The Rich Roll Podcast - From Crack Addict To Running The Sahara To Prison Hero — Charlie Engle’s Third Act

Episode Date: September 26, 2016

There is extreme. Then there's Charlie Engle – a man who has run across deserts, summited ice-covered volcanoes, swam with crocodiles, overcome crack addiction and survived a stint in federal prison. The story goes like this: after a hair-curling, decade-long love affair with booze and crack cocaine that culminated in a near-fatal six-day binge and a hail of bullets, Charlie finally gets sober. For solace, he turns to running, which becomes his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He begins with marathons, but it wasn't enough. Ultramarathons soon became the focus of his affection, a new love affair that takes him to stunning heights and accolades. During this second act, Charlie would clock a handful of impressive top-10 finishes at prestigious races like Badwater, a 135-mile jaunt across Death Valley widely considered to be the toughest footrace on Earth. But his athletic zenith is an unprecedented, absolutely astonishing 111-day, 4,500-mile run across the Sahara Desert — a feat chronicled in the Matt Damon narrated documentary entitled Running the Sahara. Life was pretty good. Then came quite possibly the most bizarre and improbable challenge Charlie could ever imagine facing. A bad B-movie narrative that involved an obsessed IRS agent with an axe to grind. Wire taps and garbage probes. Even the requisite wily enchantress dispatched to entrap. A saga that culminates in an unjust conviction for mortgage fraud. A poster child for everything awry with the mortgage-backed security crisis, Charlie serves 16 months in a West Virginia federal prison – what Charlie jocularly refers to as his federal holiday. He could have played the victim. Instead, he spends his days pounding the small prison track, running endlessly in circles. Soon his fellow inmates were joining him, struggling to keep their spirits up in dehumanizing circumstances. A prison hero by the time his sentence concludes, Charlie now embraces his third act as a more fully actualized version of his pre-shackled self — armed with newfound perspective and a grateful appreciation for what matters most in life. Charlie is one-of-a-kind. A world class talker and master storyteller, I knew Charlie's new memoir would be a page-turner. But I didn't expect the book to be so well written. Running Man: A Memoir* is every bit the gripping, raw, honest, funny, emotional, at times cringe-inducing, but ultimately inspiring story I hoped it would be – and then some. I'm thrilled to bring you my second conversation with Charlie. Picking up where episode 67 leaves off, (a must listen if you're new to the show), this is an intimate discourse about high highs and low lows. It's about addiction, sobriety, service and spirit. It's about perspective. Nine lives and third acts. What it means to touch the threshold of human endurance. And then transcend it. Enjoy! Rich

You know, I had this incredible choice to either be miserable, you know, when I went to prison. I could have been miserable and, you know, prison is a place where you get a lot of time to reflect. And, you know, what I found for me was just simply that it was up to me. My happiness, just like the rest of the time, it was totally up to me. And if I wanted to be happy, even under those circumstances, that I could do it. That's Charlie Engel, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast

Hey everybody, how you guys doing? My name is Rich Roll, I am your host. Welcome or welcome back to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you. Thanks so much for tuning in. So I'm going to do things a little bit differently today. I just have this sense that my intros have been a tad on the long winded side. So I'm going to just cut right to the chase and just kind of loosely improvise this so we can get into the interview a lot sooner. But first. Today on the show, I got my good buddy, Charlie Engel.

He's on the show for a second time. He was on the show back in the old days, episode 67, where we went into his life story in quite vivid detail. in quite vivid detail. So if you missed that, I would definitely rewind and go back and listen to that for a full kind of recap on his arc. Because today we're going to kind of pick it up where we left off last time and delve deeper into more specific subject matter. But essentially, for those that are new to the show, Charlie is a father. He's a husband. He is an is exceptional at weaving a fascinating story. And he does this throughout today's conversation. And, you know, his life is really marked by a lot of high highs and low lows. You know, low lows with drugs and alcohol and all kinds of insanity that comes with that. And the high highs of some pretty extraordinary athletic achievements.

This is a guy who has competed at a very high level in ultra marathons with top finishes at Badwater. I don't know how many times he's done Badwater, five or six times or something like that. A lot of top ten finishes in that race. that. A lot of top 10 finishes in that race. Him and two other dudes ran across the Sahara Desert all the way from Senegal to the Dead Sea, right? Like 4,500 miles. That's the subject of a documentary called Running the Sahara, narrated and produced by Matt Damon, which you guys should check out if you haven't already. And Charlie's got a brand new book that came out last week. It's called Running Man. And because I know Charlie, and I know what a good storyteller he is, and I know that his life is full of amazing episodes that would make for a good book, I knew I was

going to enjoy this as a page-turning adventure. What I didn't expect was that it would be so extraordinarily well-written. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I love talking to Charlie about it and going a little bit deeper into other aspects of his life, including his current relationship with running, how running and sobriety kind of dovetail together, what his spiritual perspective on his life is, how he has continued to evolve since we last spoke, and on from there. I actually went all the way up to Phoenix. I flew to Phoenix just to have this conversation with him. And he was delivering a keynote at a very prestigious event called Google Zeitgeist, which is basically a star chamber brain trust of some of the brightest minds in the world congregating

at a resort for a weekend of talks and mingling, I suppose, an invitation-only event. So that's a pretty cool arc from basically hiding out in $10 a night hotel room smoking crack to delivering a speech at Google Zeitgeist kind of punctuates the extent to which Charlie has traversed some pretty amazing terrain to get to where he is now. So without further ado, let's just tap right into it. Enjoy my conversation with Charlie Engel. Enjoy my conversation with Charlie Engel. I think we should kick this off by at least taking note of this extraordinary hotel room that we're in right now at the Omni, whatever it is.

It's the Montelucia. Here in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Because you spoke yesterday at an event called Google Zeitgeist. So explain to me what this event is all about. Yeah, so Google Zeitgeist I had been vaguely aware of, and interestingly from my 21-year-old son, Kevin, who had watched some of the Google Talks in the past. Because this has been going on for seven years now,

and it is a very small gathering. It's like 200 people, right? Yeah, a couple hundred. Invite only. Invite only. International star chamber brain trust. We are talking about, I mean, and I know for sure that I wasn't in this. I know you're a hustler, but like that's some serious hustle game. I wasn't even in the top 10% of brain power in the room, you know, probably at any given time. I mean, it was a, it was an incredibly intelligent crowd, which begs the question, why was I there? Cause these are, these are innovators.

We're talking about, you know, the founders of Google, the head of Alphabet. Alphabet being the parent company of Google. Exactly. I had breakfast this morning with the head of marketing at Red Bull. I made connections here with magazines, with publications that would never – I mean, I shouldn't say never, but you know how hard those connections are to make. And very often, you know, I have a book now. So whether the book is good or not is certainly important. But if nobody reads the book, then it's not nearly as important, you know? So this crowd, first of all, Google bought 500 of the books, so everybody left here with a book.

Yeah. So at least you sold 500. Exactly. Listen, I don't want to interrupt you because I want to hear the rest of this thought, but it needs to be said that you wrote an amazing book. Thank you. Like, I just love this book. I mean, of course, it hits my sweet spot, like all the things that I love to talk about and learn about and read about. But you did a beautiful job writing what I think is really a timeless, extraordinary memoir.

So you should be very, very proud. Thank you. And I loved every aspect of it. It's fantastic. when I say, you know, your book, Finding Ultra, was an instigator of sorts for me, mostly because you're humble enough to have said to me, you probably don't remember, but, you know, something to the effect of, look, if I can do it, you certainly can write one. Yeah. Well, your stories, you go like 100x, anywhere from 10x to 100x on everything that I talk about in my book. I mean, your story is so

amazing and unique that it would have been a crime had you not put pen to paper to share it. Thank you. Well, and I'm happy to say, I came into the publishing process as naive as a person could be and thought, okay, you write a book, Somebody reads the book. A publisher buys the book, and then they sell the book. And of course, that's as far from the way the process works as anything. Well, we're going to get into that in a minute, but let's finish talking about Google Zeitgeist while we're on that. So I came to find out that, in fact, I got invited because of a couple of things.

A woman who is one of the people that finds speakers for this get-together was a producer for the Rock Center television show with Brian Williams where Harry Smith was the correspondent and it was talking. This is after my federal holiday. That's got to be one of the best euphemisms. Yeah, it's perfect. It just, it makes it easy, takes the pressure off other people. People either know what I'm talking about or they don't. And so it's, I like it.

And she, you know, she knew my story and she knew that I had a book coming out and she had seen another talk that I did. I did a talk right after my federal holiday in Northern California over in Marin County called the Do Lectures, DO. And Do Lectures, I literally was fresh out of prison, like fresh. And that's a cool event too. Fantastic event. And that one, they, you know, they published those talks online. So it was 25 minutes. So it was a very tight time space.

And, you know, I, I told, I guess, a compelling enough story at that to get a lot of views. And really that was it because these are, these are very, this, this event is incredibly short talk. So my talk was 15 minutes. I actually, for those who end up watching it online a little bit later, it went a little long by probably three or four minutes. Shame on you. I know. Because they tell you, they're always like, look, you cannot go over. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And people, the other thing is people think that, oh, it's 15 minutes. Like, that's easy. I could get up and talk for an hour that's easy. I could get up and talk for an hour, 90 minutes. I get up and talk for two hours, no problem. But tell me I only have 15 minutes or 13 or 17. And I like, that's like panic attack inducing. When I speak publicly very often, you know, you get that hour window. And I have learned through the years that like, if I can make myself shut up at about 45 minutes, that's usually a pretty good sweet spot for some questions and all that. But 45 minutes is enough

time to do what I do, which is I interrupt myself all the time. I'll be talking and all of a sudden I fly off in some crazy direction for five minutes, but I can pull it back and I can get back on topic with 15 minutes. You know, you're basically screwed. Every sentence, every word counts. It does. Plus very, very well produced. And I mean, we had, you know, it started off with, you know, Dan Rather. And, you know, I was on the same card with Kerry Walsh Jennings and Charles Barkley and then Mark Ronson, the DJ, and just, I shouldn't call him a DJ, DJ music producer. He's quite the music producer. He has an amazing TED Talk too. I'm sure all these people have done amazing TED Talks. No doubt.

