Sober Motivation: Sharing Sobriety Stories - Sober Since 2012 MJ shares his struggles with addiction and the story of how it unfolded.

Episode Date: May 1, 2024

In this episode, we have  MJ who has been sober since 2012 and opens up about his challenging journey from a troubled childhood in New York City, marked by overprotection and bullying, to his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction as an adult. MJ shares how being overprotective instilled a fear in him that led to his inability to socialize without alcohol. MJ struggled to let anyone in on how he was feeling in his life and his ego ran the show for decades. The episode also delves into MJ's commitment to helping others as a crucial part of his recovery, his insights on ego and humility, and how his humiliation became the foundation for his humility and readiness to change.  He emphasizes the importance of asking for help, the power of giving back in recovery, and the message that anyone can turn their life around with the willingness to seek help. This is MJ’s story on the Sober Motivation podcast. ----------------- Loosid Sober Dating App: https://loosiddating.onelink.me/CAgW/791p3n0a Follow MJ on Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/mjgottlieb/ Support the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/sobermotivation

Welcome back to season three of the Suburmotivation podcast. Join me, Brad, each week as my guests and I share incredible and powerful sobriety stories. We are here to show sobriety as possible one story at a time. Let's go. In this episode, we have MJ, who has been sober since 2012, and opens up about his challenging journey from a troubled childhood in New York City, marked by overprotection and bullying, to his struggle with alcohol and drug addiction as an adult.

MJ shares how being overprotected instilled a fear in him that led to his inability to socialize without alcohol. MJ struggled to let anyone in on how he was feeling in his life and his ego ran the show for decades. The episode also dives into MJ's commitment to helping others as a crucial part of his recovery. His insights on ego and humility and how his humiliation became the foundation for his humility and readiness to change. change. MJ emphasizes the importance of asking for help, the power of giving back in recovery, and the message that anyone can turn their life around with the willingness to ask for help. This is MJ's story on a sober motivation podcast. I hear it all the time. How do I meet people now that I'm sober? This episode is brought to us by lucid sober dating, a great option to

meet other sober people. So many people share that the first question when connecting with others is where would you like to go for a drink? We can all see the problem here. If you're interested in giving sober dating a try or are looking to meet people that are like-minded, check out lucid sober dating. I'll drop the link for you to download the app in the show notes below.

Before we start this episode, I want to express my gratitude to all four listeners of the podcast out there. I've always struggled in life with feeling unworthy. In many areas, I catch myself wondering, am I worthy of kindness, love, or some other accolades? And the short answer is, of course I am.

But the question still pops up at times. And I want to say thank you to everybody who listens to the show and has given my guests and I an opportunity to be a part of your lives. When I started this podcast in November of 22, I almost didn't go through with it. Because I thought, who am I to be sharing stories? And honestly, I couldn't stand a sound of my own voice on the recordings. And what if somebody heard something that wasn't helpful?

Would they be upset with me? And the list goes on and on. To keep this rather short, I got out of my own way, gave it 110% and you all showed up. And I will be forever grateful. I made one commitment going into all of this. It would never be about me. It would be for that one person like me at one point, who never saw a way out, who never thought they could be better or do better. And I'll keep showing up if you do.

Let's go. Welcome back to another episode of the Sober Motivation podcast. Today we've got MJ with us. MJ, how are you? What's happening? Good to be here. Yeah, buddy. Thank you for jumping on here and be willing to share your story with all of us.

So what was it like for you growing up? It was so interesting. I always say I grew up in this remote area called New York City. And so my parents didn't have a lot of money or not a little kind of right in the middle. but like the big thing was they overprotected me. And because of that, and it was this, hey, don't ever take chances, don't ever take risks. And it just instilled so much fear in me. What it was like growing up is I couldn't open my mouth until that first drink.

And so I remember my father, rest in peace. He used to tell me every time I would go out, my real name is Michael. He said, Michael, remember there were murders and killers. she'll have eyes in the back of your head. Have a good night. And I would go out and the muggers would smell me. And so I was severely bullied. And that was my story. So I like to say I was the least popular kid in New York City history. On the other side, I like to say my sister was the most popular kid in New York history. And we shared a room. And half the room was blue and half the room was pink. And she brought all her friends. And I had nobody and couldn't open my

map. So needless to say, I needed to drink since, I would say, since birth. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. How did you navigate things early on, though, with sort of that teaching from your folks when you were in school? Is that where a lot of, like, you got bullied and stuff in high school and the middle school? Yeah. When I got into realizing why they were doing all this, which was just my parents trying to love their son, so they're not at fault. But I think about what that fear looked like and not being able to go for the team or not being able to ask the girl out because what if she says no, right? It was very dark.

I felt this like constant dis-ease inside of me at all times that I thought would never go away. And so it was very difficult. I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin. And I felt even worse because my, as much as uncomfortable as I was as comfortable as my sister, was. So it was just a very weird situation because her bringing in her 72 friends into that small room to say hello every day and me seeing that I had nobody kind of reinforced that fact that I was nobody. Yeah. So how did you deal with those emotions when you were growing up? Yeah. Well, so what happened was outside of being bullied, one day I went to a house party and

So I'm going to put a cup in my hand. And that changed my life. I mean, that literally, that dis-ease happened. And I'm still relatively blacked out from that time, meaning that fear. All I remember is really nothing happened other than me being picked on. But when that cup was put in my hand at this house party, I had a couple of drinks. And then I was like, oh, my God, I can talk. Like, holy.

And I'm going to keep it clean, even though I'm from New York City. Holy moly, who says that? But wow. And I was better looking, or so I thought, or all the girls wanted me, or so I thought, I was like, there was this collective. And then from that moment on, I needed to always have something in my body since that part. So before that, it was unbearable. And nothing inherently bad happened to me, just to be super clear.

