my mom. And it's odd, bread, because at some point I stopped calling my mother, mom and started calling a Joyce. And we kind of got on a very personal well, but I had to forgive my mom. Or I'd have lost the best years in my mother's life. And that's difficult for kids who have parents

that drink. And a lot of alcoholics and addicts like myself, our children suffer from that. And there's always that amends you trying to make with your kids. A strain in these families is just a terrible, terrible thing, as you well know. I'm sure you hear the stories all the time, right? So I chose, without even being aware of why I was doing it. I chose to forgive my mom and just kind of get on with life and enjoy the last 20 years of life, which were wonderful. It was a great ride. But no, we got back together.

She moved back in, and then my mom and dad put their stuff back together for a minute. Yeah, yeah, good, good. Thanks for sharing that too. I think the point you make there is so true, right? The kids growing up and parents struggling with addiction of problem drinking, in one way or another too, right, has a big impact. I mean, a lot of people seem to share too that one way or another that maybe motivated them too to maybe change their ways.

Where did things go for you after college? After college, I settled in New Orleans and got a job and had a long-term girlfriend. And then along the way, an elevated door opened one day. I was in a building. I sold computers to court reporters of all things. That was my first real job. and this really beautiful woman gets out the elevator,

and I introduced myself, and she just basically tells me she wants nothing to do with me. Well, oddly enough, we have two kids together now. So at 26, I got married, and we had our first child in May of 1987. And so we settled in New Orleans, and we had another baby, Bailey. And so we have Casey and Bailey, and my wife and I had a 20-year marriage. marriage. And during that period, my wife kind of was in a different little bit of a fast crowd. It was the 80s. She's a wonderful woman. So, but they kind of lived a different little lifestyle. So I started kind of drinking and then drugs came into my life at 29 years old. It was the first

time I did cocaine. And I was so against all that, Brad. And then just so happened that a particular a friend of my wife's had it one day. And I was like, man, I want to try that. I'm so against this, but I'm going to give it a shot. And when I put that drug in my body, brother, I saw Jesus. Okay. And I fell in love with cocaine. It was just, it resonated with me like there was no tomorrow. All the things that I was always responsible from, I've always been self-employed for the most part of my life, always ran a company and always had employees and customers. And when I did that, All that went away, and I was in this whole different zone. So at 29 is the first time I really did any hard drug.

And unfortunately, that stayed with me for a while. It took me a minute to get rid of that part of my life. When did you really start drinking? Like, was it around this time, too, of when drinking sort of crept in? I mean, it's always interesting looking back. I think at most people's stories, it's like a slow progression. Not everybody, but a lot of stories, it's a slow progression where you open up the door and you maybe lean on drinking a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

Yes. And as time goes, right, not anything that necessarily happens in 20 days or 30 days. But so in this span here, after college to say 30, you find yourself kind of lean into drinking. But is it problematic? Are you seeing red flags or no? No. No. So we, my kids' mom and I, we were social drinkers.

We never, there was no problem with alcohol in our house. Like we never, we were employed. We ran companies. She was self-employed. She had her own little thing going on. And we did, we did well. In fact, we did extremely well financially for the last years of our marriage. But drinking never dominated our day.

We were drinkers at night, but not every night. We were martini people. We loved a vodka martini in the end of the day, right? And we were recreational drug users. I did more than she did because my wife made a decision. that she wasn't going to do that any longer. And I made a decision that I was going to continue to do that, right? And so we had, I was earning a lot of money at the time and with cash comes freedom.

And you get to be quite narcissistic when you're balling with a lot of money. And so I just had made the decision that you could stop, but I'm not. And then I lived a secret life kind of behind my wife's back. None of this is going to be a surprise to anyone that sees this that knows me on my kids. They know this story, right? That led to a lot of problems in our marriage. Is this different than the way you grew up? Like, did you grow up with a lot?

Yes. Yes. No, totally different. My mom was a little bit of a wildcat, but they never had enough money to have the luxury or leisure of freedom that I had. So when you're doing extremely well, you get in situations, money can buy you out of bad situations, right? And so I really kind of used that sort of a lot, that, that leverage I had to be able to kind of live the life.

I wanted to live outside of my four walls of my house. Yet my wife was maintaining our family, right? But I was, I was not being a good father or being a good husband at that time. Yeah. And it ultimately caught up with us. Yeah. And then Katrina hit New Orleans. And then when Katrina hit New Orleans, everything shifted.

We lost our house. We lost the business. We lost everything. And then we ultimately ended up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We were like a lot of people in New Orleans. Our neighborhood was devastated. Our house was destroyed. So we had to go find somewhere else to live.

So oddly enough, we ended up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Yeah. When was that? What year? So 2005, August. So it was a really, it was a bad time. We were struggling with the business for a while. We had a downturn in our business.

So we were struggling with that. And my best friend in the world, my brother died suddenly of a heart attack. And so one month before Katrina hit New Orleans, my brother passed away. He was in Montana and had a massive heart attack and died. And then Katrina hit. And then we moved to South Carolina. And so for me, man, I was trying to deal with the death of my brother. and then the devastation of my city and my home and my drug and then trying to hold a marriage

together that was really on rocks before the hurricane hit, right? Yeah. We ultimately separated and I stayed in South Carolina and then my wife moved back home to New Orleans and then my alcohol use and drug addiction picked up significantly. Yeah. You mentioned something there too that kind of stood out to me as you're trying to deal with another death and before in life, you've had a lot. When you see trying to deal with, I mean, are you going to a therapist,

are you seeing a counselor or something? Or like, how are you working? It's interesting because while we were still, well, my wife and I was still in South Carolina, I was never sick, Brad. Like, I was a guy that went up, got up every day and went to work. I was not a sick guy. I mean, I could have come to times on one hand that I had to float in my entire life. And so I went through this period where I didn't want to get out of bed.