Yeah. And Morgan Spurlock, he was like doing the Q&A. He introduced me. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So he was the one who introduced me and he's been on your show. No, he hasn't. Oh, he hasn't the one who introduced me, and he's been on your show. No, he hasn't. Oh, he hasn't. No. For some reason, I thought he had been. I wish. So I told him, though, that he should.

Oh, yeah? You know, I'll hook it up. You're lying. No, no, I did. You did? I would love to have him on. He was on, he did Tim Ferriss' podcast. Oh, okay, okay.

That actually was a great conversation. I would love to have Morgan on. No, because he's the right kind of guy for your podcast. He is a little off the wall, but he's done a lot of stuff. Oh, he's incredibly prolific at what he does. I mean, what started with one documentary, he's built into this unbelievable career. It's quite something. No, he keeps replicating.

And one-offs, well, one-offs are hard, too. But staying in the game or near the top of it is really difficult. Right. So that was your segment. So basically to kind of, you know, generalize or encapsulate this event, not only are all the speakers extraordinary, but everyone in attendance who's watching you is somebody of extraordinary substance. You can't just buy tickets to this. There's 200 people that are here in attendance who's watching you is somebody of extraordinary substance. You can't just buy tickets to this. There's 200 people that are here in attendance. You have to be invited just to watch. It's not like, that's what distinguishes it from something like TED, a TED conference where you can actually purchase a ticket. No, exactly. You had to have been invited. And I mean,

I'm not kidding when I say there were 100 people in the audience who were the founders of some high-tech company, whatever it might be, that they either sold to Google or they've partnered on something. And it's like, I mean, person after person is telling me what they're doing. And I'm like going, you're kidding. I use that. Or it's some app that I use or whatever else it might be. And it's just, it's fascinating. Yeah. Well, I mean, what an honor.

That's so cool. Congrats that you were doing that. All I know is that I, that Jason and I, who's sitting to my left right now, my wonderful audio engineer and producer who lives in Phoenix, we pulled up to the hotel, to the resort, and there was no shortage of black suburbans, which is like, okay, there's either some kind of political dignitary in town or there's something serious happening here. You know what I mean? that we're sitting in right now is a far cry from the $10 a night, you know, sort of hole up and smoke crack for four days type of hotel room that you spent more than your fair share of time in. There's a certain hominess to those other ones.

Yeah, there is. But, you know. Well, like when you have those four walls, like sort of closing in on you, there's a womb-like aspect to that, right? No doubt. And I mean, I actually told the story of my talk. And I'll tell you this, just very briefly. So two days ago, I've got a particular talk laid out. And quite frankly, it's going to really focus on running the Sahara because it's an iconic expedition. There's the film, people know the story and the theme if you will of this google conference was great expectations and it was kind of this so it's this forward-looking idea about

what do you expect from yourself and you know and i i was trying to like be true to why they'd brought me here potentially and like i'm not kidding you by i went to bed two nights ago, 11 o'clock, I'm like, F this. And I balled it up and I threw it away. Two nights before. And I'll tell you why. No, and it was the night before my talk. And I got up the next morning and my talk was going to be in the afternoon. And what was bothering me was I was trying so hard because of what I felt like the magnitude of this place was.

I was trying so hard that I was actually memorizing things. And I am not a memorizer. You know, I am a talker. And it doesn't mean I wouldn't have a cue sheet. You know, I might have five words that just remind me where the hell I am in my talk if, you know, if I get lost. my talk if, you know, if I get lost, but I got up there and I started with, you know, Wichita, Kansas and crack and, and, uh, you know, bullet holes in my car and the police and, you know, and so I kind of brought the audience into my world within 30 seconds and, and it was, it was good. It was, it was, it was powerful because this is a group of high achievers, of which we know

if there were 200 people in the room, there were certainly more than a few addicts sitting out there in the audience. Yeah, there's probably between 10 and 20 people there who have had their sort of analogous version of that in their own lives. But like always, and I'm sure it happens to you to you i people come up to me after and not only congratulate me for my talk but say yeah you know my my brother has this problem i said my son we've put him through you know rehab twice and nobody's untouched right is he ever gonna get it and i'm like you know it's he he might and don't give up on him but you have to figure out for yourself that fine line between, you know, enabling and, you know, and loving, you know, and anyway, I just had a, I had more

of those conversations than I expected to have here. That's beautiful. Yeah. You know, and I think there's something inescapable about the power of just showing up and being honest and vulnerable and sharing from the heart. And I think in my own experience when I've done the memorization thing and it's flat. It's fine if you've done it enough times where you kind of say similar things because you just know it wrote,

but that's different from remembering something that was written on a page. When you can free yourself from that. And look, all of this I learned from sharing in the rooms. It's like being scared to get up and be honest and vulnerable in front of a group of anywhere from 500 to 200 people to share your story. and ask for a little help to be of maximum service to whoever is in front of me and try to understand who that audience is

and what they might be most interested in. And when you're in that headspace, it always works out. And it's always better than whatever you thought, you spent the last month scripting and rehearsing. Well, and it's so true. And I think that the honesty, I think both for you and I is, I don't do it for other people. I really do do it for myself because I understand the power of saying these things out loud without it coming across as me almost, You can like that old part of your life too much where it almost becomes

bragging. There's a romanticization. Yeah, you're like, oh, man. There's an ego attachment to that. Right. I was the worst addict ever. Yeah, my story is so insane. It's so much worse than yours. You won't believe it. That's nothing. I put four needles in me at one time. And there's that temptation. And I think, though, that I'll even take it to another place. I learned it, if you will, in the rooms. But I also learned it being on Eco Challenge in 2000. And this is a funny lesson. But I carried a camera, a video camera, for the television show 48 Hours back when it was a news magazine.

And I did this video diary. And I actually went back and watched a few things that I taped on the first day. And it was the most boring shit I've ever seen. And I finally, like literally, I said, okay, if I'm not going to turn on the camera when things get hard, then let me just give them the camera back and not do it. And it's that same thing. People don't want to listen or watch you say how awesome things are. If they're awesome, that's fine. Say it. But if they're not awesome, say that. And you see it in races a lot. You see also even in ultras and i think it's funny where someone you know because you've seen them will be out on the course just struggling you know

puking on their shoes and laying on the side of the trail but then if there's a camera when they come into the you know into the aid station like if they know the camera's gonna be there then it's like yeah everything's going great you know doing fine and, then it's like, yeah, everything's going great, doing fine. And it's like, why? Because people actually want to share. Shared suffering, even if you're only watching it, is so much more powerful than sharing what experience you're almost trying to make it look easy. But you can only know that when you've experienced it like you have, know that when you've experienced it like you have, you know, because most people were programmed from infancy to put the mask on. And the idea of being vulnerable and sharing your weaknesses with somebody else is in and of itself a sign of weakness. And that's something that, you know, has sort of been bred out of us. And the truth is, and you've, like you're a walking example of this,

is that when you can get to that place of owning your story and owning, you know, all your warts and all your blemishes and to do it without it, you know, raising your heart rate or creating beads of sweat on your forehead, that's the most powerful thing you can do. I mean, you can stand, you know, in your strength and just be like, this is who I am. People freak out. They're not used to seeing somebody who can do that. And it's disruptive in its own certain way, I think. Yeah. And this was really a... I got a lot out of this conference because I did get a lot of positive reinforcement from people who... Look, there's some brilliant people speaking here,

reinforcement from people who, look, there's some brilliant people speaking here and very smart, but a lot of this talk was about tech. So they're explaining the next new thing in 3D printers and moon robots and I mean, like seriously, some just blow your mind stuff. And I found it all incredibly fascinating. But these guys, because they're all techies in general, they kind of live in this world. And so they know these things are out there and whatever. And hearing a story like mine, I realized in a way it was my responsibility to be even more, almost more honest than usual, if that's possible. Right. These are people that live in their minds.

Yeah. almost more honest than usual, if that's possible. These are people that live in their minds, right? And it's almost like you're there to serve as a reminder that we're human beings. And that's why I changed the talk. Running the Sahara was a great, cool, interesting experience. Let me impress all these people. Exactly. And I'm like, okay, so I'm really going to get up for 15 minutes and just show these people, you know, here's a couple scenes from the movie.

And we ran this far and we, you know, we sweated this much and we lost this much. And I mean, I was like that it was hollow for me, even though I think it would have accomplished like the minimum goal. And the maximum goal was to tell them a story that went from addiction to matter what happens to you. All that matters is what you do with what happens to you. That's it. That's all of life. Good and bad things happen to every single one of us. And only in hindsight, normally, do we classify them as good or bad. normally, do we classify them as good or bad? Some are on the surface. But no, we classify everything as it's happening. We're just doing it with poor information. Right. Well, okay, so I'll give you the example. Somebody you love gets into a car accident, right? And so that's a bad thing. They're injured. They go to the hospital, they get a brain scan,

and it finds a brain tumor that they didn't know was there. So is the car accident a good thing or a bad thing? Yeah. You know, and the point is that you don't, you really don't know how things are going to work out. And if you absolutely classify something, you know, in my case, and we talked about it before, in my case, would I have ever chosen to like go to prison?

Of course not. I wouldn't sign up for it. If there was a sheet on the wall, like, hey, let's try this. But classifying it is either good or bad, which I don't really classify it as good or bad. It just is. But the things that have come from it are actually very good. Yeah. Undeniable. Undeniable. And it would be very easy for you, and this kind of brings up a larger conversation about sort of cultural mores that are creeping up in society right now that are kind of more indicative of the generation below us. But nobody would have put it past you to architect some great victim narrative around all these things that have happened to you,

whether it's your addiction story or whether it's your federal holiday. You could weave a whole identity around persecution, right? And you would be applauded for that, I think, in a way that maybe you wouldn't have 20 years ago or 10 years ago, which I think is a very interesting thing. But the choice to perceive and act upon these events in your life as springboards for continual evolution and growth, to look at them as opportunities, as divine moments to sort of perpetuate your evolution, that's the beautiful thing. That's the magic in all of this.