But this is why I have a visceral reaction. when I see kids bullied. Because still, at 53 years old right now, I know how that can affect someone and how we can make an agreement with ourselves. One of my favorite books is the four agreements, is how we can make an agreement with ourselves that we're a certain way. And then unless we break that agreement with another agreement, then we're just going to think that we're no good for the rest of our lives. Yeah. Did your parents pick up on this, too, when you're growing up and was there any intervention like counselors or therapy or anybody talked to you about it? No, I mean, I think that the challenge was, and when I learned later, is really that my father's

father was very overprotective and did the same thing. And my mother was like, okay, cool, you're telling Michael like not to get hit in the face. Good. We want him not being brayton up. So they were like rolling with it. But it looked like when these kids would come to beat me up, my father would always be like chasing them and then people would be like, oh, daddy's boy. It was just a total mess. So no, they really didn't understand. And I think that's something that's so important. When people are struggling, they normally internalize and they don't want to say, hey,

I'm not okay. And I was not okay, but I didn't say anything. Nothing. Yeah. I mean, like, I'm thinking back to when I first was struggling in high school, I mean, I got bullied a little bit and then I turned into this really strange, weird bully. Definitely not something to be proud of, but that's like the protection that I was like, if I get to the punchline first or get to it sooner, then maybe I won't be the punchline.

It was this really weird flip. But I noticed in my life and my story, even before I picked up drinking in drugs, it was chaotic. It was a mess. I really struggled. You hear some people's stories and everything was pretty good, right? Did well in school, made good friends, joined the sports team. I remember in eighth grade, ma'am. it was already starting to get suspended in school suspension, out of school suspension.

I mean, it just started then. It became more frequent. I was trying out for the soccer team in this middle school I was at. And everybody MJ made the soccer team except for me. And I remember this. My mom pulled up in the blue Honda Odyssey. And it was like, oh, how did it go? And I'm like, ah, it didn't work out.

They cut a bunch of people, right? Because I didn't want to feel like I was the only person. And I never said anything about it. I never even thought it affected me. I was like, that didn't even matter. Like, whatever, who cares, right? The next day, they've got the game. All my friends show up in their shirt and tie. They all made the team, right? It had a big impact on me. But what you said there, when I was younger, I didn't know how to share about any of this stuff. I just know that I felt really uncomfortable, a ton of anxiety, never felt good enough. Had a hard time fitting in. Other people seemed to be able to

do it so easily. So I guess the long story short is I struggled in life. long before I ever found my quote unquote solution that worked for a bit until it doesn't work. How old were you when you went to that house party? I was probably like 13 years old, maybe 13. And it's interesting what you said. I turned into the bully too. So because I was bullied, when I found alcohol, I turned into the bully overnight. And not because I was some tough guy, because I needed to hit you before you.

you hit me. I needed, I, I, I didn't want you to know that I was deathly afraid of you. So I would pick a fight with you to show you that I wasn't afraid when in fact I was hiding out, hiding the fact that I was deathly afraid. And I took those swinging hands all the way to later jails, institutions, intensive care units, waking up in a single cell, tombs in New York sit like wherever and have to ask the judge what I did so it's like I swung and fought the world because once I had that alcohol which then turned into other substances all of that rage and all of that anger and resentment came out and in many ways I was trying to get back at the police and I learned that in my recovery work that we try to

understand, okay, I could tell you how I drank and how I drug, but it wasn't until I understood why I drank and why I drug that I was able to get better. Yeah, and I love that. That's beautiful. Yeah, so high school, how does that look? Like, the rest of the high school for you, and then what do you do after you graduate high school or you finish high school? Yeah, so, well, so basketball saved my life. So I was good at basketball. I was very aggressive on the basketball court. And basketball saved my life for a bit. Basketball always saved my life until it didn't.

And so I became the star of the basketball team. And I drank two 40s before practice. But that really saved my life. And what happened to me, a junior year, first week of junior year, so you remember how I told me my father lived in a tremendous amount of fear, right? So my father's father was a doctor. My grandfather was a doctor. Because of that, my father never had to go to the hospital. And my father was always afraid of disease. And so one day I come home from school and nobody's home. I'm 11th grade high schooler, right? Normally everybody's home. And my grandmother calls and says, I just want you know your father's a very sick man. Well, it turned out that my father tried to kill himself three times that day. He checked into a whole hotel with a butcher knife, but he forgot his ID. So then he crashed his car on, I think, 106 and

first into a pole. It's like sandwiched the car, totaled the car, but he was so OCD. I think he forgot to take a seatbelt off. So he got out of the car to jump over the FDR drive and two cops happened to be walking up in York Avenue, I believe it is, and they tackled them and threw him in the mental ward. And so for the next, I don't know how many months. My father was getting electric shock treatment on his brain cells, and it was just very bizarre. Then you tend to lose your memory. So it was like wild. And I was very good to my father during that time.

But again, this was finalizing my high school time. And here I was in the hospital, like playing ping pong with my dad in the mental ward. It turned out the reason why he tried to take his life is because he had to go to a hospital for a routine exam. my grandfather couldn't take care of that exam. He thought they found something on the MRI and we wouldn't tell him. And so he figured he'd take his life before he had to go through the disease. And I mentioned all this not to tell you this is the reason why I'm an alcoholic or an addict, but, you know, what fear can do, right, in your life and how it can like, my father was fine.

He had diverticulitis. It's nothing. He thought they found something. He's going to die. Oh, let me take care of everything. Take care of my affairs. Okay, great. My affairs are in order.

Good. That's what fear can do. And you and I speak a lot. We're big into recovery work. And the bottom line is we need to understand like what's going on. And that's really what recovery work is about is taking pen to paper and figuring out like what's going on. in its most simplistic, the most simplistic way that I could say it.

So that's what high school looked like for me. And what's interesting is, like I said, I was very good to my father during that time. But then when he got back, he would say simple things like, hey, can you take out the garbage? And I'd say, F you, I don't need to do anything. You try to leave us. And so I became this very angry, horrible son to my father. I was drinking more and more. I had introduced other substances,

and the only time I was ever free was on the basketball court. Yeah. It's interesting, man, your love for basketball. Before I got into all of the trouble I got into, I had this span of probably a year where I used to go with a buddy of mine and we used to go to this local court, and we used to just shoot basketball.