I just was totally just isolating, not from drinking or drugs. I just was totally devastated. And then we went to urgent care, for lack of better term, to kind of see what was going on with me physically. And I was diagnosed in severe depression, right? And at that point, I went on meds and tried to kind of medicate myself back into being in some sort of functional state. But I never went to therapy.

It wasn't to later in life that I embraced therapy. and that was years later, right, that I decided to go to a therapist and try to start working through these problems. But I was still drinking and I was still drugging. The drinking became the predominant drug of choice at that time. Outhaul became my drug of choice. Yeah. And, yeah. Yeah, I just feel like I hear a lot too on the podcast too.

Like these big traumatic events happened for people. And I think it was, I don't know if it's right, but it's. seem like it's so common for people just to pick up and move forward. Yes. Like these things happen. And it's like, were there any support or anything? And it's like, no, I just sort of tied up my work boots and went back after it the next day. I think things have hopefully shifted now where people might feel more comfortable of getting

support or in one way or another. But it seems like when I hear stuff from like the 80s, 70s, 80s, it's just like the next day. Yeah. I think it's the culture we grew up. in, I grew up in the 70s, so I was a teenager in the 70s, and then in 80s, Reagan comes along, and we all become yuppies, and we just bolted up, and we ended up baby boomers. So we had that, still had that World War II generation influence in our life, my dad, my mom of that generation. So you had a real strong work ethic, and like, the world is not going to fuck with me. I'm going

to take it by the ass and drive it all the way to the end, which is good and bad, because you had no room to grieve or you didn't accept those things, right? Men didn't say they were weak. Alan Alder on MASH is the first guy that probably became some soft guy that men said, I'm going to be like that a little bit, right? It's cool to show your emotions. But prior to that, you just, yeah, you bolt it, you put on your pants the next day and you went back to work. Thank God, you know, nowadays, we are open to discuss these things out loud. and not worry about the consequences. There's a tad more freedom with folks now, you know, Brad, where you do a podcast like this and

you just, you talk to truth. That's a lot to do with staying sober, too, of course, right? Acceptance and admission and amends and all these things we do, your inventories, all these things we do to get through today on a sober footing, right? Yeah. Yeah, I couldn't imagine a show like this or like a lot of shows in the 80s, right? But I think of what kind of where we're getting at here, too. And what I feel like the trend I pick up on in a lot of stories is these things tend to catch up with us later down the line.

If we don't grieve and maybe go through the process of things of just like, hey, next up. It's not really maybe resolved if, you know, not that things ever kind of get resolved, but maybe the feelings and the emotions behind it. I think it has a lot to do with why we self-destruct too. right so but think a lot of us suffer from imposter syndrome where we start being sober and you want everything to be right and you want people to recognize you for being this new sober person and you want to see yourself in a mirror as this person and you got a job and you're not drinking and you're doing your meetings and you're doing all that but deep down inside there's sort of a feeling that you're just gaming yourself and gaming the whole deal right

And so, and ultimately, I think it's, you know, imposter syndrome, right? Sometimes, and I was telling someone this one time, until of recent, I mean of recent, right? I almost felt like I was in a movie theater and I was watching my life on a projector, on a film, on a screen. And I wasn't in my life. It was just kind of going along and I was just not partaking in my life. And as I shared with you before, earlier before we started filming this, I had a relapse recently, which really caught me by surprise. But I know exactly why it happened. Okay.

I really kind of thought that I had it going on and I could manage this and get through it. But, you know, truly it has taught me a great lesson, actually, this recent, right? Yeah. So back up a little bit here, though. Yeah. We'll get there, Manny. I'm just thinking, too, back up to where you're leaning into more into drugs and you're drinking, and that's kind of always the constant thing there.

Where, like, at that point, you're making the move to Myrtle Beach. What does that look like for you? I mean, you're doing, you got to start over with business and everything, too. You bring the family there. Like, how does that look? So Myrtle Beach was interesting. We were lucky because of the financial situation we had really leading into. Katrina, we had bought most things cash and our stuff was all insured, right? So I had done some

projects right prior to the hurricane that there were large payouts coming with very trusted customers. So I knew that that money was coming, right? So I had the abilities when I first got the Myrtle Beach to stop working. I really took a time out, right? My daughter was in eighth grade, my daughter Bailey. I wanted to be part of their life because when you're building a company and you're working around this whole state of Louisiana, doing remote sort of projects, you're not home a lot. And I was really kind of missing my youngest one's life. My oldest daughter had started the University of South Carolina, which was about an hour and a half away. So that's kind of why we ended up in Myrtle Beach. We wanted to get

close to her after the devastation of Katrina. My brother dies. We get hit with a hurricane. We just wanted to be close to my daughter away at school. So that's why my wife, and I ended up in Myrtle Beach. I really took a time out. The drug stopped. You know, we were kind of doing some things that we were drinking more than anything. We were living a beach life. I had a scooter and a golf cart. That was how I got around, you know, in Myrtle Beach. So Myrtle Beach, the first year there really was probably one of the best years of our marriage. and the best year for me as a dad with my daughter Bailey and my daughter Casey, right, who was at college. I just, I dove in and I wanted to be just part and present with my daughter's life, and I was.

And so Myrtle Beach, the first year was really, was a great experience, but like all things, we hadn't dealt with stuff that had happened before the hurricane. And ultimately, those things started bubbling back up to the surface, right? because you can only live, like the Truman story, right? You could only live it so long before. Realities of things that you hadn't reconciled are now starting to stack up and coming back up again. So it ultimately led to the separation, my wife and I separation and an ultimate divorce, right? So Myrtle Beach was exciting, right?