I mean, you nailed it. And it is an interesting thing how the temptation in writing this book even, and I would love to tell you that this was the first and only draft and that I got it right the exact first time. No, no. I would love to tell you that, but it's not true. We're going to talk about all that. Yeah. But I mean, just this thing of, as you said, I might be either applauded or at least justified in complaining about certain things in my life. I could complain about being an addict. And I spent, hell, I spent years, the first few years of recovery because I didn't understand the power of being an addict.

I spent the first few years trying to have that surgically removed. You know, if I could just get rid of this part, then I wouldn't have all these just crazy feelings and all of that. And it took me that long to figure out that, hell, if you cut that out, I might never get out of bed again. I mean, it is the thing that drives me to accomplish whatever it is I manage to accomplish. Yeah, you can't compartmentalize it out of all these other aspects that define who you are. No, and then the lesson to learn about something like my federal holiday, I have no desire to spend the rest of my life complaining about that or whatever. I can make a couple of blanket statements kind of about criminal justice system in the U.S. and priorities

and this and that. And I think I'm, I think I would, I can say them and they would be correct, but they're also pretty much accepted things these days. You know, kind of like everybody knows that there are some pretty confused priorities. And I think we agree there's way mass incarceration is a complete waste of time. And there's a lot of things that we should be focusing on rather than the things that we are. But that's politics. It's money. It's around elections.

It's all that stuff. And I'm not a, I'm not that guy that wants to spend the rest of my life, you know, I like to acknowledge injustice when I see it, but I'm more interested, I'm much more interested in the injustice that happens to you than I am in the one that happens to me. Right. And I think at its core, like the message that I get out of, at least, you know, the federal holiday aspect of your story, is that things are neither good nor bad. They just are. Life just is. Life is in session. And you have a choice. You have domain. You have power over what you're going to do with this information that's presented to you. So, you can be the victim, or you can take it in a completely different direction. And the idea that you could sort of perceive these four walls that were, you know, imprisoning you and channel that into a

positive direction is, you know, sort of a comment about the human spirit and your character. But I think that anybody, no matter what your circumstances are in life, can find, you know, hope and inspiration out of that. And that's the power. Like, to then divert the conversation into politics and privatization and all of that is a distraction from the bigger, the more powerful component of this story. the bigger, the more powerful component of this story. Well, and I think I know you will relate to this completely. You know, you can't, you have, I had a choice.

You know, I had this incredible choice to either be miserable. You know, when I went to prison, I could have been miserable. A lot of people were miserable in there. And you know what, I'm sure you were. I'm sure you had moments where you were miserable. Oh my God, you know. It's not like you're some superhuman. I reported on Valentine's day, you know, man, my only worry was not being somebody's Valentine, you know, I mean, I just wanted to get through that day. And, you know, but very quickly I was there and realized that, uh, there were, there were

people that were, they were doing all right all right and getting along okay in there and, in fact, improving their lives. And I had more than a few people tell me very early on that their life had been incredibly improved by this because they were on a track to die or whatever it might be. Some of that is hindsight. And what are you going to say? You're either going to cause yourself pain by always saying what an awful tragedy this is, or as a human being, you're going to say, I've learned something from it. And, you know, prison is a place where you get a lot of time to reflect.

And, you know, what I found for me was just simply that it was up to me. My happiness, just like the rest of the time, it was totally up to me. And if I wanted to be happy, even under those circumstances, that I could do it. Well, this is probably a good moment to kind of take it back a little bit and reprise the story for those that are new or newer to the podcast and have not had the opportunity to go back and listen to our initial conversation where we kind of recap your entire, you know, the arc of everything that's happened to you. But maybe we can kind of nutshell it a little bit and bring people up to speed before we dive into the book. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So how far back you want me to go? Or are we just talking about this? What it was like, what happened? Yeah, there we go. There we go. So, you know, so in a nutshell, for, you know, for me, I grew up in this very eclectic sort of hippie world and only child of very young parents in North Carolina and just cast.

My mom was a writer. She's a playwright. I didn't realize until I read the book just what a hippie your mom was. So she is a – my mom has Alzheimer's. She's in a facility. So I struggle with is and was because the person I knew is no longer the person she is. How old is she now? She's very young.

She's only 73. She just turned 73 and it was about 10 years ago that she was diagnosed. That's really early. turned 73 and it was about 10 years ago that she was diagnosed so really early and you know for a writer you know i tell the story in the book but you know she she called me one day or i called her i don't remember and she like said you know i can't spell the word b i'm like what do you mean she's like no i can't spell the word b i can't remember how and And, you know, and I heard the, I heard the fear in her voice. And there was a, there was another time where she called and she'd gotten lost going to the grocery store, you know, the same grocery store, two miles down the road that she'd gone to

for years. And she, she turned out the wrong way of the parking lot. And, you know, it took her two hours to find her way home. Anyway, she's certainly the most formative person in my life from start to here. And I like to think that she's sort of the hero of the book in a way, too, because she's my perpetual all-time supporter. No matter what idea I ever had, running across a desert, it didn't matter. Whatever it was, obviously, I didn't call her and say, hey, mom, I'm thinking about doing some cocaine. She would have had a problem with that. She always saw the best in you, and she always had your back, and she was always supportive of you and all your crazy, harebrained, creative pursuits, of which there have been many.

Many, yeah. And on the flip side, you had a dad who was more of a taskmaster and a guy who, you know, basically had difficulty sort of seeing the good in these things that you were doing. And we talked about choices before, right? Like, you have a choice of how you're going to perceive your federal holiday. Like you have a choice of how you're going to perceive your federal holiday. And as a young person, you had a choice to sort of be influenced by your mom or your dad. And you make this choice to really – it seems like what I got out of the book is that you're very driven by this need, this desire to impress your dad.

It was almost like everything your mom was doing is great, but what you really wanted was for your dad to get on your mom's page. And that was a pursuit that availed you nothing. My mother went through her entire life. I would probably guess that my mom never made more than 15 grand in a year was probably a good year. She was the type of person who she was all passion, you know, and just didn't, she just didn't pursue, you know, money. And, and it's not to say, I mean, my dad's, my dad's actually a really great guy. He's a nice man. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but he is, you know, if I was to go to dad and say, you know, Hey, I'm joining the Peace Corps or I go to dad and say, Hey, I just got a job making 200 grand a year, you know, hey, I'm joining the Peace Corps, or I go to dad and say, hey, I just got a job making 200 grand a year, you know, I can just tell you that the reaction

to those two things would be quite different. Right. You know, and he, you know, he believes in traditional, you know, things around, you know, you earn money and you buy a house and car and you do those things. And it's just not, what's funny is in my pursuit to please my dad through the years, I still, though, it was dishonest most of the time. So I, when push came to shove, most of the time I still made a decision that was exactly the opposite of, you know, what would have made him happy. Like, I just couldn't, I just had no follow through. I had a good, I had a good game. It's like, you know, it was like,

you're going to marry somebody you don't love, you know, you get to the altar and it's like, oh my God, what am I doing? Right. And, you know, and so it, it, it's taken a long time to come to terms with that in a way that I'm never going to have the kind of relationship with him that I want to have. But what it has also done is turned my relationship with my boys, my two sons, into this, I mean, powerful, you know, we're as close as any father and sons could be. father and sons could be. And they're as different as two boys could be from each other. And they know without a doubt that I love them truly as unconditionally as possible. And I want the best for them, but they're the ones who have to determine what's best. Pete Yeah. Breaking the cycle.

Pete Yeah. Yeah. Right. And they'll have kids of their own someday. And hopefully that cycle will continue in that loving, accepting direction. Because it's still what I need. It's still what I need. Right. And I actually get it from them. And there's a serenity prayer kind of aspect of that, too, of letting go of that need to try to get your dad to be

anything other than who he is. And that's a journey that kind of infused, that's a theme of the book as well. Well, it's unfair of me to assume that he would change or that I would somehow convince him to treat me differently than he's capable of treating me. I mean, that's a little bit naive. And I know my dad loves me. He just has a bit of a difficult time showing it or showing it in a way that fits what I need. Right. So the running thing kind of enters your life pretty early, and you show a natural talent for it and inclination and passion for it,

clearly, you know, it tapped into, you know, something primal for you and you found joy in it from a very early age. And what I didn't realize until I read the book was this sort of genetic, you know, predisposition to running. Like your grandfather was the coach of UNC? Yeah. Like a legendary was the coach of UNC? Yeah. Like a legendary track and field coach? 40 years. Yeah. I mean, he was an All-American and Jack himself in the 20s. Like the track was named after him? Yeah. So the cross country course at UNC Chapel Hill is actually called the Dale Ranson

cross country course. And my family actually still funds a full scholarship there. I didn't know that. Wow. And it's a source of real pride for me because he coached a lot of Olympians. But I'll tell you, the biggest power in it is that, okay, he died when I was a year old, so I never knew him. I mean, there's not even a picture of him holding me because apparently I hear that he was always at practice. me because apparently I hear that he was like always at practice. So, but I grew up with this narrative from family members of them telling me, oh, you know, you're just like Coach Dale. You're

just like your granddad. You're going to be a runner. And it's weird what you can do as a parent for a kid by not telling them that, you know, some parents might say, oh, you're going to be a doctor. And maybe, okay, maybe that does sort of work sometimes in a kid, but more often than not, that kid's either destined to be one or he's not. And for me, though, this love of running, you know, developed through an acceptance of running to begin with. So I at least was open to the idea because I'd been told about my grandfather. And I saw the awards on the wall. And I had a pocket watch that was like, conference championship 1936. And I had these couple of little possessions that were so important.

And in my head, I wanted to make him proud. He was not on this earth anymore, but there was that desire. I have a very similar thing in my own life. My grandfather was captain of the University of Michigan swim team in like 1929, I think. Swam for Mat Man, the natatorium at Michigan now is called the Mat Man Pool, who was a legendary coach at the time. And my grandfather had an American record and was an Olympic hopeful. He didn't ultimately make the Olympic team, but he died long before I was born. So I never had the opportunity to meet him.