Every day you could go there, we'd play pickup games, everything. It was incredible. And then after I stopped doing that routine, I found myself in a lot more trouble. And it's so interesting, too, you bring up the fear, right, of everything that's been passed down. And then our experience in the world is, yeah, I mean, it can be definitely scary, right? And how we internalize things and how we don't ask for help. And then when we're younger, it's we don't need help. Like when I was 16, 17, 18, I mean, I went to my first rehab when I was 17.

I was in a psychiatric hospital, UNC Chapel Hill. and my parents offered for me to go to this three-month program, and I basically just gave them the middle finger and was like, I'm not going to that program. So they had this ace up their sleeve, it basically an involuntary committal program for teenagers in Knoxville, Tennessee. And I got picked up there by this private transport company. My parents hired, and there's a crazy story to all this.

And they dropped me off at this place and it was locked down, and I was there for the next 12 months. but it's almost like everything when you're that age, you've got it all figured out. At least you sometimes think you do. I thought I had it all figured out. I couldn't wait, MJ, I couldn't wait to turn 18 to get out from under my parents' roof. And then when I finally did, I was just like, oh, my goodness, like, I actually don't know anything that I need to be doing. So it's interesting.

So after you finish high school, where do you go with things? Like, you start working to go to college? How does that look? Yeah. So my parents wanted me away. from New York City to get me out of trouble. I went to University of Colorado Boulder. I thought I was going to play ball for the team. There was a coaching change, and I showed up, and I had blown my ankle out, and they didn't let me rehab my ankle. And so what I would do, just to tell you where resentment goes,

is I would get drunk at the bars every night, two loggies and tailors, which are the two main bars on the hill, where all the basketball players were, the CU basketball players. And one by one, I'd pick fight with every single one of them. And I'd always do the same thing. I'd go up to them. I'd slap them in the face. I'd wait for them outside because I was so full of resentment that I couldn't play for the team. And Malcolm Hall gave me that liquid courage that I'd just go one by one, all first the guards, then the forwards, then the center, Sean Vannever. And then when I ran out of CU basketball players, I went to CU football players to pick fights. And we were the top team in the nation at the time, just to give you context. So, like, I was on a death wish. I was getting

in a lot of trouble, a lot of, like, violent kind of, like, thinking. And so that's what it looked like. And so it was drinking. It was fraternity parties, drinking, and then going up and picking fights with my fraternity brothers, putting my hands through walls, going into hospitals. I was part of one of the biggest party houses out there and I got kicked out by the biggest party house out there. They're like, like, you're no good. And so that's what it looked like. That's what it looked like. I was that guy.

Like, this guy's going to do nothing but trouble. I was that guy. Yeah. Yeah. And did you last at school? Did you finish? Well, what's interesting is I had no direction. And then I was into music for a very long time.

I wrapped for 17 years. Yeah, yeah, I did. I did. And it was funny because, like, when I wrapped, it was like low baritone rock Kim, like type. Not like, cool about a corner and a hat something. Like, not that. It's like message type, like deep stuff.

And then I'd be working with people in the studio and they're like, okay, we're going to play this in the club, but we can't let anybody know there's a white guy in front of this microphone. And so it became this whole thing that, like, you can't let anybody know this is you. We're going to play your music and the clubs and all this stuff. And I started growing a resentment against that. So anyway, to answer your question, one day we went to a club in Denver, printed up a bunch of shirts, B&W, standing for black and white, which was a group that I wanted. I was the white, couldn't really find the black guy at the time.

I went in with my boy, Gary, who interestingly is brand director of Lucid now. and we went in to promote the music and everybody was asking us about the shirts. And we sold out of the shirts the end of the night. And the next day, we quit school and started a urban clothing company to urban hip hop clothing company to help push the conversation of what's going on with race relations and racism. And for the next 17 years, I was in that urban hip hop market. So I left school, senior year when we landed our first national account, and we couldn't do both. So I left in the middle of my senior year.

Didn't tell my folks. Yeah, but yeah, I left. Yeah, interesting. Well, that's a great story. So while all of this stuff is progressing for you, the addiction anyway, so you're drinking. You said other substances, too. What are you getting involved with as well? Well, in the latter part of my story, I was an eight ball a day guy.

So it was cocaine. So yeah, started to kind of... Cocaine really became into the picture when I became very competitive in business. And so I saw a buddy of mine doing really well, like doing 10x my revenue. And so I just said, wait a second. I was doing some cocaine, but I was like, listen, if I triple my cocaine and, intake, I could probably work close to 20 hours a day and beat him. So then it became like where I needed cocaine at all times every two minutes. And I'll tell you a funny story about this. Sometimes

people would call me chopsticks because what happened was I used to be at this restaurant, this Japanese restaurant, and every night. And I would always excuse myself every two minutes to use the restroom to do a bump, right? Yeah. It just got exhausting. And so one day, I just got, was lazy, and I licked the chopsticks, I put it in, in the bag in my pocket, and it grabs the cocaine. And then I stuck it up my nose.

And from that moment forward, I never went into the bathroom. I just carried chopsticks with me. And I would just lick the chopsticks. And I always had a bag of coke, open it up, boom. And then I'd just be like this. And so no matter what I was doing, always had my chopsticks. I don't know why I didn't, like, thinking back, why I didn't just use a bullet. They used to have those things bullet that you just, but I used chopsticks.

So for years, it was just my chopsticks and my cocaine. And that generated your nickname chopsticks. Yeah. So at this point, too, when you're starting this new business, I mean, how do you get this thing going and stuff? What is Gary thinking about all this stuff? Everything that's going on. I mean, it sounds like it might be a tough business partner to get involved with things with

the wreckage. And also the fighting and everything at school. I mean, are you getting arrested for any of this stuff? Or is this just swept under the rug type thing? What's interesting is, if I think about it, basketball kind of sort of saved my life during that whole four years. Because I didn't start getting arrested until after. Yeah. After.