You leave New Orleans and you move to a beach and we're living on the beach in a beach house and taking any Atlantic Ocean. So every day was a fun day, actually, when we first. first got there, Brad. Yeah. And a lot, but you're finding yourself drinking. I mean, up into this point, are you feeling any certain way about the drinking? Like, is it, are you thinking, hey, this is getting in the way of anything?

No. Or I don't feel good about it. Or it's like, you're figuring it out pretty good. I'm figuring it out pretty good. Living on a beach, it's a beach life. Yeah. Again, our normal pattern, right? We, during the day, would take care of our daughter.

And I was dabbling in business still in New Orleans. So I did have things going on still here. My wife didn't work. So she was home all day. So she was with my daughter, I'm going to the gym and doing those things that she had the leisure of doing. I was starting to get active back and work again. So our drinking would be five o'clock, six o'clock in the afternoon where you just, the day's over. And we didn't get drunk every night, but we probably drank every night from what I can remember, right?

But still at that moment, I'm not, I don't consider myself an alcoholic at that time at all. that if someone had labeled me that, I'd have probably told them to go F themselves. Because that's the last thing I saw myself as, as an alcoholic. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of people too who my guess is anyway, we'll probably listen to this episode and where you're describing you were at then. They might be at now. And just like maybe you thought then and they think now, never get to the next level.

Like, this will be it. nothing, it's all good like this is okay. Everybody's doing it, right? You're talking about Myrtle Beach and the beach and all of that, right? So it's probably barely common at that time for other people to be leaning into drinking and it not getting out of hand or out of control. Myrtle, Katrina either made you or broke you, right? It was that simple. People like our friends that were in marriages and a lot of even just friends that we were not so close with, but just distant friends, put people you talk to, their marriage is either got extremely tight or totally done. There was no middle ground, right? Because it was devastating. And yeah, I think that a

lot of people have PTSD from Katrina. A lot of people manage that PTSD with alcohol and drugs. And New Orleans is probably still unwrapping some of that even to this day. We're still suffering from that. It's Katrina was in 2005. It's a long time ago. but at the end of the day, this city is still suffering from the after effects of that with people emotionally. No two ways about it. Yeah, for sure. So where do you go?

You and your wife there separate, divorce? Do you stay in My life from then? I kind of went on tour. So I stayed in Myrtle Beach. My wife went back to New Orleans. My daughter went with my youngest child, went with my wife. And then my youngest daughter wanted to come back and live. with me. And man, I was a train wreck. I was really kind of devastated over the breakup of that

marriage, although I was an active hand in ending it. But I was really devastated with the loss of my family. And I was managing it with alcohol and up in Myrtle Beach by myself in the beach house. And my youngest starter came back. She's such a trooper man. She wanted to be with her dad. And because we're very tight. We're very, very close. So she didn't want me to to be alone and she wanted to be back there because it was a better place than New Orleans. New Orleans after Katrina was not a real good place to be, Brad. And so we tried it. And she came back and I failed. I couldn't pull it off, right? I couldn't, I couldn't, I just couldn't handle it. Couldn't quit drinking or were there? No, no, I was still drinking. But did you want to quit? Did you,

did you connect the dots that if I was getting in the way of this? No, I wanted, I wanted, I wanted my daughter with me, but I wanted my life still. I was emotionally a wreck and didn't know how to fix all this. And now I had my daughter back with me. She's at this point of sophomore in high school. And we were dealing with stuff like my dad's single and he's living in a beach house and her friends. The parents are uncomfortable with the girls coming over and hanging out and spending the night with my daughter. She was facing these sorts of hurdles.

And her mom's not there. And my wife's not there. So we really, she and I struggled with it. And it took a toll on our relationship. Bailey and I, my youngest child and I's relationship. And ultimately, I sent her home. And after that, my life really kind of spun out of control for a little while. And then I ended up leaving Myrtle Beach and kind of moving all in my life, right?

That was, that was the end of Myrtle Beach was not good. It was not a good period of my life. Yeah. Did you have friends and stuff you hung out with there? just sort of a solo. Yeah. So, Brad, it just is like, people from New Orleans are everywhere now, right?

So, you know, red beans and rice, gumbo, jazz, the New Orleans Saints, we're everywhere. We're in your hometown, buddy, because after Katrina, we scatter. So now, like, our area codes is the 504,

right? So that's kind of just the New Orleans thing. We say, hey, I'm from the 504, right? Because this is a small, big city. And, man, people here, you say what school you go to, it's not college, it's high school. So you're all pedigreeed by the high school you go to in New Orleans, sort of.

So we ended up everywhere. That said, we found friends in Myrtle Beach that were from New Orleans. And so I ended up having this guy named Richard. Actually, I finally remembered his name in this interview. Thank you. He and I, we met him at a concert. And my wife and I met him at a concert. And then he ended up hanging out with me.

And I had friends in Myrtle Beach that I had made. just from hanging out around the city. So I did have a social group. Interestingly enough, the folks that I hung out with, they drank, but they didn't do drugs. They weren't of that crowd, right? I was the only one that was probably in that group that was living really kind of a whole other life behind the curtain.

So, yeah, I had some friends there. I made a community. Yeah. How are you feeling about yourself, too, as Myrtle Beach seems to be unraveling here and with your daughter, like you're kind of waking up. Yeah. Not good. You know, I had a conversation with my daughter of recent, and I said to her,

it's sort of like when we're the thermos, right, old school thermos is when we were kids that had the glass on the inside. I really looked good from the outside, but if you shook me, I was broken glass on the inside. So I was really just kind of gaming it and moving through the world, but I was shattered on the inside. And my family's gone, my daughter's gone, my wife's gone. my life in New Orleans is gone. My brother's dead. My mom is old. My family's in New Orleans, my siblings. And at this time, my sister, one of my sisters got cancer. So we're dealing with one of our other siblings that's dying. So that's going on. And those years were difficult. I ended up leaving Myrtle Beach and going in New York and hanging out with a friend of mine that I knew

from many years before. And so I was in Manhattan for a while. And so like I said, I kind of went on tour. I had the job I had because of my experience in the gaming business, right? My skill set was portable. As long as I answered my phone and had a laptop and an internet connect, even back then, nobody gave a rat's ass where I was. My performance level, I was a highly functioning alcoholic, right?