But, you know, I'm named after him. So there's this doppelganger kind of aspect to it. And much like yourself, I was told told like, oh, you're a lot like him. And then I become the swimmer and follow in those footsteps. But I'm not consciously thinking about that when I'm in high school and college. But it's interesting how that DNA can send you on a trajectory that's sort of beyond your conscious awareness. No doubt. Well, and so I do in high school, I end up running and I run pretty well, you know, but I'm actually, I'm more interested in, you know, the football players are the ones that

date the cheerleaders. And so I will admit to, you know, I played football and I played basketball. I mean, that's very different. Most runners, they run. That's it. Have them do anything else, forget about it. But you're playing basketball. You're playing football. You play basketball at UNC on the freshman team. Yeah. Yeah. All of that said, and I don't like to live ever in regret.

And I'm an addict. So to take these two things, actually, and say that they don't live in the same world would be very naive. But, you know, I went to Carolina after a stellar high school career. And as I say in the book, you know, it's this, like I expected there to be a Welcome Charlie banner on my dorm. and other fantastic freshmen who were all top 10 in their class and great athletes and all these things. And, you know, I was shocked to see how average I was under those circumstances. I think it's very interesting and perhaps alcoholic that you're this kid who is, you know, president of your class and had been, and had been throughout high school. Obviously, you're a very gregarious, charismatic person. You have a big personality. You were great in sports. And I'm sure had a very sort of solid opinion of yourself going into college. And yet beneath that is this deep self-loathing and insecurity. And I saw that in the book when you

basically refused to run cross-country. And part of that is informed by the fact that this cross-country course is named after your grandfather. Like there's this legacy. And with that comes expectations that you feel like you're never going to be able to live up to. So why even try? No, and that is that, that is the regret right there is that I didn't, you know, it was very few things I'd want to go back and redo, but I could have run there. I wouldn't have been like a star athlete and I wouldn't have been, I would have been just average and I probably wouldn't have been a scoring athlete on the cross country or track team. But, you know, those programs do allow, you know, they have a lot

of runners and not all the runners get to go to all the meets or anything else. And I'd probably get to compete a few times, might not have earned a letter or whatever, but so what? And I think back about that. And here's the thing though, here's the dose of reality that I am very capable of still swallowing, and that is I'm an addict. I'm an alcoholic. And those traits weren't going to magically go away just because I went out for the track team or cross-country game. So in a way, maybe what I was afraid of wasn't being good enough, this idea of not being good enough to run there. But I knew somewhere deep down already that I was going to screw this up. And I did.

I totally just devastated the rest of my college career after the first couple of years. And I think I knew it was coming. And maybe not as a freshman. As a freshman, I still had great hope. But I actually went to Carolina, if you can believe it, to play football. Right. I mean, that's what I thought of it. I got an invitation, only an invitation to walk on, but I had spoken to the coach. And there was at least the opportunity to make the travel squad

or potentially even be on the team. And so when that didn't happen- And get your college education paid for. Exactly. Exactly. And I- But you've made sure you've screwed that up before you showed up. Oh, man. If you can just sabotage that early enough, then you can be sure you never have to fail. I got very good at sabotaging pretty much anything three steps in advance. Don't wait till that weed's three foot high. No. Oh, God, no. Step on it when it's a seedling.

When it's a seedling, absolutely. Because heaven forbid you sabotage yourself by on the playing field doing something disastrous. I make sure that I never get anywhere close to the playing field in those days. So what happened? How did you blow it with the football career? You know, I actually got hurt. I turned an ankle playing basketball the first week of my freshman year in college. And that was just kind of the end of football.

And, you know, I ended up going out for the JV basketball team and, you know, made the team and knew I was never going to play, of course, because you don't go play at UNC Chapel Hill as a walk-on. I mean, once in a very, very long time, that happens. And it wasn't- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you know, oh, man. But you played JV or you played, you did? JV, yeah. Did you know a guy named Bill Spindle? Bill Spindle. About your age. My age. Man, that sounds incredibly familiar. You played JV there? Played JV. He's my cousin.

Oh. Yeah. That's very funny. Yeah. And his younger brother, David Spindle, who was my year, my year, also played. I think he played freshman. I don't know if he played JV. Interesting.

Oh, actually, wait. Bill. No, no, no. I'm screwing it up. David Spindle played at UNC. Bill went to Michigan. Sorry, I got that all Bill. No, no, no. I'm screwing it up. David Spindle played at UNC. Bill went to Michigan. Sorry, I got that all wrong. No doubt.

But yeah, I used to go visit David at UNC. I have a huge scar on my leg to prove it from a night that I can't recall. So maybe I ran into you. Right. Did you come to a bar called Purdy's? I couldn't tell you. On Franklin Street? I have no memory of any of it.

I'm sure you were on Franklin Street. But I had a huge scar, so something happened. Well, I'm sorry about that. But anyway. I'm going to blame you. Is it in the right? Anyway. Is it in the shape of a tar heel?

No. So, yeah, so college ended up being just this launching pad into addiction. You know, I left there and, you know, as you know from your own story and from us talking about it before, I basically spent the next seven or eight years just doing my best to actually achieve. I actually, you know, I started a business. I got married. I bought a house, I got a car, because if I can do all those things, then my five-day binges off in some, you know,

coke heaven, you know, and drinking and then slinking home, I could get away with those. Yeah. You know, because they can't fire the top salesman, right? Right. Which turns out to not be true, by the way. You can't possibly be an addict or an alcoholic if you're bringing home good cash. Exactly. Or if you're able to get out there and run.

It says it in some contract I signed. As long as I'm making $100,000 or whatever it was, then you can't possibly be an addict. The thing that just struck me that was so powerful for me in your book was that phase of your life like just the like as the it's like if you're on slow boil right like you can just feel it getting hotter and hotter and hotter as the stakes get higher and higher and and this you know this this addiction is becoming increasingly you know more and more out of control and just the level of like incomprehensible demoralization that you would continually subject yourself to and bounce back and get clean for a little bit and then do it again and be absolutely baffled

that you, that you went back for more and then it would continue to get worse and worse and worse. And you're doing all the classic things. You're pulling the geographics and you're spinning the lies and living the double life and all of that. And I was just, I mean, literally I wanted to vomit because it was so real for me. Well, I always say quitting's easy. I've done it a hundred times. Yeah. I know. And we meant it. I mean, there was no lack of conviction. Every time I quit in that moment, 100% I meant that I quit because I felt so bad. The only thing that was redeeming in my entire world was this conviction to all of a sudden quit. I've spent all my money again. I've ended up in some place I definitely shouldn't be. I've destroyed my body once more. My car has a freaking

bullet hole in it. Whatever it might be, I've done it again for the almost uncountable time. So absolutely, that has to be the last time i'm not doing that again oh by the way does anybody have a valium yeah so i can go to sleep and and then when i go to sleep you know of course two days later i wake up and it's like okay well i don't feel that bad and you know and then it all starts over again right and it usually would start over when you had the opportunity to go out of town. Absolutely. Right?

So it's like that geographic, like failing to understand that wherever you go, there you are, that you're bringing yourself with you. And I know what that feels like. In early sobriety, it would terrify me to go out of town and be in a hotel room somewhere by myself because that's like, hey, nobody knows. I could do this. I could get away with something. Who's going to know like, hey, nobody knows. I could do this. I could get away with something. Who's going to know? No harm, no foul. Why should I tell anybody if I did that? And I had the curse, if you will, and I'm doing air quotes for anybody out there listening, and that's that I actually had a business that was lucrative enough that I could make $1,000 in a day when

I was on the road. And I mean, that was in a limited time span, but come on. I knew the calculator- This hilarious weird, like you're like undenting cars that have been pelted in hailstorms. That's just the weirdest- So I fix a car and it's $1,000 repair and it takes me a day to fix that car. I fix it, you know, and I might have three or four guys working for me too. So I'm, I'm taking 20% of, of, of their job too. So it wasn't uncommon in those days for me, you know, to, you know, I could earn a thousand or even a couple thousand dollars in a day and it might only be a couple of weeks. But my, my calculator was on, my mental calculator was on full standby, you know, because I knew in my head, okay, this much I need to like, I need to like take it and move it out of the way so that I've got, I can pay these bills and I can do that.

But hey, look at that. There's like $3,000 extra right there that I can- Were you getting paid in cash? No, every once in a while. But generally speaking, I got checks. And I mean, so yeah. So then I had to, of course, at the end of the year, make sure that I'd paid taxes on everything, which I did.

That's another story, but that is another piece of- I like how you were so quick to jump on that and clarify that. I knew it. Yeah. That is definitely a function of your federal holiday. That's somebody that's been beaten. Yeah. But still, a customer could write me a check. I could deposit it. It's my account, my business account. I can go put it in there and I can, of course, pay myself. And then when I pay myself, there's my money. And so I did this course pay myself and so and then when I pay myself there's you know my money right and so you know I just I did this over and over and it was a dangerous thing to feel like how many times I said oh my god let's just take 300 out I'll go buy an eight ball you know to be it'll be just tonight that's the thing people don't don, I think, about addicts and alcoholics.

That persistent delusion that tonight's going to be different, that I am going to be able to enjoy my couple drinks like a gentleman and call it a night. And convincing yourself that that's a possibility, despite copious evidence to the contrary. Every once in a while, which is actually terrible, you actually pull that off. That's the night you remember, man. That one time five years ago when I went home after two beers. Well, then my first sponsor said to me, okay, you do understand that normal people don't have to control their drinking. You get that, right?

Because we all tried the, okay, I'm only going to have two, or it's the weekend now, so I can blow it out on Saturday with a six-pack or whatever. And again, normal people just... My wife is a normal person. She has a glass of wine. And if that second glass of wine gets started, about 75% of the time, it doesn't get finished. And I'm like, I'm actually astounded. I'm like, aren't you going to finish that? That's more baffling than waking up naked in Vegas. I still say it today.