Okay, bring us up to speed here with you guys launching this business. I mean, how does this thing look moving forward? Yeah. So we had a company called B&W, Black and White, Race. awareness work. And Gary being black, me being white, it was very, very socially relevant to try to understand why color lines existed and judgment against racism and to show that if a black and white person can work together, we can break down some of those stigmas. And then we ended up getting into a deal with Samsung, which later supported and backed Fubu. That's how I know Damon from

Shark Tank so well, because we came up together from the standpoint of We were both backed by that giant Samsung. And Damon is frickin' genius with regard to all the hip-hop videos. And then I would hire him to put products on the celebrities because we were only as good as our ability to put product on, let's see, at the time it was Will Smith, on Fresh Prince of DeVilleur. It was hanging with Mr. Cooper.

It was that it later became 106 in Park. And it was Culeo and it was Drey and it was Snoop. And Chris Rock in Lom. in color. And so that lasted for a number of years. But my drinking progressed and progressed. And so as it progressed and then cocaine started to get introduced, answer your question about Gary, Gary is very highly tolerant, like, obscenely tolerant. And so he just shook his head for 15 years until one day I put him and is now wife in trouble. And he straight up left his best friend. and he should have because I put him and his wife in a situation.

I'll tell you. So I used to play ball with Diddy and Bad Boy and all those guys, right, at this place, right? And so I go to this club one night and I pass the then president of bad, the then president of bad boyed records. I'm like, oh, what's up, Lou? All right? And then I go up and I start a fight with this group, right? and 17 people surround me and I jump up, I smash the bottle, and I'm like, come on. And Gary's, hey, I'm trying to defend you here, right? And that's when Gary and Grace's wife was like, hey, we got to get out of here.

This is going to be serious. And Gary had to leave. So I woke up in the morning and I was fine, right? And it didn't make any sense. And so I called like the studio the next day and I said, can somebody please speak to Lou? because I think he may have saved me my life last night. So it turned out as they were coming in on me, I said Lou Tucker and they were like,

and they went down to Lou and say, do you know this kid? And he's, oh, God, that's MJ. Please leave him alone. And then everybody, and he's, MJ, you got to understand those kids are crazy. You would have been dead. And but you somehow blurted out my name.

They came down to me and I vouched for you. And I can tell you 100 of those. stories. That's the sad thing, where I got this close to getting killed and something happened. So, so, yeah, Gary was very tolerant until he wasn't. Yeah, understandably so at that point, MJ, right? Yeah. I mean, throughout this whole journey, like, where are you at now? Like, around, like, after this, this business and things are progressing, like, how old are you? And did anybody ever mention anything to you about, hey, like, you should, maybe get some help for this, an intervention, your folks, are they seen the fall out of this,

or are you keeping it separated from them? I'm keeping it separated from them because I'm not living with them at this point. So I'm keeping it all separated. At that point, I hadn't been arrested. Once I got arrested and there was nobody left to pick me up other than them, that's when things got real. But yeah, everybody. Damon from Fubu, Shark Tank, say, Mike, like, dude, I picked a fight with his bodyguard.

His bodyguard is insane. And it used to always be, oh, don't worry, it's just Mike. Leave him. He's just, he's a mess. Just, it's Mike. Don't touch him. I would go to strip clubs where my friends used to run the strip clubs in New York City. And I'd wake up with black eye and then I'd have to call my guy that runs a strip club.

Yeah, they had to straighten you out last night. You got a little out of hand. And then I got arrested at another strip club and a restraining order. Then stuff started getting real. Then things, then consequences started to happen. But yeah, people, my drug dealer, I used to say, do you think I have a problem? He came very close to the point of not dealing me drugs anymore. My drug dealer actually went to potentially cut me off.

And I remember I was sitting on the couch with Dre and I said, Dre, let me ask you, do you think I have a problem? And he's, yo, am, you're going to be dead within a year. And I remember him saying that. And I said, all right, so you're saying like cut back. And he, I look at me, and he's, did you, I just said you're going to be dead within a year. I was like, all right, yeah, so just cut back a little bit on the cocaine or like the alcohol. And he just shook his head.

And we're friends, like good friends to this day. And we talk about that conversation. And he's just, it was so strange your response. I'm telling you you're going to die and you're saying, which drugs should you cut back from? Right. So, so yeah, people were telling me, but like, I was a. denial. It doesn't denial. Yeah. So when you got arrested there, how old were you at that first one when this thing picked up at speed anyway downhill? Like, what age are you out there?

Well, I'll tell you. So the reason why I picked up at speed, because basketball was saving my life and then my hip started hurting me because I'd always get thrown around or like a rag doll and wind up on the ground and play guys seven feet, six, two. And so I got to the point where I really couldn't walk. and I went to the doctor and the doctor said, you've got to replace your hip. You chipped half your hip off. And I said, cool, when can I get on the basketball court again? She said, never. And I cried for the first time I was a kid.

From that moment, from that day, the rest of my life, I dedicated to my addiction. I gained 100 pounds within six months. I went from one, like, I was lean. I went from like 180 to 270, right? And then I just started going to bars picking fight. instead of being on the basketball court. And the first time, I knocked out two bouncers at Ricky's Cabaret, which is on 33rd Street.

And, yeah, so I was 35. I was in and around 35. Yeah. Yeah. And what's Gary thinking? Are you guys still doing the business and everything? It's going all right? Is this thing growing and you guys are showing up for it?

Are you especially? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was growing, but I kept blowing things up. for instance, we supplied about 1,500 stores, right? We were a brand. And we have salespeople at the time, right? We had salespeople in every area, but they always wanted to have a relationship with the boss.