High level. And as long as I've showed. up and closed deals and did trades and transactions and merger acquisition, that's, nobody cares. They just really don't care, right? It's the end result of your effort that they care about. And I wasn't diminished at that point in like as an alcoholic, right? Like I wasn't isolating, not answering my phone, any of that. None of that was going on, right? But I was actively in deeper, getting deeper and deeper into drinking. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting to me, bring up that high functioning alcoholism.

I hear a lot of people mention it. That really gets some people excited, right? Like, they're just like, hey, there's no such thing. And hey, it's everybody's story. Everybody's got their own experience. It's not from where I sit, it's not for me to say what, what this is or what that is. But you were able to keep all these other areas of your life together, which I feel like is a relatable story for so many people.

You're able to achieve. You're able to like make things work out. But there always seems to be. with people that might, you know, speak like this. Quitting the drinking with the same techniques as doing everything else. Like they have a really hard time, if not an impossible time, applying those same strategies to quitting drinking. Yeah, Brad, you have to be, look, man, this is not braggadocious, right?

You have to be a significantly, a significant human being who has the abilities to achieve to maintain that edge and still be living that life. Now, you're slowly going down to hill, my friend. Because in the midst of all this, I end up in Chicago, got an opportunity, show up in Chicago, start a private bank for the gaming business because Illinois legalized video poker and slots in bars and pubs at the time. And so I got partnered up with a guy in Chicago by a investment bank, a friend of mine that I knew through the gaming industry. I'm moved to Chicago. I don't know anybody, right? And we open a business.

We raise $1.5 million of runway cash. We get a $200 million credit facility from a private equity firm in New Orleans. So the whole time I'm doing this from New York, excuse me, the whole time this is going on, I'm still drinking. My best friend in the world, well, one of my best friends in the world still to this day. He likes to drink. I'm in Chicago. We're running this upstart private equity kind of specialty lending fund in a very racy industry

called gambling. And the whole time, our businesses take people out to launch, go drink, go out at night, go drink, go hang out. So drinking was just part of my life back then. And I had to be able to soldier up. So it was a toolkit I had to have, right? Like, you had to drink to hang out with these people. And I never even considered quitting drinking back then. That wasn't even in my mind. Like, I like doing it. I have fun. And no, I'm not going to stop doing this. That went on for three years in Chicago, by the way. Three years, yeah. And how old are you at this point just for like a rest of time? I turned 50 in Chicago. The Saints won the Super Bowl. So I was in, I'm a Saints fan.

So there is, I'm not a football fan. I'm a Saints fan. So the Saints won a Super Bowl. I was hanging out with people who in Chicago from New Orleans. We had our own bar that we adopted, it became a Saints bar. So the whole season when the Saints went to the Super Bowl, this 2009, I turned 50 in January of 2010. And so I'm 49, 50, 51 years old, 52 years old when I'm in Chicago. And so I'm not young, but I'm not old, right? And I'm living downtown Chicago and high-rise building. It's a bucket.

I'm living a bucket-less life at that time, right? Yeah. So up until 50, had you thought of quitting yet of like, hey, this is a problem? No, no. I stopped doing so much cocaine. I pretty much stopped doing cocaine, right? I sporadically did, I dabbled, just had an opportunity a couple of times when I was in Chicago, and it just happened to be around, and I took advantage of it.

But, man, like, that didn't happen up there, right? But I never thought about, I knew I couldn't do that, right? Because you get lost for a couple of days when you do that. But the drinking aspect of it, I really didn't think about stop drinking. and I enjoy drinking. Yeah. Every relationship I had when a woman

was revolved around drinking, right? My girlfriend drank. So why would I stop that? I mean, it was just part of my DNA. Who, like, who were you without the drinking? I mean, did you even have a second? I don't know.

That's a great question. And that's a conundrum because I face that moment, actually, years when I get back to, I leave Chicago, I'll come back to New Orleans. I reestablish myself here. I'm still drinking.

Right. Yeah. And I ultimately, it's part of my story. I ultimately had, I got remarried. And there was a moment that I'm really kind of leaping here, but to answer you question, there was a moment that I decided I wanted to stop drinking, right? Because it was getting out of hand. And I had someone explained to me in a medical setting, a nurse practitioner, like, what would

happen if I stopped drinking? Suddenly, I would get, you could have a. seizure, you could die, you've got to go to rehab, you just can't stop drinking. And my man, the whole time I'm thinking, well, the guys that I work for, they don't care that I drink. And if I stop drinking, they're not going to stop drinking. Who am I going to be if that's not part of who I am? So I faced that question, and I chose to not reconcile with it. So I chose to continue to be this guy who drank. Yeah. And it kind of hits home, too. I mean, I think that I kind of have this idea.

I don't know if it's relatable to anybody, but I think we convince ourselves that there's a huge fear of quitting drinking. I don't think that's really it. I think the fear is like answering that million dollar question of who are we without it? When you look back at your story, you know, this isn't part of your life, you know, until after college. And I'm only guessing then, but you probably weren't thinking, oh my God, if I quit drinking, like, who am I going to be? It probably didn't cross your mind. And then something along people's journey switches.

There's this deep-seated fear of who will I be without it? Will people like me? What will they think? It seems to happen. I don't even think we could put sort of a time on it. But it is like there's something that happens that it's like without alcohol, like life is meaningless. The joy is gone.