I'm like, aren't you going to finish that? It's like, come on. Or let's see if somebody else wants it. It's this crazy thing. Somebody's at the door. They are. Hold on one second. Hi. I'm still in a meeting

Yeah yeah yeah Sorry Whoops There was a sign on the door That said meeting in progress But she knocked anyway She didn't believe it To see if we still needed

The meeting sign That's like That's the best thing I know yeah Can I take your sign Well we're still in the meeting sorry so it just defeated the purpose of having it in the first place

we should clarify that your wife now is not Anastasia is your second wife and Pam was the name of your first wife in the book Pam has the patience of like a saint in this book because the number of times that she would have to clean up your mess is beyond like what you could wish on any human

being. Well, and you know, I don't know, I actually don't know how much you relate to this exact thing, but I'll say it this way anyway. And that is that I know a lot of people out there will relate to it. So I was married to Pam and she was my caretaker. So while she was still willing to take the role, she'd be the one to call in and say I was sick at work when I was working for other people. She'd be the one to go out and look for my freaking car when I couldn't find it. She'd be the one to do all these things. And interestingly, though, she won't mind. We've talked about it, and she won't mind me saying this. I said it in the book anyway to a degree.

I mean, she grew up in a household with a father who drank. A very nice man, but a drinker. What a shocking revelation. Yeah, exactly. So she ends up marrying someone like me. But there's a comfort, obviously, in that for her. So she's not totally freaked out by my behavior. And that's an illness almost in itself.

Any sane person who has the right self-confidence and just feels good about themselves never would have stayed with me through that stuff because they would have finally thrown up their hands. We sat together in marriage counseling one time and had a therapist actually say point blank, she is never going to leave you no matter what you do. Because there was a time in there where I was trying to make her leave. Right. Like I was trying to behave badly enough where she'd finally just go because I felt so bad about myself that I wanted to be alone, but she wasn't going anywhere. But yet lacking the maturity or the skills to actually confront it. Yeah, to confront it directly and discuss it. The courage. I was a total coward, you know, because I was an addict and that's not even an excuse. I was just simply, I was a coward. So,

then when I get sober years later, right, she's stuck by me all this time, and now we have kids and all of that. So now all of a sudden I'm in this place where, well, I can't possibly leave because she stayed by me all that time, and this wouldn't be fair. But the reality, and she and I, by the way, are still very close friends, and we co-parented very well, I think, with our boys. We co-parented very well, I think, with our boys. But there came a day where I got married as a 25-year-old in the midst of... She was leaving me, as you saw in the book.

And my way of solving that problem was, of course, hey, let's get married because I couldn't let her leave. And later on, our roles changed. I no longer needed the caretaker. I no longer needed somebody to call in you know i might still screw up but i i was there and present for my screw-ups right and i and i was willing and able to handle them myself and when suddenly she doesn't have to fill that role that codependent role of cleaning up your messes then what does that mean like how are you in how are you relating to each other who is she she without the person to take care of?

And she ended up with a lot of soul searching through that because she was this giving, generous person who was willing to do this. But we weren't in love, or I wasn't in love. And the reality was I knew I couldn't spend the rest of my life in that circumstance. And I love her as the mother of my kids and she's never been anything but wonderful to me. And I think I pay very proper, I honor her in this book as being a good mom and a good person. Yeah. No, you definitely accomplished that. I mean, my favorite kind of drunk-a-log story in the book, which simultaneously made my skin crawl

and laugh out loud, was when you go to dinner with her and your father-in-law. Can you just tell that story? I just love it. So Horace, who was just, again, this great man. And Horace had been a drinker earlier in his life, but he had a quadruple bypass in his early 70s and literally just was told he couldn't drink anymore. And if he did, it would kill him, which doesn't stop most alcoholics. But he did have his drinking. He still had a cocktail, but under control. So he's there for the whole week.

And I was in this phase where I knew absolutely I couldn't handle it. You had to keep it together. I had to keep it together because I really liked him. And he was there for a week. And I made it through six days. You were in Carmel at the time, right? Yeah, Monterey. And I'm selling cars at a Toyota dealership.

And I went through this little time. I mean, I'm like the number one car salesman in the country there for a little while. And so I'm selling a lot of cars because I'm an addict. I can talk, I can talk, you know, and my joke- You got the hustle. I do. And my joke was though that with any sales, of course, your only job, especially in car sales, is to prove that you're not like you didn't hatch or you're not an alien and you have a mother that loves you and you're not just out to screw the customer. Anyway, so I do my job all week. I sell a few cars and I sell this one car that's got like this, you know, $300 spiff, as they call in the car business, a bonus. And this cash is in

my pocket. They do pay those in cash. And then, of course, they take the taxes out on your check. So I had a lot of small checks in that business because I'd spend the cash. But I got this $300, and it's like, no, no, no. I'm not going to go to the dealer. I'm not going to do anything with this. And then, then my guy actually comes up to him and he says, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm holding, I got, you know, I got some Coke and if you want some, and I'm like, maybe for this weekend, he's like, yeah, you know, I don't think I'll have any more then. I mean, he was a good salesman himself. And so, right. So immediately I say, well, you know what? You're right. The practical thing to do here would be to go ahead and just buy it now and then save it. I'll save it because of course I can just

save it. And five minutes, I'm going to the restaurant to meet, it's my father-in-law's last night in town. He's going to take us out. And you almost made it. To the Monterey Plaza Hotel, man. He's taking us to this beautiful place right down on the water. It's this gorgeous spot and good food and all that. And so I'm five minutes down the road, and I stop. And I'm like, what's one bump? I could do a couple of bumps. I'm a little tired because I still believe that.

So I do that. And then before I get to the restaurant, I do two more lines and I, I show up, you know, wide eyed and chattering. And I know my wife knew exactly what the deal was, but Horace didn't know. And so we sat there at dinner for the whole night and, and just like, uh, you know, I talked my head off and I looked at my $25 steak and moved it around on my plate and cut it off. Yeah, pretending like you're eating it. If there had been a dog, I would have fed a couple bites because we all know that cocaine is a real appetite enhancer. So it didn't feel like eating because it's not for those of you out there who don't do it.

But I managed to get through the meal and I went to the bar, I went to the bathroom a couple of times. And on the way, I happened to stop and do, you know, a couple shots of tequila and down a beer. And I'd come back to the table and I got through the dinner. And I finally, you know, we leave. I used to do that thing of like, you know, I'm going to the bathroom and it always was a lap around the bar. And a couple quick shots on the way to the bathroom and then back from the bathroom and then return to the table. Absolutely. And here's the thing.

And I don't know if you were married at the time or whatever, but I told myself that, of course, no one knew about it. Of course my wife knew. But she knew there was zero. I had put her in a position, and addicts and alcoholics do this to their partners. I had put her in a position where she couldn't say. What could she say? I mean, there's nothing to say. All she could do is try to manage me and hope that I wouldn't just spin out of control or fall on the table and knock everybody's food off.

I'm a loud person anyway. I may be the loudest person you've ever known, just with a natural volume. And put that on cocaine and alcohol in a restaurant. And I mean, people across the restaurant are turning their heads going, oh my God, is there an argument going on over there? But in your mind, you're just being super charming and engaged. Oh, I am fantastic. If there was music, I would have danced.

I mean, it was that kind of thing. So on that night, we finally, mercifully finished dinner. Then we go home, and I like feigned, man, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. And my wife was not a good drinker. man, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. And my wife was not a good drinker. So she, and she, she would have a couple of glasses of wine and like, she would just, you know, pass out. So she'd had her two glasses and probably had half a glass when we came home. And so when she came to bed, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm gently snoring as if asleep and, you know, and she's out in three

minutes and I'm like up out the door, you know, I'm out the front door and I walk, you know and she's out in three minutes and i'm like up out the door you know i'm out the front door and i walk you know to a you know to a bowling alley uh nearby and i don't drive at least there's that one thing and i'll tell you this i'll tell you i'd left this out of the book and to be honest it was a mistake and i'd forgotten about it and i'll tell you a brief story. I'm on my way to the bowling alley. Two cops roll up on me. I got the remnants of an eight ball in my pocket. Two cops roll up on me, and on the sidewalk, cars. And they take me, and they're like, what are you doing out here, whatever.

It's midnight or something, and they're like, empty your pockets. And so luckily, I have enough crap in my pockets that I start pulling stuff out. And I hear one of them like on the radio. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And they come back to me. He's like, nevermind, put your stuff away. And I mean like the last thing left in my pocket is the drugs. Why did you leave that out of the story in the book? You know what? To be honest, it was a mistake. And you reach a point where you've turned in the final manuscript. And in my drunk-a-log, I actually had this as a different occurrence. And it wasn't until later that I actually realized that it was the same episode. And whatever, maybe if there's a second printing,

I can add it back in. But they're like, let me go. And so I go to the bowling alley, I do my thing. I'm there until like five o'clock in the morning and I come back. And this is actually highly unusual. Just having your own party at the bowling alley. I'm just bowling and drinking.

Did the bowling alley stay open that late? It did. It was an all night bowling alley, man. And the craziest thing, when I was doing coke, I bowled over 200, like, multiple times. I couldn't bowl worth shit when I was sober, but, you know, it was a great— How does that work like that? I don't know. I don't know.

Just focus, you know? I mean, it's a terrible drug, but it had its— That's the other thing. Like, in this book, I wonder sometimes if people will wonder about, you know, how much I remember. But, you know, I wasn't – cocaine was a part of pretty much every binge, every episode. And cocaine is – it is a drug where you don't necessarily forget things. Right. So you have this depressant of alcohol.

Cocaine actually allows you to just continue to drink and drink and drink. Without being drunk drunk. Without blacking out. Right, exactly. Like, I never passed out. Pretty much never. Like, the passing out was not in my, you know, it just wasn't in my skill set. So, I wish I could sometimes.