So I would speak to the buyers and the owners of the chains and the stores. Well, when I was drunk and I didn't realize this, I started calling these owners of the chains of these big retail chains. I can wake it up in the morning and seeing this text saying, if you don't f in place an order by 9 a.m. I'm going to hunt you dead. And I'd look at my Blackberry and I'd be like, oh, no. And then it started like picking apart the business. And that's when things started to get super real from the standpoint of how it was affecting all my other affairs. Yeah. But the business was going well until it wasn't. And then I was presenting the samples and I would be running every

two minutes to do a pump. This is prior to me being called chopsticks. That was when you're blacking out then. You're blacking out from drinking and then you're sending these things. You don't remember and it's just getting, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So Gary probably looking back should have been meeting with the store owners. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I was just a human wrecking roll. Okay. You've got all this stuff going on, MJ. Let me try to understand.

here. You're going into all these situations you're wanting to fight everybody. You've also got drinking. You're doing cocaine. And a day in the life of doing that stuff too is, I'm just thinking back to, for me anyway, it was just miserable. I mean, you're doing something. You think you got everybody fooled. I did anyway. I thought nobody knew I'm working at this restaurant with an open kitchen. I'm going to the bathroom every five minutes. Everybody, they know what's going on. Right now. I have these jobs for a little bit. And then I would get called in. They'd say, come in a little bit early before your shift. And I would never show up because I knew for I knew I was getting fired from that job, but it was just terrible because I could never get back to where it once was.

And it's actually really weird. I blow people away with this sometime. The first drug I did before drinking weed, anything was cocaine. It was the first drug I ever did was cocaine. It's really strange. And it wasn't like the movies where I was just like, oh my gosh, my life is just great. I don't even know if I really even felt much from it to be honest. But I kept going back and thought I was going to uncover this solution to a better life, which never came.

But it's a really tough cycle to go into, man. But a lot of time you hear the two cocaine and alcohol matched. Because when we're doing cocaine, we can drink longer. We can stay out longer. We can do it. But also the next day, it's just, man, it's got such a grip on us. And the downside, too, the anxiety, the sadness and everything like that. It takes a toll on you, man.

So how do you keep this thing going, too? I mean, you mentioned before you're in denial. This is 35. I mean, things with the business, it sounds like, little bit slippery. I mean, any thoughts coming to you at this point of, hey, like, I maybe have to do more than cut back here, or I've got to make some changes, or just keep going forward? No, it was all ego.

It was all, the ego was preventing me, completely blocking me from any type of understanding that I had a problem. Even though there were a million people telling me I had a problem, my ego was preventing me. That's why I always say a friend of mine who passed sober, used to always say, MJ, your ego is not your amigo. And so it wasn't until consequences directly hit me that everything got unveiled. So what happened was my national sales manager knew that I was spilling cocaine all over the showroom.

And being it was my showroom, my financier had cameras in various areas all over the showroom. I knew the blind spots. So I would literally be in the middle of the showroom. room and go to a blind spot and do a bump, right? What I didn't realize is that I was spilling cocaine on the samples. He tested the samples because he said, hey, dude, you're using. I'm like, no, I'm not. So he tested the samples, came and said, hey, we got you. You were busted. We're going to out you to your financier unless you go to rehab. And that's where it's all started. So I was forced to rehab in 2007. I got sober in 2012. I was forced to go to rehab in 2007.

And then the night out, I was using again because my roommate said, hey, my father lives five minutes away. You could spend the night, meet my father, and I'll drive you to a train station in the morning, crash on the couch. And he woke me up at three in the morning and started driving me to crack houses. So the night out of rehab, I was smoking crack. So that didn't take. But that's where the consequences began because my parents now knew and the world knew that I had a problem. to keep everything away from our financier because they gave me their word that they would not out me and they would just tell my financier I need to go away for health purposes for 28 days.

And so that's where it got real. And then when I got back and continued to use, they ended up stripping away my everything and I got kicked out of my own company. So that is when I had to face what the, like everything got stripped away from it. And what do they say the gig? Because something is up, something like that. Yeah, face the music. Yeah, to face the music.

It's so interesting you say that there, right? I just wrote it down there. Everyone knew you had a problem at that point. Did you know you had a problem? Did you believe that you had a problem? Because it's really interesting, I think, in a lot of stories, right? Everybody around us, it's clear as day. It's clear as day to somebody without a problem, substance use problem.

When you can see somebody that has one, you're just like, I see that. And then, but for us that's in it, man, we get into this whole denial. There's not a problem where we minimize or we justify. We come up with all these different reasons how we know somebody who's a lot worse than us and we're not there yet. I don't have all these consequences in my life. So there can't be a problem. I still go to work. I'm high functioning. I mean, in your case, you work in 20 hours a day. Some people you ask, they're like, that's huge success. That's incredible. I can't know. Not me, man. Here's another thing. I also had a bunch of people on the other side telling me I was fine, meaning, let me explain. So you talk about you and cocaine. So alcohol would always get me in trouble. Cocaine never. Meaning alcohol made me violent, right? So I gave up alcohol for a while and I just did cocaine. And all my friends used to say, oh, we're so proud of you. You're only doing cocaine. How did you? How did you? do it. So I had this like hero complex for however long it was that I was just doing cocaine that I was like a mentor. I was a mentor being that I was just doing cocaine and not alcohol with my friends. And the girl that I was with, she was an active addict. And so she was like, no, you don't have a problem. Did you pick up the bag from Julio? Yeah. Okay, cool. Like, she didn't care. She just wanted to make sure that she had a

bag when she got back from work. And so I surrounded myself with people who were high functioning like me so I could use that way. Yeah, that's so interesting too, right? So there's another element. That's interesting that they became sort of the mentor in a sense about not drinking. I just was wondering about the rehab stays. I mean, 28 days you stay in the rehab. What happened in there? I mean, the day you left. Yeah, I mean, this is why I tell people like, be very careful. Like, it's very good to be with your day counters and your early sober crew. But a lot of those people are going to have ideas to use again quickly. I wasn't planning to use when I got out.

I was in someone's house who was my roommate and he woke me up at 3 in the morning and asked me to take a drive. And before you know it, I was inside of crack houses. So, and then the addict, MJ, and it was so funny because he gave me the crack pipe. I was like, no, I'm not much of a crack smoker. I'm more of a cocaine, straight cocaine, sometimes freebase. And he just gave me that crack pipe. And he's like, this is your only option. But it's better.