The excitement. I won't have fun anymore. We believe all of these things that I think on the other side. Things do change, but I hear people say all the time, none of it really came true. But I think big alcohol does a good job. I mean, they blast us day and night with the joy and the good-looking people and all of the fun and the movies and the music and the commercials and the billboards and the vacations and it all looks so great, but it's just not the story for everybody.

Brad, you just touched on something very interesting because at this moment in my life, I don't, I don't want to drink anymore. I like the person I am now. I like my life without alcohol. That's a decision I made not recently. I was getting into that decision point, but now it is definitely where I live, right? That is my life now.

I don't want that in my life. But man, you know, when I hit my bottom story and then I went to rehab, my first rehab and I got sober, if someone would have played the film forward for me about how much my life was going to change without alcohol in it and how my phone was never going to ring anymore

and how, you know, my girlfriends were going to go away. And I had to watch every relationship in my life that was going to be involving me with someone else. I mean, I think I would, I don't know that I would have chosen sobriety because everything does change. and you need to be so resolute spiritually and foundationally in your decision that you make that decision that that's okay I'm willing to pay that price to be the guy I am today but you have to make those sacrifices because your life is does change and it is different man whole community

shifts when you live in a town like New Orleans where now a lot of people are choosing sobriety nowadays just in general right I mean that's just the stats now now. But I still live in a city where, you know, TGIF is every day. And I can walk out the front door of my building where I live and I can walk left or right. And I promise you, my friend, I'm going to hit five or six bars within four blocks of here. So it is part of what the thread of my city. But I choose no longer to have to like, I don't miss that anymore. Right. But it takes a while for people to get around to that because your life is going to change. And you are going to have to make hard, hard decisions about who's in and who's out and

who you vote off the island. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good point. And I think that's a road that a lot of people have to travel. I just think back to when I made the jump, I really reflected on what was real. Like if all of these people are not willing to be a part of my life now that I don't drink and

they're not willing to flex or do something different, like go for a coffee or whatever it was. I mean, I could go on and on with that. Like how important were these relationships? Was all of this built on quicksand or a facade? Like, was it real? And when I got more comfortable, I didn't learn any of this on day one. But when I got more comfortable and finally feel like I got to see it for what it was, I was so just uncomfortable in the world.

alcohol just rounded the rock a little bit. Right. But then you get the dependency and you get the tolerance and you lean on it more and more and more. And it kind of becomes the answer without us even realizing it for everything, stress, hard day, meeting people, meeting girls. That was a huge problem I had. But I was like, what if I just try to do things without it? Like, isn't that like going to be the thing other than it kind of.

it kind of being the thing for everything, because that's what it became for me is like the doorway to everything. And I have found out over the years, like for me, I have, I have all of those skills now that I once used alcohol to sort of enhance or to sort of make me more comfortable. I feel like if I would have still been leaning on alcohol, and I feel like for most of us, when we lean on alcohol, we prevent our. ourselves from learning how to be uncomfortable, build some resilience, kind of fall on our face sometimes. Things don't always work out, but maybe those, you know, learning opportunities.

But it is a really good point. If somebody came to you and was like, hey, you're going to quit drinking and, you know, X, Y, Z and everything else is going to change. Yeah, that can feel like, wow, I'll pass. Thank you. Right. Yeah. Right. Like, okay, I'm out. See you. Right. You touched on that and that is so hard to get to that moment where you just kind of say, well, you know, maybe you're just really not important to be in my life. And, and, you know, but that takes a lot of, that takes a lot of courage, my man. That's a lot of learning who you are to be able to just say, that's okay, right? But, you know, part of my experience of getting sober has been learning to be comfortable to be uncomfortable.

Yeah. Right. Just learning to be comfortable or be uncomfortable. And then learn how to unlearn and relearn. And I've taken on so many new things about learning because to me, I know the why. I know what. I know what's going to happen if I drink. I know what my world's going to look like.

And now I'm really focusing on what's the why. Like, why does that happen? Right. What's going on in between my ears in this real estate up here that I have to just watch. every moment of it, but what causes this to happen? So on the educational side of trying to figure this all out. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it sounds like what you're saying there too is kind of the point that I talk about

a lot of the podcast is, this really ain't about the drinking. No. This is about everything else that is going on. Like you mentioned in between our ears and how, I think for me anyway, how I reacted to the world. The story I told myself, how I grew up, and the way I reacted to the way I reacted to the the world, things just felt more comfortable with alcohol and then you get into drugs, too. I did a lot of drugs too, and you get into the rhythm in the mix and things make a whole lot of sense. I wanted to,

you kind of hinted on it there a little bit, too, about sort of the rock bottom story before your first rehab stay. Walk us through that a little bit. Well, I got rematch. So COVID hit New Orleans. When I got back from Chicago, I decided that I didn't want to buy a house. So I bought a 60-foot motor yacht. Okay. I actually lived on a beautiful California motor yacht for three years. I started not feeling really well. And then ultimately, my, my sibling owns some rental properties. And I moved into a house off the boat and then ultimately sold the boat.

Okay. So it's like every story. And so I started feeling bad. And I caught COVID and I had long COVID. And then so my next door neighbor, Shannon, she started taking care of me when I had COVID, right? And so Shannon and I became really good friends. And then I, they ultimately get diagnosed with having a tumor in my bladder. And so I end up, Shannon and I got really close and we ended up getting married. So I married my next door neighbor. And we spent COVID together, right? And,

man, we battled through it. We battled through COVID together. And she stuck with me through my chemo and the whole bit, man, just a trooper, right? And then, and so, and so, we, and so. And so. And so, we battle through, we're So we ended up buying a beautiful home together. And we get married. We buy a beautiful home together. And I'm now still in a gaming space. And I'm working remote 100% now from my office space. And it started getting bad.