But anyway, so I come back home and it's 5 a.m. And I'm like, oh, thank God I've gotten home in time, because I need to slip back into bed and whatever. And I'm coming up in the driveway, and I see the lights on in the kitchen. I'm like, oh, shit, this is bad. And I just skirt out to the garage. It's a detached garage at this house. And so I go into the garage and I'm in there pacing

and, you know, frantic and, you know, how am I going to spend this? And I see my dirty running clothes from a couple of days before. Cause look, even during this time, running was part of my life, you know, and I, I would running saved my life multiple times and I'd clean up or get frustrated with my behavior. And I'd, you know, and I'd run and it get frustrated with my behavior and I'd, you know, and I'd run and it was a purging. And I talk about it a lot in the book and different stories, but there's my dirty running clothes and I put them on. I'm like, ah, I have this Eureka, absolutely brilliant idea, you know, in my stoned mind. So I put on my clothes and I literally take water from the faucet and I put it in my head and I shake my head out. And so now I've got just enough. I even know that,

just putting the water on there, it looks like you just poured water on. So I jog in place for a minute and I get a little going and like i've got all this going in and i like literally jog into the kitchen you know from the back patio i'm like hey oh you guys are up man wow it's early yeah what are you guys doing i go over to the sink and splash a little water and get a towel and wipe my face off i'm like hey what's going on and they're just looking at me i'm like, what? Pam's like, well, we've been up since three. I told dad everything. So now I'm not just an ass.

I'm an ass standing there in dirty, sweaty running clothes. But I just love the idea that you're going to pull this off, that this lie is going to go over. How could that not work? I have my own version of that story that I've spun a couple times. And the idea that it's going to work. How could that not work? I still don't get it. It's like, oh, they outsmarted me.

No, and it was another catalyst towards getting me into treatment. And I was embarrassed. And, you know, Horace died a couple years later after that. And, you know, but he never held it against me. I mean, I think he also, you know, he knew I wasn't a bad guy. And, you know, we'd been married a few years. And I was certainly good to his daughter. And, you know, he was very forgiving. We'd been married a few years, and I was certainly good to his daughter.

He was very forgiving, but it was certainly a—I would love to say that that was even in the top 50 most humiliating things I've ever done, and it wouldn't be true. It's just that I did most of them away from family. That was one of the few times where I did something that was just gut-wrenchinging and like right in the face. And on public display for the people that you cared about. I preferred to disappear with my vengeance. And I just would then show back up two or three or eight days later. Yeah, pretend it never happened. And beg for forgiveness, you know. And usually I could get it because once again, I was very convincing about my, you know, I'm sorry, that's the last time I'll ever do that.

And the next chapter that kind of ensues is this rubber banding. Like you do, you go to treatment and you have these sort of stints with sobriety that always, you know, sort of are short-lived and end up in some crazy, you know, unforeseen circumstance that you create for yourself. Indeed. But throughout this, as you mentioned earlier, like throughout all of this, running is very much a part of, you know, who you are. And I'm interested in, you know, what that relationship looks like for you, because I think it starts out as, as you describe it in the book, it's like this self-imposed purgatory, right? I need to feel that pain to atone for this great sin that I've perpetrated by disappearing for four days and going down the drainpipe on drugs and alcohol.

and going down the drain pipe on drugs and alcohol. And if I can feel myself and punish myself through that visceral experience of running, then somehow that evens the playing field. But then it sort of morphs into this way of feeling more alive, right? So can you describe that evolution? I can. And I mean, you actually described it very well. But running became, well, first I should say, I still had an ego.

I was certainly a drug addict with enough ego to not want to look like a drug addict. And so running, of course, has this way. And so running, of course, has this way, you know, it's to me, if you want to get fit, if you want to lose a few pounds, if you want to whatever, I mean, nothing does it like running. And so, plus it doesn't take any equipment. I could do it like, you know, that. Like, so I'm in my running shoes even when I'm still hung over and wasted sometimes. And it was... But that also fuels the denial as well, because as long as you can keep doing that and you can go out and do that, then everything's cool. Like how bad...

I'm not an addict. Yeah, like you're not one of those guys in a church basement. I can run a marathon. How can I be an addict? I can run a marathon drunk faster than most people, and I can do it on two hours of sleep hungover. Yeah. But what I did start doing was using, I guess I used running almost as penance, as self-flagellation where I would- Your hair shirt. Right. If I could have taken the thing and whip it over my shoulders and make my back bleed, I would have done that. But this was my version of that, one that I understood. And the interesting thing about it, every runner has felt that you do get control of the burning in your lungs. hard enough to like to like cause yourself with lactic acid buildup and you know oxygen depletion and of course not to mention an unbelievable amount of dehydration after the things that I

would do I actually knew that I would I would all like squeezing a sponge my desire was to squeeze dry everything that I had done and I wanted it out of me. Of course, that's not how it works, but that's how I pictured it. And so when I ran, you know, I ran as hard as I was capable of running under those circumstances. And I felt like I was purging my, not just my bad behavior, but the, man, the deep-seated, painful insecurity and shame. I mean, it's shame, right? It's because that's where I lived, was in this shameful place where I knew how bad I was, and I knew, like most addicts, that if other people knew how bad I was, they would hate me, despise me, whatever.

And so I wanted all of that out of me. And I found running, okay, I wasn't running for the right reasons, but running still saved my life in that way. Running and a combination of that and addiction recovery when I finally got a handle on what that meant and why I was actually doing it. You mentioned treatment earlier. I went to treatment, and I'll just tell you very briefly, the reason I know this for certain, the reason treatment didn't work for me when I went when I was 27 was a 28-day program in Pacific Grove, California, traditional. You do the group counseling, get some one-on-one.

You go to AA meetings that are right there in the building and all that. It's because I was a genius, right? So that was my view. I didn't really think I was a genius, but I was smart. And smart people don't need spirituality. That was my— They also don't need to do the work because they can read the book or skim it and go, I got it. I got this.

Absolutely. So I said, almost like training for a marathon, I said, okay, I'm going to do this for 90 days. So I practically learned that big word for word. I could, you know, I'd say the serenity prayer. I would certainly talk about a higher power but in my head I'm like going yeah whatever that's for other people you know I'll do the rest of this and I did get a lot out of you know doing an inventory and sharing it with somebody and

talking about this you know I understood very quickly that doing all of that was a way of purging and therapy and it did feel good but i wasn't about to allow some kind of higher power to i wasn't turning shit over to that guy you know what i mean because that would require you to relinquish yourself will exactly and as somebody you know beyond the intelligence quotient you're also an athlete and an athlete who excels in an individual sport. And if there's something you learn through the process of developing as an athlete in an individual sport is that your performance is directly related to the amount of work and focus and dedication that you and you alone decide to put into it and what comes out of that is this idea that self-will will avail you everything right in the context of running or any other number of sports so to then say well you got to let go of that like not only does that create something to disagree with it doesn't even compute like what do you mean right like the idea of surrendering that i don't even understand

what that no so 90 days into treatment i mean i, it's 28-day treatment, and then I stayed sober for 60 more days where I was going to meetings, and I was active. And man, I was waiting for that 90-day tip, because that was like a graduation diploma for me in my mind, and I knew that. I wasn't telling anybody else that. But if I could just get to 90 days, then, you know, things would be fine from that point forward. And so I stopped going to meetings. I certainly didn't have a sponsor to talk to. And I did manage to stay sober another like 90 days. But what I didn't get at that point was that there's only about, what? There's only like 1% of the time for a recovering addict that is actually dangerous.

And the other 99% of the time is when we're supposed to be building up our power and our guards to be prepared for that 1%. That one moment when a drink appears or a drug appears or a feeling, heaven forbid, appears, an emotion that we're not prepared for that in the past, we could take care of that emotion in a second with a drug or a beer or whatever. And so I didn't understand that all of this time was like training for a race. You're training 99% of the time, and the race is only 1%. That race is that one moment where suddenly you're like, what's the big deal?

Hey, I have a beer. You got this thing in the back of your head, this voice going, hey, you deserve this. You don't just need a beer. You deserve it, damn it. Look how hard you worked. So it was around nine months, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So, at nine months, you take your diploma, you graduate from sobriety and celebrate this great achievement by going out on a bender. Absolutely. Right? And so, when people come to me and they're like, I don't, you know, like, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not sure I really understand, you know, what that means or what that is. Like, what is an alcoholic? What is an addict? And I just, I always say, imagine a person who works extremely hard to repair their life. They stay sober for an entire year. They put everything into it. They make it their number one priority.

And then when they get that one-year chip, they celebrate it by getting drunk, and they think that's a good idea. That is the essence of what it means to be an alcoholic, the insanity of that tweak, that mental tweak, that mental, you know, whatever it is, disrepair that would lead you to believe that that's a perfectly good idea. Well, and here's the thing. The discipline that it took to go that year and to know, and probably in the back of your head, that on your, you know, I mean, that year didn't just appear and then you decide to get drunk. Like that thought of drinking started. Oh, yeah. You're playing that scene.

Right. And so how much discipline does it take to actually keep yourself in that space once you already know this is going to happen? I mean, so the power of an alcoholic or an addict is so strong. And if that could only be used, if our power can be used for good, then a lot can be accomplished. And that is why, though, I think you and I and a lot of other people that you talk to and that are listening out there right now, they do understand that, man, this addictive power is what makes them good at stuff. And if they can just figure out how to apply it to their life. Right. But then when you do that, they accuse you of just being addictive in that other discipline. Okay.

Which brings us up, and we talked about this last time. We did. But I think it bears repeating, or maybe your definition or perception of that has evolved. No. Yeah, when people say, well, you're still, you're just a crazy alcoholic, you just channeled all that into your running and you have this unhealthy relationship with it. And it couldn't be, it literally couldn't be farther from the truth because everything about my addict and my addictive behavior when I was drinking and doing drugs was about hiding every bit of who I

was. I mean, first of all, I didn't really know who I was, but heaven forbid that starts to surface, I would drink it or drug it down back into the pit where it came from. So all I wanted to do was destroy and hide every bit of my personality. Running, on the other hand, does the exact opposite. I really do feel like I become the true essence of who I am and who I'm meant to be in the course of a run. And that doesn't mean it's all light and sunshine. Sometimes that means I'm a dick. Sometimes that means I'm whatever. But it's an emotion that I actually get to have.