You're going to love it. Oh, I bit crack a couple times. Okay, why not? So, yeah. So I don't know what would have happened if I went home to, but I probably wasn't ready. I didn't have the willingness. I don't, I think my, you asked before, what is it? I think it's the ego.

I think that the ego just prevents us from getting the help we need. It goes back to what you were saying a few minutes back. This is why I constantly, when I used to do these podcasts, I talk about all the time. It's like what Simone Biles did, I'm mental health saying, hey, I'm not okay. Like we need to show and tell people that we're not okay. But you can't have the ego up and saying I'm not okay at the same time. It just can't happen. Fear and faith are strange bed felt, right?

Yeah. He don't know of humility the same thing. Yeah. There's so much truth to that. At this point in your life, because we talked about the fear and a role it played when you were younger in your life, what were you so afraid of now heading into, say, around your late 30s, 40 years old? That's an amazing question. So I've done a lot of work in this, and I was working with it. a healer as well. So on top of the normal work that I do in recovery, I was speaking to someone,

and they said, so there's little MJ and there's big MJ. Little MJ is when you were 12, you were being totally just brutalized from the standpoint of being bullied. You had nothing to offer at that time. You couldn't open your mouth and you felt the whole world was against you. So fast forward to 35 years old, you still reversed. to Little MJ. So even though you have things and you have businesses and you have homeless foundations and you shoot documentaries and like you do all this great stuff, the moment you sense anyone's pushing up on you, you revert back to 12 year old MJ that was bullied in the court guard. And at 53, I still go back there. My immediate response when someone tries to bully me in business, in life, in anything, my first reaction is I go 12-year-old MJ.

And that's my first maybe three seconds. Then I have to get back into big MJ. But the middle MJ was where my addiction was, which was, okay, I'm just going to swing. I'm going to swing. I'm just going to swing. That was my addiction. I'm going to fight you. that was whatever was between little MJ and big MJ, that was the fighting.

The fighting was addiction. I fought addiction. I fought people. I fought everything. So that's the best way that this person explained it. I think that's the best way I can explain it. It makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it does too.

I'm just wondering even if there's another level to it, if it has anything to do with fitting in or being accepted or being a part of something or do we like ourselves, do we love ourselves? Do we not even want to feel that? Do we not even want to go there? So I'm going to talk, which you just mentioned is the key to the kingdom. So one of my favorite qualifications, qualification is when a speaker in recovery talks about his or her experience, strength, and hope.

His name is Tom Brady Jr. He's passed now, but you can find him on YouTube. He has a talk on emotional sobriety. And he talks about how Bill Wilson in his 23rd year was suffering severe depression, and he didn't know why. And it's this beautiful talk that talks about that he realized that he needed complete validation from others. For him to get completely content with himself, he needed validation from others. And he said the only remedy for that is we have self-hatred and to move from self-hate to self-love.

and every person in recovery is going to go through that. Whether you're in 12 step or not, you're going to pass phases where if you don't get validated by other people, right, you're going to have a certain opinion of yourself, which is really bad based upon what you're thinking other people think. I'll give you an example. That's where my default, right?

I go to the gym and like someone wants to use. the machine and I'm using it and that person walks away. I'm like, wow, I'm sure that person is like talking shit about me right now. He's so upset. Should I give him this machine? He's probably really upset. And I tell, like, all this crazy stuff goes into my head. He probably forgot about it. So like this guy, Tom Brady Jr. says emotional sobriety compared to emotional inebriety, which is what it was referred to, is when emotional sobriety is when what you think about yourself and what other people think of you is one and the same. Emotional inebriety is when what you think about yourself is very different than what people think of you.

So I constantly feel like people are talking shit about me, even if I don't even know them, right? Yeah. And so how can we put down the bat and take out the feather and move to self-love? And I'll give you one more example. I tell people and I tell these kids that I work with. I want you to go in the mirror and I want you to get in front of the mirror and say, I love you and I'm proud of you. And they come back to say, okay, I did it. Oh my God.

That was so hard. Yeah, but you feel bad. Oh, my God. I feel a thousand times better. How often do you do it? I'm like, me? I don't do. Listen, hey, I'm telling you to do it.

Yeah, but why don't you do it? Hey, I'm your sponsor. Yeah, it doesn't apply to me. I can't say I love you to myself. They're like, well, sponsor. aren't you a hypocrite? Hey, but I don't tell myself I love myself, right? And it's just, I am so hard on myself.

It's insane, like insane. Yet I know what the answer is, so I got to give that answer to other people, but a lot of times I don't do it myself. Yeah. That's so deep there, MJ, too, because searching for that external validation, the emotional sobriety, that's a whole big thing I talk about, probably here and there with things. It's like the act of getting sober that that thing right there difficult, yes, but the whole thing is about staying sober and plugging into that emotional sobriety and figuring out how we're going to go from somebody that we don't like that we have to live with every day ourselves. It's somebody that we can work on building that love and trust within ourselves is really what this whole thing is really about for people.

The quitting part seems like when we're drinking, when we're using, the act of quitting seems like the biggest mountain to climb. And at the time, like it might be. But it's literally like a decision that we make. And then after we make that decision of now I've quit. Okay, today's my first sober day. Now how do I stay sober is really when the big mountain kind of shows itself. And the emotional sobriety is a key element of doing all of that. But it's that thing, MJ too.

And hearing your story there about that external validation, right? And if anybody got too close or if it was ever going to be exposed in your life, Now I'm just coming up with this conclusion here talking. I could be way in left field. It wouldn't be the first time. But if anybody was going to expose how you were actually feeling on the inside, you were going to do whatever you could do in your power, whether it was physical or whether it was numbing out to prevent that from happening.