Like I was day drinking. That's when I really started day drinking, right? I would wake up and I needed to get a drink because I would feel the effects of not having alcohol. I'd start getting withdrawal effects pretty quickly. What do you drink at this time? Huh? What do you drink? drinking at this time. Vodka? Vodka and wine. Yeah. Drink of choice is wine. Vodka is,

it jumps into the dance. So vodka and wine. And doing the day I was drinking wine and I would go buy some vodka, whatever, because the wine just wasn't getting me there and I was getting withdrawals. So ultimately, that destroys Shannon and I's marriage, right? So she very nicely and then unnically asked me to move out. And so I did. And again, I'm still working, right? So the guys that I worked for, it was a family-owned business, and we were buying and selling casinos around the state of Louisiana. And they didn't really care where I was working from, long as I was in touch with them. So I moved to Mississippi and rented an Airbnb for two months on the Gulf coast of Mississippi. So I kind of went back to the beach, right? And my bottom story happened in

Mississippi. I was probably drinking four to five bottles of wine a day. I was constantly isolating I hardly was talking to anybody. I was really missing an action. I missed a big meeting that I was supposed to attend. That got me fired, really. I was never technically fired, but we just stopped talking to each other. I stopped calling work. They stopped talking to me.

And so I guess I was fired. I didn't get paid anymore. But I had money. And so I was able to kind of just grin and bear it. And so I really hit my bottom in Mississippi. It was really bad. It went on for two months. And I made my way to a friend's house in New Orleans that I had known for years.

And she truly loved me. She truly loved me. And so I knocked on the door. And then I went in her house. And then I was laying on her bed. And she actually whacked me in the ass and told me that she was taking me to rehab. But my bottom story took about two, two and a half months for me to get from being married, going through a divorce, moving out.

out to house, leaving New Orleans, going to Mississippi, and then ultimately ended up in my first rehab. It was bad. I had to seek alcohol all the time. I knew with withdrawals what felt like because I had a taste of withdrawals, what I had my surgery when they removed my tumor. I had to stop drinking for post-op. And I immediately felt withdrawals of not having alcohol in my body. So I had to get treated with phenobarbital and atavann to calm me down. So I could actually, actually have the surgery. And so I didn't want to feel that again. So I just kept drinking. Ended up for a week in a little hotel room on some seedy part of New Orleans after I left Mississippi, went there for a week and then ultimately ended up at my friend's house because I had

reached my end. I really just couldn't go anymore. I hardly could walk to tell you the truth. So I went from being a highly functioned alcoholic to a guy living in a hotel room to somebody who could hardly walk and then made my way into rehab, my first rehab in New Orleans. So it took me about 10 days to detox, actually. It was a medical detox. I had to go to the hospital. And then ended up in the detox unit of the rehab for seven days. And then did a 28-day program and came out and did. and did well, actually. I had three years of sobriety

when I got out of my first rehab. You didn't drink for three years after that? 90-day, 90-90-A. Got it, had a sponsor, changed my sponsor, got my current sponsor, who's still my sponsor today. He walked me through

and joined a home group, was chaired meetings, did the whole bit, Brad, and just really stuck with it for three years, and then I had a relapse. What, before we get it, into that. What do you learn about yourself in three years in those three years?

That I was mean, that I was a sober drunk, that I was agitated, that I couldn't get along with Shannon because we got back together. She actually, we tried to put our marriage back together. I was terribly mean to her. I got now went back to work and I had a good job. It wasn't with the same guys, but I was back in the same business space, but I was running a company. I had a lot of responsibilities. I was running a slot machine company. I was running restaurants. I was running bars. We had a bed and breakfast. He had 45 round properties. I took over his business and was running his whole business. It kept me busy. But man, I was constantly one, one, you know, thought from drinking again. Like I didn't, I was sober, brother, but I didn't see myself mentally

as being sober. I just had to stay sober because I remember how bad it was. my bottom story. So the memory of how bad that was kept me sober, not my desire to be sober, right? You think so there's like a difference there or there was at least for you of huge. Tremendous difference. 100%. Like I don't need to remember my bottom story today to stay sober. I do not, right? I, I, I, why, and you know, God, I don't know, you know, it just switch went off and we all have that moment right like you can't beat sobriety into somebody's head you just can't when was it that you that you drank again three years later i had a slight

relapse when i was working for this other company i had i had a relapse that yeah you know it was a relapse man and then i went i went and lived with a friend for a while i was still i was still working for the same company and then she drank it was like a friend of mine and I went and stayed with her and I thought maybe I could manage her drinking and me not drinking. But the truth that a matter is, it's a very cliche saying, but people places in things, right? Ultimately, I started quiet drinking to try to match that energy that she had when she drank. And I liked it and I wanted to be part of it because we had a relationship before and it was involved in alcohol. So I just kind of wanted to try to get back in sync with her.

and then I ended up, that cratered me, put me back in rehab, actually. That did, that was the start of it to feed. That was the second rehab, yeah. I went back to rehab. And I came out of that and I did a year sober. When I was in my second rehab, I made decisions. I was getting out of the gaming business. I was going to move into a new career.

I was going back to school and I was going to start a platform to help people in sobriety, right? I made some real strong convictions. and I suck with them, right? I followed through it. I had a relapse, but I stuck with all my convictions I made in my second rehab stay. Yeah. What about the other time after this last rehab stay, too, though, you did drink again. I mean, any insight for anybody listening who can relate?

So I overloaded myself, right? I went to sober living. I stayed in sober living for 14 months, and I was straight sober in there. And I never had the P-TAS. That's part of the gig, right? but I was, man, I was like a rock star student in that class, right? So nobody ever challenged me on a drug test or any of that. I never presented myself that way.