So maybe my view has evolved. I think this is different than what I said, but it's more expansive. I now understand that it's not a requirement just because I'm sober that life is going to be good or that I have to be nice all the time or that I'm not going to be hungry or cranky or snap at my wife on something when I absolutely shouldn't. The difference is now I get to apologize. I get to admit my wrong or even potentially stick by my rightness, but without that alcoholic's conviction of based in fear that everything I do has to be justified in some way. Now I'm, and running has taught me that I, and it doesn't have to be running. It can be biking.

I mean, if I couldn't run again tomorrow, I'd find another outlet for this. And I don't do it addictively. I do it instinctively. I don't run every day. I like to exercise every day because it makes me feel good. Why the hell wouldn't I want to do that? Racing is more about culture and travel for me than it is anything else now. I don't want to do the neighborhood 5K every year.

That begs the question of why so extreme then? Why run across the Sahara? Why do Badwater or however number of times you've done it? Why run across the United States? Why can't you just go do the 5K? Badwater is unique for me because it's the only race that I've really ever gone back to over and over, except for I did Boston a bunch of times, the marathon. And the reason I did that is because I was going every four or five years. And it was cool to see my own evolution at Boston because the course

doesn't change. Same course, same great crowd, whatever. The difference is my first year at Boston, I didn't even realize there were spectators. I mean, it's like I was so, because this is all about me and my time. And by the fourth or fifth time I did it, I high-fived every kid. I took orange slices, even if I didn't want to eat them because I didn't know if they'd wash their hands. I stopped at Wellesley and made out with a couple of girls. I had the experience because I wanted to have it. Well, that's its own evolution too, because this sort of arc is throughout the book as well, where it

starts out like, you know, running is a sense of, is a means of proving to yourself that maybe you're not, you know, as crazy as you might want to believe. But those involve running marathons, like drinking, you know, drinking beers at mile 20 or, you know, doing all kinds of other insane stuff. But then you finally clean up and you become very focused on your times, right? Like it's all about like, I got to go under three hours and all of that. And it drains all of the sort of joy out of it. And then it's a journey towards trying to recapture that sense of joy that you experienced as a young person running. Man, you nailed it. I mean, that couldn't have been better. It's something that Julie, my wife, tells me all the time.

Like when I was training for Ultraman, I kind of lost a little bit of the joy because I was so performance-oriented. And then it's easy to not have a goal. Then it's harder to get back into it. And she's like, you've got to get back into it, but you've got to find a way to find the love. You've got to do it for the love. It's not for the goal or the end point.

Well, and so in the book, there's an interesting scene that really resonates with me still, where I'm in the Sahara Desert. And a lot of people have seen that film. And the film, whether it is or is not— Just tell people really quick if they're new. So running the Sahara, along with two you know i ran all the way across the desert 4 500 miles and it was 111 days and matt damon narrated and produced this this film and it's a it's a beautiful film and it's also a very it's an interesting and divisive film because some

people some people see me as this you this sort of heroic person in it, and others see me as the biggest asshole in the world in it. And I've got the emails to prove it. The edit threw a little shade in your direction. No doubt. So the edit made me look like a dick, and it's certainly in the last part of the film. And the beauty of being sober is I can actually respond to the people who think I'm a dick because of it and say, through a lot of years of maturity, you know what,

absolutely, I understand why you say that. And I'm actually not saying that I'm not. It's very disarming to people when you do that, because they're not expecting you to kind of own that. Because I mean it. I mean, I was far from perfect there. I can say that the way the movie depicts that particular scene is, there's not, it's false. I mean, it's not even just like off a little bit. It's like, it's like, it's just not true, but I understand why it's in there because it created intrigue and, you know, it made me, you know, whatever, it made me look a certain way. But I, you know, the Sahara was a life changer for me in a whole lot of ways, both good and bad. And you asked a moment ago about, you know, why go do something like that. And this is the part that I still feel today. And I still want to do other things. And that is culturally, yeah,

I want to test myself. Certainly there's ego involved in wanting to see if I can do something. There's nothing wrong with that. I didn't have to lose that just because I have sobriety and humility. It's okay to want to be good at something or first at something. Yeah. What you learn in sobriety is you don't have to apologize for wanting to be better or more expansive than you are. What I've learned, and I know it now even far better than I did after the Sahara, is for the most part, I'm no longer attached you know, attached to the outcome. You know, my happiness or satisfaction is not directly attached to how something comes out. And my wife is actually very good at pointing

out something to me that I didn't understand about myself. I don't talk about the Sahara. I don't, yes, I wrote about it and whatever. If I have questions about it, of course I'll talk about it. But I can be sitting on an airplane next to somebody and we start talking about running and we'll end up spending the whole time talking about the half marathon that they're getting ready to do. My wife will tease me about, why didn't you tell them that you've done a lot of running? I'm like, why? I get it, but it's not humility either.

I would absolutely tell them what I want to do, what's coming up, but I'm way more interested in the other things that I want to do than the things that I've done. Well, also the moment that you mentioned that, it almost creates an emotional divide between you and the person you're trying to connect with, because their perception of you will then switch from somebody they can relate to to somebody who's unrelatable. Exactly. And I don't want that. The reason I travel, the reason I run and go to crazy countries all over the place is I actually want to connect with people, you know, and I want to running, running is this gift. And I'll tell you this one story. I told it to a guy today,

in fact, who asked me here at Google about what it was like, because I showed a little scene in my talk of going into this village, Foshee, this oasis town that's in the film. And it's this beautiful scene and all these kids are around us and we're running in. And it really is like a, it still gives me goosebumps to think about it. A year earlier, I had driven into those same kind of towns in a scouting trip, right? When I'd gone to do some scouting for the film and try to figure out logistics and whatever. You drive into that same little village in a Land Cruiser and you get out. And the first thing that happens is everyone is looking at you and then maybe a couple of kids or people come up with their hands out. And they've learned that people that drive into their town, they're foreigners,

And they've learned that people that drive into their town, you know, they're foreigners, they're white people, whatever they might be. And so there's a routine and everybody plays their part. Well, they've never had anybody run in from the open desert. These three, you know, white guys, I mean, Kevin's Asian, but, you know, basically very different guys from them running into their village from the open. They don't have, certainly then, this is eight or nine from the open. They don't have, certainly then, this is eight or nine years ago now, they don't have cell phones. It's not like somebody called and said, hey, there's some guys coming down the road. We just appear out of the desert and we don't speak the same language and they don't care and they're laughing and having fun as kids and and their behavior is

not one single person had their hand out for anything. They weren't asking, and they needed stuff. This is an oasis, and they have water, but it's still not exactly by any standard. It's impoverished. And we run out of the town, and many towns that we'd run out of under those circumstances we got like kids running with us and i mean for five or ten k it just imagine somebody running you know what if what if a couple of guys ran through your hometown and your kids just ran out the front door and just headed down the highway with them for like a couple hours

i mean we'd be calling the cops and saying, oh my God, my kids are gone. And it's just so different. And that is the experience that I want to keep having for the rest of my life. Which is what? Well, it's just this connection, this human connection. And especially without, it's interesting when you can't speak the same language. I mean, this was totally Arabic there. There were some French-speaking, so Ray, you know, Ray Zahab, could talk to some of the kids.

But generally speaking, it was all Arabic. I didn't speak any Arabic, but there was this joy, this laughter. And, I mean, holding my hands and, you know, touching me and not being afraid of the difference of this person. And these are in places where, I mean, tourists don't come to these towns. So they're not like, they don't have some vast experience with Europeans who are much more prolific as far as their travel in this area. There's no Yelp reviews for this. No, exactly.

Hey, which restaurant should we eat in? You know? And there's none of that. And so, I mean, that is the, you know, sort of the epitome of what I would like to keep having in some fashion as long as I can do it. Right. And I think it's about trying to develop a healthy relationship with that desire. You know, it's very vivid in the book when you describe the first time that you get high smoking crack, like doing something you thought you never would do before because that would mean something about who you are in a way that you never perceived yourself to be and where that leads you. And then all of the,

you know, the sort of crack smoking in the wake of that first experience is an attempt to feel like you felt that first time that you did it, right? So is it the same with running, like in the wake of having that experience a, hey, dude, that's such a, you know, I worry about that almost because when, you know, I do even worry about it for myself in the sense that will there, and actually I know it won't, but will there ever come a day when there's simply nothing left to do and then what am I going to do? Because, and I do talk about it some in the book, but I've spoken about it a lot, this feeling of, you know, I've spoken at a lot of marathon expos and pasta dinners and stuff. And you get people that like, you know, they raise their hand. Because I'll do it. I'll say, who's run, you know, 10 marathons?

Who's run 20? You know, you get some guy over here who's run 79 marathons. Yeah, like where does it end? Right. And what does it mean? And my question for him is, and I'm not trying to be demeaning about it, because I have to be careful, because I'm admiring him and his dedication on one hand. But I've asked a couple of times, so tomorrow morning, when you tow the line, are you worried about being able to finish the race? And he's like, no, not at all. And I'm like, don't you miss that? Because why would I want to do something

over and over and over again that I absolutely know that I can do? For a while, it was about time for me in marathons. And so that was enough to sustain me. I'm no longer going to set a PR in the marathon. I'm just not. I'm not going to be faster. I don't know. Of course, the ego part of me says that if I dedicated the next two years of my life, maybe I could, but that's not what I want to do. So if I can't find joy in towing the line, what I need in a marathon is more a beautiful place. And I love the energy of a marathon because it's thousands of people there for the same reason. But my preference would be to go do some 100 miler or some stage race in a foreign country and run through an area. And I am standing on the starting line

going, holy shit, I hope I can actually do this. Or just what that experience, what that journey is going to entail involves a question mark, right? As opposed to a foregone conclusion. So this is, I feel like we're peeling the layers and we're getting at the real Charlie because there's nothing wrong with, I think I understand completely and relate to that idea of why would you do – like you know you're going to finish this, like so what's the appeal? But what I've learned and what I've come to also appreciate is that I think part of the drive for someone like that is that they get to enjoy the community, like that there's something to just the experience in and of itself. It doesn't have to be driven by any agenda outside of that,

which is a leap for me to get to. Because like yourself, like I'm not interested in just going and running a bunch of 10Ks and marathons and all that kind of stuff and be a middle of the packer. Like it doesn't really appeal to me. Yeah. But to recognize that that's a beautiful thing in its own right and works for a lot of people is great too.