You could not let people know that on the inside, you were actually really scared. And you mentioned it before and terrified with dealing with emotions with. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff. But, you know, I think that's what a lot of us go through and to keep that ego alive. So, MJ, we've been... I just have to say something. What's interesting, that you just said it, and it's so important that what you just said

doesn't fly over anyone's head. Like, the reason why we created a lucid community is because we see so much junk happening in social media, this compare and despair, right? And they say comparison is the death of happiness, and you have all these people posting, my home with my pretty girlfriend and my pretty place in the Hamptons and like people are feeling less than. And so taking all of what you just said about me, I said, hey, we need to establish a place that encourages nothing but vulnerability and rewards vulnerability. And so let's create the opposite effect on social where everybody talks about their vulnerabilities and everybody

helps and loves one another because of their vulnerabilities. And so to me, it's a way of me showing people, hey, listen, I went through pure health, still am, because I still have that in my mind, right? Here's a place where we need to teach people to encourage people to be vulnerable to say I need help because I got stuck in that. And so other people are. And we need to understand that's just not how things should be shaking out. We need to be doing it the other way around.

Yeah, 110%. So where do you turn this thing around at, MJ? bring us up to speed there or close to it. Yeah, I will. Well, so what happened was towards the end of it was I woke up in a jail cell one night, single cell that time. And I said, what am I here for? They said, well, you assaulted a police officer.

I was like, oh, boy, and now I'm in trouble because I was in probation for assault and I got arrested for assault on a police officer. So I asked one of the CEOs to get the mace out of my eyes, and I want to apologize to the police officer who I assaulted. Can you tell me who it is? and come back to the station. He said, it was me. And he said, let me tell you something, kid.

Like, if you saw the animal that came in last night that required five guys and jars of mace, like, you're the nicest kid in the world. What happened? And so I got to the judge and my lawyer said, watch magic happen. And I got 130 hours sweeping the streets of Harlem. But here's the thing. My lawyer said, if you get in trouble again, lose my number because there's nothing I can do to help you. I just got you off this last charge.

but you can never touch anyone again. And so what I did for the next several years is, and I'll button this up quickly, is I would just pick fights and then I was put hands in the back of my body, and I would find any big tough guy, slap them in the face and wait from outside. And I put my hands in back and then just let them take shots at me. And so I just wake up intensive care units and all that.

And my last trip to the intensive care unit was January, Friday to the 13th, Friday, January 13th, 2012. What got me here and what got me into recovery was I was babysitting the five-year-old son of an ex-girlfriend and I passed out. And the thought that I put a five-year-old, I didn't care about myself at that point. The fact that I put a five-year-old in jeopardy, I couldn't look in the mirror. And so I crawled back into the rooms, into 12-step rooms. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror for 100 days. And then about 100 days later, I crawled my.

myself into the rooms and I said, I'm done, I'm done. I put a kid in jeopardy. I'm done. I am a menace. I'm done. And then I put my hand up in the air and I said the three words that no addict wants to say, which is the very three words that'll save your life. I need help. How does this shit work? Pardon my French. And that's where my journey began. I have a question too before you get to the next thought there is, okay, you mentioned you're getting into fellowship 12 step meeting now. How did you experience this in the past? How did you try? tried to get some help before this other than the 28 day. You said you had experience with it.

Yeah, I mean, I have tattoos with old Sprite days. This one's August 2nd, 2004. Ink doesn't work, by the way. That doesn't keep you sober. If anybody just wants to put a tattoo with your Sprite date, that lasted a year, two weeks, and five days to be exact. So with me, I would just not, there's this old saying in 12-step meetings, don't drink and go to meetings, right?

So I just rode that. I didn't hear anything about, and I'm not going to get preachy because I can get up on my soapbox because the 12 steps saved my life. But to be super simple about it, I entered the program of recovery and I cleaned up my junk. I need a sponsor. I don't know how this works. I get a call that night from Herschel, sponsorship coordinator. He says, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I found you a sponsor.

The bad news is he's not going to take any of your show. shit and everybody knows you're full of shit. That's exactly what he said. And this guy took me line by line to the big book and got me into service immediately in prisons, in jails, in institutions. I was chairing detoxes. I was taking the message in. You used to always say service keeps you sober. So I just started my grant sponsor had me go to the Rikers Island, take prison meetings. So I just did the work and started carrying the message like we were told do and work, as they say, all three parts of the triangle, which is unity, which is connect with a bunch of other individuals, fellowship meetings, whatever, recovery, which is the program

and service. Nothing ensures immunity from alcohol and drugs other than intensive work with other alcoholics and addicts. And that's the reality. And that's what I've followed. I've kept it very simple. It's a ton of work, but I've kept it very simple. Yes, you have, MJ. Thank you. I'm wondering to right because a big theme here, MJ, for you is this ego part. How did working through the steps, if that's where you found an answer or an understanding for about how you're going to work on this ego, switch it over to humility. I think the service part of working and helping and giving back was like a big difference, right? Especially, I mean, when you do stuff like service or volunteering, right?

I used to volunteer. Every Christmas, we do. We volunteer for different programs here in the community. when you do that type of stuff, that's the ultimate way for me anyway to get out of my own way because this isn't about me. This is an opportunity really to help somebody who couldn't help me in other ways. And I think especially like you have a big business background and you have all that stuff. And I feel like a lot of the ventures we can find ourselves is, hey, we want to go scratch so-and-so's back because we know potentially one day that they could scratch hours, maybe not immediately. but when we switch it over to really go out there and selflessly help people without looking for that return.

I mean, maybe that played a role, but I just had that thought. But how have you been able to really get that and check? How were you for ego? Yeah, well, a number of things. So my first sponsor said, hey, if you get this thing and you do the work and you don't give it back, you're an effing shoplifter. And so he said, if I'm taking the time to take you through this work and you get this thing, Do you promise and give me your word that you will carry this message to other people who are sick and suffering the same way you were?

And I said, yes, I will. So I gave them my word, right? And then what happened in my third year of sobriety to really answer this question is my father got very sick. So I was in the hospital month over month and I couldn't go to AA meetings and I'd listen to thousands of speaker tapes. And I understood and I learned the history of alcohol. from soup to nuts and every speaker that you can imagine I listen to. And I realize how important service is and how this program very nearly, so this program was defined in one night in the Mayflower Hotel,

the entire program hinged upon one decision by the co-founder, Bill Wilson, to either go into the bar or go help someone. He ended up doing service. And because of that, I'm speaking to you today. That's it. And when you understand how serious that is and all the things that had to happen to have you and I here, we have a responsibility. Like we all go in knowing the same thing, nothing, right? But the biggest thing will always keep someone sober while they're trying to figure that out is service.