And I didn't drink, right? In fact, I was always mentoring the guys that were younger than me in the house. Got out of there and got my own apartment, right? And in that whole time, I'm back in school. I'm going for a master's degree. I'm back in school. I'm in another business with my friend. We're running this whole company.

We're growing this business. And I'm building a platform. an app for sobriety at the same time. Dude, that's 18-hour days, Brad, right? That's like, I'm up at 4 in the morning. I'm going to bed sometimes at 11, 12 o'clock at night. I'm getting four hours sleep. I'm back up. I'm mad at in the morning. I overwhelmed myself, right? But I also got a false sense of security because I was pulling all this off and I felt, okay, I can, I'm okay. I'm doing all right. And so I went out of town for work and I stayed in a home. hotel and they offered me a free, three, free drink ticket when I checked in.

The first time I went, I threw it in a garbage can, right? Yeah. Just returned back to New Orleans from my business trip and continue doing my sobriety. The second time I went, and I purposely went to that hotel because in my head, I remembered that coupon. Now I'm really kind of feeling comfortable. Like, maybe I can do this. But remember, the whole time, I'm building a sobriety platform.

and I'm thinking in my head, dude, you're going to drink, really? And so I actually took the ticket and went and got the drinks and went back to my room. And that's the first time I drank. And that was April the 9th. And I tell anybody to ask about this, I didn't turn into a unicorn, right? I got up the next day. I went to work. I pulled it off.

But the whole time in my head, I knew I drank. And I was just really like living a lie at this moment. And it started eating at me terribly. Yeah. So that was, that was, as I said to you earlier, I think that was my real first relapse. I know that sounds stupid and people in sobriety are probably going to just kind of shake their head at me when I say that, right? Because a relapse is a relapse. But prior to Brad, I like, I was living sober.

I wasn't drinking. I was abstaining. I wasn't doing drugs. I was abstaining. But I just wasn't a sober person, man. You know, I hadn't bought in. And I hadn't bought in. like personally, right?

This, this has been an eye-opening experience for me of all the things I had and how great my life was when I wasn't drinking. And I saw my life for a short period of time, two weeks, basically, not sober. And it opened my eyes up. It was a lights on moment, right? I got an opportunity to kind of see what it was like on the other side. And I choose this. I don't choose that.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing that too, man. Yeah, I think, you know, it's a reality for a lot of people. I think we could skirt around it that, hey, this doesn't happen and people aren't faced with these decisions. But the reality is that people commit to not drinking. And I don't look at it. And I know everybody's got their own thing. And some people, hey, they might bat an eye or think however they want about this too. But in my opinion, the only person that can relapse and drink again is someone who's actively working on not drinking. I don't see it as. the horrible as thing that I feel like some people believe it is. Like I'm not saying go out there and drink and whatever. But people are going to make their own choices. You know, sometimes people are like, you know, so and so made me drink. And I'm thinking, well, if they can make you drink, they can make you not drink.

And you don't listen to them when they say don't drink. So it's kind of weird how you're picking and choosing. One thing that really stands out to me, Manny, with your whole story, man, and I could be in left field, dude. It wouldn't be the first time. Do you find that you value yourself as a person based on what you produce with these businesses and how well and the money and how things look and how other people perceive you? Like, do you feel like there's anything there because I find myself in that spot too? Like my value as a person is how many people watch the podcast or how many people do this or how many.

I feel like I really have to check myself because I'll always want more. It'll never be if a gazillion people listen to the podcast, for the example, I'll always want two gazillion. Yeah. I used to tell my ex-wife, and I'll answer that question. That's a great question. When we lived in Myrtle Beach, New Orleans has a lot of snowball stands, shaved ice, right? And there were no snowball stands in Myrtle Beach. And I remember telling my wife, you know, Lisa, we need to put a snowball stand in Myrtle Beach.

And she goes, you know, you're right. And I went, problem with that is, if I open one snowball stand, I'm going to want to open up a thousand snowball stands. And I'm just not ready to open a thousand snowball stands because I can never just have one snowball stand. You're spot on with that, okay? Yes, I think to you to relapse, 100% agree with you on that statement. 100%. Not bad than I about that. I totally agree.

I think relaps to sometimes teach us to be sober. Actually, it's taught me to be sober. Okay. So when I relapsed of recent, the person that I really had a lot of resentments for, and I love her so deeply, man, it hurts my heart some days. My daughter Bailey, right? I love that child so much, right? But I had a lot of resentment because she went out of my life. And this is nothing that if she saw that she would bat an eye at, because we've had this conversation of recent, right? But that's who showed up to rescue me, by the way, my daughter, right? And that brave child showed up at the store after she and I not having a real substantial conversation for years. But that's the

nature of my daughter's courage. So now, I'm comfortable being dad, right? I produce a lot. Like, I'm closing sales all day long. I'm opening new markets. I'm scaling this company all day long, right? And, you know, we're growing our business and we're doing all these things to achieve. But, man, having a sit-down conversation last Friday at lunch with my daughter and not talking about work and not talking about the things that happened in Myrtle Beach and not talking about all the bullshit or her mom or just the, you know, my oldest daughter who I'm still doesn't talk to me, right? But just talking to my child, man, on a one-on-one level with my daughter has, I'm comfortable being dad, man. there's a suit I put on every morning when I get up.

That's Ed. That's my work name, Ed, right? My friend name is Manny. That's your real name. My friend name is my business name is Ed. So I put on a suit called Ed every day. And Ed bangs it, bro. Like, Ed bangs it.

But I'm a very, man, at the same time, Ed will walk out of his house and go bring somebody food who's hungry on the corner because Mani shows up. So, you know, we are complex human beings. And I think us alcoholics and drug addicts, we are more complex than the normal cat. We don't know how to manage our shit and we hide out by escapism, right? One of the hardest things that I think people need to learn is to stay sober is you've got to find somewhere else to take your shit and escape for a minute. be it meditation, be it prayer, be it God, be it banging your head against a tree. Because you can't go hide in a bottle anymore or, you know, with a drug, right?