As you said, and I was telling these newcomers, I said, and then I'll get into your ego thing. I was telling these newcomers. They're like, I don't have anything to offer. I said, no, let me tell you a story. My sponsor said, go out and greet people every morning. And then years later, people would say, you saved my life. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Dude, I don't know you.

You're like, well, I was coming down to stairs and I was going to turn around, go, use. And you smiled, extended your hand and said the word welcome. We're so glad you're here. And I've now been here over seven years because of you. And I was like, who's. But what's interesting is, and I told you one of the things that attracted me so much to what your work is in recovery is, I don't know if you remember the conversation that you and I were having about the ego. I said, you speak from the heart. And this is a journey from the head to the heart.

And when I work with people, I say, they're like, how do I know if I'm operating from ego? I said, do you feel it in your head? If you feel it in your head, it's ego. If you feel it in your heart, it's not. So like before I speak at a meeting or in rehab or anywhere to you, I sit to see if it fell down to my heart. And if it's still in my head, I don't like to speak because it's probably ego. So if I let it sink down here, that journey from the head to the heart and I go out here, if you speak from the heart, you hit him in the heart. And so to me, how do you get from ego to humility?

I was telling a sponsi this yesterday, be very cognizant of where you're speaking from. And you could feel it when you're speaking in the head, like I could feel it compared to when it's falling and sinking into my heart. Well, I see even goes back to where you mentioned, I mean, all of this other stuff happened. And then you mentioned you went into that meeting and you were just ready. That's the most difficult thing about this whole thing of sobriety is because until somebody is ready to make changes, What do you do? I mean, as human beings, we're incredible at saying that will never be our life and that will never happen to us.

And we like truly believe it. I mean, it will believe anything we tell ourselves. So until somebody's really ready to throw up their hand, ask for help and then do what's suggested or follow through on something, whether it be a program, whether it be rehab or detox or something, I mean, you could talk to people all day, but until they're ready to do that thing and realize, hey, what I've been doing for two decades or three decades. is not working, I keep ending up with the exact same results, and they're not good results. Then, where do you go?

Well, that's why it's so hard. If you think about it, the reason why I was only ready for one reason. If I didn't babysit that kid that night and pass out, I wouldn't be speaking to you today. So that readiness came out of humility. That humility came out of one thing, humiliation. So the readiness came out of humility. The humility came out of humiliation. because that was on the back of a month or so before I was babysitting my four nephews for the first time.

One was in a crib. One was like three. One was five. One was seven. And I drank a bottle of Mount Gay Rum and I passed out. And when I woke up in the morning, my parents were looking at me. And my sister and brother-in-law took their four kids, my four nephews, out of the state and left their own home because of Uncle Mike. So I was at a complete humiliation point.

and the humiliation saved my life. I think it is where it comes from. Yeah, no, that's good. That's good. We've got about four minutes left here, but I wanted to mention, I wanted to hear from you on some of your other recent projects. You've got Lucid, sober dating and that,

as well, the Lucid sober community. Share with us about what you've been up to for the last couple years on these. Yeah, so I started Lucid with my business partner in 2018. Lucid now. We just passed 200,000 installs to date. In our 10 millionth session, we passed, I think, in late February. A lot of people call the lucid community a sober Facebook. I don't like the Facebook part because I told you people use social media for compare and despair.

We like to encourage the opposite. And it's a place where people connect. They're struggling section. There's sober tips of the day. There's daily gratitude, which is the biggest section. There's recovery voices, which is 50 hours or so of episodes where I speak to various recovery professionals, sober celebrities, stuff like that. And then we launched lucid sober dating April of last year, specifically April 28th. We have about 75,000 new members and to provide a supportive environment

for sober singles to connect. And so, yeah, I'm very excited to be doing that. It's something that is my life as a vocation and that vocation recovery is my life. And it gives us the opportunity to help. Because if you look at the amount of people who are struggling, There's a statistic 300 million people suffer from alcohol use disorder alone worldwide, and 38% of American adults suffer from some from some SUD substance use challenge. Well, in aggregate, that's over 500 million people. So we wanted to develop a platform to have those resources available to everyone, or at least in something that almost everybody has a phone.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful, man. Thank you so much, MJ, for jumping on here, sharing your story, sharing that with us. anything that we miss you want to mention before we go yeah i mean it's just a message to anybody who's listening that isn't really understanding this recovery thing just remember that we're not mine readers and someone once told me that and those three words that i mentioned the i need help they say the

thousand pound phone to say hey i'm not okay um i get it i understand i've been there but also you putting your hand up in the air and say i need help how does that work there's millions of people out there that are here to help you. And also by you doing that, you'll be encouraging somebody else to say, oh, wow, that person asked for help, then maybe I could ask for help too. And so if a lot of this stuff sounds like a different language to you, the journey of a million miles starts at that first step. So I know how much like incredible effort you've made to take your story and turn it into a message of hope. I saw like those pictures of you. When you were in your active addiction, you've seen pictures of me, and now you put this beautiful life together.

And so for those people listening that think that there's no hope for them, understand that anybody can turn their life around if they have the willingness to ask for help. So that's what I would have to say. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much, MJ. No, thank you. It was great to be here. Well, there it is, everyone, another incredible story. Huge congrats to MJ. Sobriety since 2012. I'll drop MJ's contact information down in the show notes below.

Be sure to send him over a note and let him know that you appreciated him sharing his story here on the podcast. Thank you guys so much for all the support. If you have yet to leave a review on Apple or Spotify, take 90 seconds out of your day and drop a review. And if you want to support the podcast and everything that we do around here, I'll drop the link for the Buy Me a Coffee website where you can donate to support down in the show notes below. I'll see you on the next one.