Because that's where we sought shelter. And so I've had to learn now, where do I go when the world gets overwhelming? Because the normal folk, they just handle it, how to handle it. But the truth of the matter is, is that they're not really handling it any different than we are. They just got their own little shit they go do, right? And we think that we're not, we think there's so much better than us because we carry this sort of scrawlet letter on our chest because we're so aware of the fact that, yeah, I'm an alcoholic, man, you know. And so I think that's like, I wear that on my sleeve. But, you know, that just makes me very self-aware and very dialed in. But in my sobriety today, Brad, I'm comfortable being Bailey's dad. And then, um, then I have. have to put on my work armor and go to work every day. But I'm learning how to manage all that now.

And my goal is to help others manage it as well because I want to be a teacher and a helper now, right? I want to. It's time to teach and to mentor and to help people who will get through their day every day who have these issues going on. Try to make a better world, man. You know, I sound that's like a lofty goal. I'm not trying to be Gandhi right now, bro. But, you know, dude, I mean, what's the, what's the saying? I mean, if you want to change the world, start with, with home, start with where we are, you know. At some point, years and years and years ago, when this drug shit was going on in my marriage, I went to an NAA meeting. And, like, one meeting I went to.

And it scared the fuck out of me. And I, like, it's like, dude, this is like, going to a gospel Baptist, like a, you know, full gospel church or something. Pentecostal people are talking in tongues and shit. And I'm Catholic, man. So that scared me. Like, no, I'm going back there. But this dude told me, you know, if you want to change the, if you want to change your world,

you got to change the face of the man, right? And I didn't understand that at the time. But if you want to change your world, you need to change the face of the man. Right. So to that point, right? You want to change the world. You got to change yourself. And it's not promotion.

It's attract. You know, it's attraction. I think so many of us when we get sober, all we want to do is go scream to the top in a moment. Hey, I'm sober. Everything's different now. And we think everybody's going to pay attention. But, you, man, I just kind of see the same asshole.

But the more you live an amends and live your amends and be present and be in your life, the people that have got to come around are going to come around. And to your point, you might not want all those people. back in your life anymore because, you know, maybe you weren't such a friend when I thought you were a friend, you know? Yeah. So you get discernment, right? Yeah.

You learn discernment and you just grow as a person. So, you know, it is definitely your journey, my friend. Yeah. If anything, that's the truth. I think a big part of it for me, too, is acceptance. Like if things, people come back or relationships or whatever, it's just kind of acceptance of things. I feel like a big part of my substance use

was just trying to fight everything, like trying to control everything. And this part of the journey is just live and let live, man. You know, and that's why I just love doing this podcast because I get to hear so many people's stories and journeys and understand so much more and what's working for them. When I got into this, you only had a couple of options, you know, 16 years ago. You only had a couple of options that I'm just great for.

that today there's so many things. There's so many books. There's podcast. There's virtual platforms. There's cool apps. There's obviously the more traditional things. There's rehabs. Whatever.

Outpatient. There's so many things people can plug into that can fit sort of their story and where they're at. Heading towards wrapping up, though, Manny. What do you take away from all of this journey, man? Today, how old are you today? So I'm 66. What do you take away from 66 in this story that you've shared with us?

Wisdom, my friend. And that it's never too late to learn. It's never too late to change. Because, you know, tomorrow's coming no matter what, right? And it doesn't matter how old you are. You could be dead in a minute. So at 66 years old, I've lived some people's lives that watch your podcast twice already, right? And so, you know, I love the road I've traveled is not the normal road that a lot of people travel.

And so at 66 years old, buddy, I'm back in school, right? I'm building AI apps for sobriety as we shared. And so at 66 years old, I think my job is, they say those who can't coach, right? But I have, I can, and I do, and I coach. So my job now is to just try to coach. And then in coaching others, I'm coaching myself, right? Because, you know, you help others. You're really helping yourself.

So at 66. I'm excited about tomorrow, bro. And I'm excited about tonight. So I'm ready to just continue, live my life and be the best me I can be. And then if that's not enough, well, that's just not. not enough, right? Yeah. You get old enough to go, well, if it ain't good enough for you, then I'm sorry.

This is not good enough for you, right? Yeah. Thanks for being here and whatever, right? But, yeah. But, you know, it's amazing at 66 years old, you're still struggling for self-awareness, right? And I think that's a battle that we take to the grave. This is probably the last thing you might be thinking about is as you close your eyes, man, I should have fucking done that.

So I kind of choose to embrace it now. And look, in closure, right? If you, you know, you work so hard when you're an alcoholic or an addict to try to find the next bottle, to find the next drug, you work so hard at that, right? And so if you just apply half that energy just working to live a good life, you can have a great life, you know, because it's hard to be an alcoholic. be a drug addict, my friend. And it's not an easy road. You got to worry about a lot of shit. So that same energy now. I want to put that energy towards new things, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you turn it around. Yeah. I mean, even if you, for most people, I think if they put half the energy, the thing, I guess where the problem lies is that we

convince ourselves in one way or another that we're not, you know, struggling with substance use disorder and without that sort of without that sort of honesty we can't flip things around but I love that man well thank you so much manny yeah for you know jumping on and sharing your story with us dude wishing you nothing but the best

and don't keep rocking man right on bro it's it's great to meet you well there it is another incredible episode here huge shout out to manny thank you so much just realized too looking back through the episode that we didn't have the sober date there

for Manny, which is April 29th, 2026. I'll drop the contact information for Manny down in the show notes below. Thank you, as always, for listening to the podcast, and I'll see you on the next one.