But what drove me, like in my drinking career, part of the allure for me when I was getting ready for what I knew was going to be a big night was that there was a question mark. Like I never knew where it was going to go. And that would scare a lot of people. But to me, like that's the best part. Totally. We're going to go on this adventure. and that would scare a lot of people but to me like that's the best part totally we're gonna

go on this adventure and i know i'm gonna come across some crazy people and some weird stuff's gonna go down and i just can't wait to figure out what that's gonna be and it's very similar to towing the line on at an ultra like what's gonna happen yeah see when when you got i love this like idea of you know when you're a addict, when I was doing so much coke and smoking crack, the far more powerful part of that was the acquisition of the drug. Because having that in my hand and in my pocket. It's potential energy. The possibilities were limitless, you know, because every single time I had those drugs in my pocket

and, you know, I was going to- That's its own rut, that dopamine rush of that alone, just that idea. So this narrative of I'm going to go do this, I'm going to go find some people to party with and I'm going to go, like, this is going to be this best night ever. And then, of course, I,

you know, I do the line or I light the pipe and all of that is gone for two reasons. What you said a moment ago, the high, because I've been doing it now for so long, doesn't even approach the first time I did it. So that's not there. Number two, I now have enough experience to know that once I do that first line, I'm not sharing this shit with anybody. And once I smoke that first little bit, like this is mine. I may go find somebody, you know, whatever, because I need a, if I'm in a, you know, another city that's not mine, I need to find a way to acquire more. So I need a, you know, I need a person. But I would also relate it in a weird way to running in the sense that there is huge power still in, boom, and putting your finger on the enter button on the

computer and, you know, are you sure you want to enter this race? It's like, yes. And man, you get that email back that says, congratulations, now you're in, whatever it is. And man, that is a, I tell people all the time, I had the conversation with a woman this morning running here from this beautiful hotel. And I led a run for people that wanted to show up. And she's run a bunch of half marathons, and she really wants to run a marathon. But she wants her life to be perfect in order to do it. She has kids at home. She's married. She's got a great career. There's just not time.

And I gave her the talk, as I call it. I'm like, all I can tell you is trust me on this. Enter the race. Find one you want to do. If you've been running half marathons, I guarantee you right now, you and I could get together tomorrow and you could run a marathon distance. You might walk, run, you know, it might be a six-hour marathon, which might not be your ideal goal, but so what? Right. You're having the experience. I mean, what I would say to that person is, was your life perfect when you got pregnant? Right. You know, because that's the big thing.

People don't want to have kids until everything is lined up and they know that they're going to be safe and secure and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, life doesn't work that way. Life is messy. Wait until you're 62 then. If you had kids, it's fine. Wait until you retire just to have kids then. Maybe life will be perfect then. Yeah, exactly. kids then. Maybe life will be perfect then. And I think she got it because I think she understood how scary it is to hit that button not knowing whether you could do it. But oh man, what a gift.

There is no greater gift than having the opportunity to be fully present for a first in your own life. Because very often, all we ever do is look back at firsts and we have such skewed memories and I don't care if it was a first sexual experience, a first race, a first time you tasted a food or visited another country. Or smoked crack. Or smoked crack. Absolutely. No, it's exactly right because, man, my memory of the first time I smoked crack is just as powerful than what it actually felt like, if that makes sense. Because, of course, I can't remember what it felt like, so all I have is the memory of it. But, man, I've walked, even in nice hotels, I've walked down a hall in a normal hotel and I've smelled crack coming out from under the door of somebody's room.

And I've stood outside it like going, because I can see through the door practically exactly what is going, what hell is going on behind that door. And I've wanted to knock on the door a couple of times. And I don't know if I wanted to knock to say, hey, can I join? Or you guys should think about a new path because I can promise you this one isn't going to work out. Right. I'm sure they would have really welcomed that sound from you. I'm certain they would have because we all know that the best thing to do as a recovering person is to try to force people into our way of life. How has your sobriety evolved or your perspective on sobriety evolved maybe since the last time we talked?

Maybe it hasn't, but. It has. I think it has in this one really fundamental way, and that is that I am even more appreciative for this idea of attraction rather than promotion. I mean, it really, I think it rules my life because I want it to. Because the danger even with having a book is, and in writing this book, because I didn't want this, there's not, I hope there's not one sentence in this book that sounds like, well, here's what you should do. Because there is not, I'm not qualified to tell anybody what they should do, but sobriety and recovery programs taught me that I am fully capable and allowed to tell how I did it. And if how I did it in some way appeals to somebody else and they find their

way into running or into sobriety or into prison for that matter, you know, I mean, then so be it. Hopefully my book doesn't take them to prison. But, you know, the fact is, I think, and I've had three instances already where people who are going to prison have been in touch with me to want to have a conversation. Now, that's a crazy conversation. You told them to get a nickname? Yeah, I did. Absolutely. Well, there's no manual out there.

Yeah. There should be. There should be. That's your next book. Well, we have enough people incarcerated in this country where there probably should be. Can you imagine how helpful that would be? Prison for dummies. Here's what you need to know going in.

Is it federal? Is it state, first of all? Right. Here are the things to say and don't say when you go into the bathroom. You know? I mean, you know, don't look. I still, and I know we haven't been talking about this, but like in prison, like one of the craziest rules was you don't look in cells as you walk down a hall, you know, because it's natural. I mean, you know, just imagine if you're walking

down the hall of this hotel and everybody's front window is wide open or their door is open. It's human nature. What are you going to do? You're walking down the corridor and you're going to glance over into every room. Not even because you're being nosy. It's just you're a person and you're curious. Curiosity is not a good trait to have when you're in prison. So learning how to walk in a straight line down a corridor with 50 cells on each side of you and not ever look to one side or the other. How would you know that? You know, you got to be told. And it just occurred to me that if people are the newer people who didn't listen last time, maybe you should explain how you ended up in prison.

Right. Well, yeah, so I'll keep this part brief. So I'm in, and this is in the book. So anybody who wants a real detailed explanation can certainly find it. But, you know, in 2010, the premiere of my second film, Running America, which was, you know, running across the country, Marshall Ulrich and I, and, you, and we finally have this film to show, and I'm in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I have this amazing premiere one night, and 300 people in the audience.

It's a great night, one of the best days of my life. And the next day, I get up and I go out and do some errands, and I get accosted by six armed IRS agents that come out of a coffee shop and, you know, and they arrest me and put shackles and handcuffs on me and throw me in the car. Was it like you imagine in the movies where they're wearing dark suits and dark sunglasses and they're in a black SUV? Exactly. It was a gray, you know, Ford LTD're in a black SUV. Exactly. There was a, it was a gray, you know, Ford LTD or something. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, you know, and as it turns out, there'd been, you know, this one IRS agent who just took a real interest in me and he asked

the question to himself, unfortunately, that, you know, how does, how does this guy, you know, run across the Sarah desert? How does he afford to do that? And, you know how does how does this guy you know run across the sarah desert has he afforded to do that and you know and of course i i guess he'd never heard of matt damon because you know i certainly it would have taken about 10 minutes to figure out that i certainly didn't pay for it and that in fact i had been you know it was my idea but once the production company came and and got involved you know, it was all them. And in fact, I was paid a stipend and, you know, whatever, however many, however much money to actually do the run itself, just to have living expenses. But this guy, he had a bug up his ass.

He did. For some reason. He did. And he went after me. Maybe he saw the movie with a girlfriend who decided she liked you. Maybe I took his parking space at, you know, at the Harris Teeter. And, and, you know, I mean, I really, I'll never, I will never know, but ultimately, you know, I was charged with essentially with overstating my income on a home loan application. And that, that is, it's, it's exactly, you know, anybody listening is going to say, well, that's what, that's not possible. And yes, it is. And that's what it

was. And the details don't matter right this moment. And I had a seven-day trial and I was found guilty and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison in Beckley, West Virginia. And so... There's a pretty robust New York Times profile about you and the story that I think is pretty fair to you, right? You would say? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I'll put a link up to that article in the show notes for people that are listening. And here's how that happened. You know, Joan O'Sareth in New York Times, very well-known op-ed writer wrote an article that said, nobody is in prison for the subprime mortgage scandal, except Charlie. And my father wrote him, my father wrote to him and said, I beg to differ. My son's in prison. That's exactly how

it came about as my dad. And he, you know, again, he's an incredible advocate. And so Joe, you know, wrote a story, wrote another story and, you know, just really shed a lot of light on it. And, you know, and I can't help myself but to say this, things have evolved in the last few years, you know, this is don't, don't forget, this is 2010. So it's only a couple of years after 2008, after the quote unquote crash and people to this day still would have a hard time unless you've seen the big short or whatever, would have a hard time kind of explaining what happened. But at that point, you know, what happened. But at that point, you know, I was the target of something that was very much in the public eye. And, you know, the government was very much interested in trying to bring someone to account. And, you know, I ended up on the- This is all your fault, Charlie.

I was. And I was on the day, I'm sorry about that, all you guys out there. Forget that guy, Countrywide, whatever his name is. So I was on the daily show even, and Jon Stewart held me out in this one piece as the cause of the meltdown. Yeah. And whose fault is it? This guy's, because I was the only guy. I didn't see that. Yeah.

Is that online? Oh, yeah. I've got to find that. Yeah, you Google me on daily i mean you'll find it and it's it's it's very funny because it actually is a five minute segment that he called like you know priorities and he's talking about the priorities of you know of law enforcement or whatever and and i i end up being singled out as like you know as the guy but what i was going to say is a few years later there was another trial with some some mortgage brokers and real estate people, like not big time, but just people who were in the

industry who understood the industry. And they did do some things that were shady. You know, there were straw buyers and there were, you know, some loan applications that were falsified and this and that. But this guy, William Black, who was the head prosecutor during the 1990s for the savings and loan scandal, for those that remember that, and he prosecuted thousands of bankers. And there were a lot of people held to account. So he ends up being a witness for the defense in these guys' trial. And basically, it comes down to one simple fact. What he testified to was that income was not actually a factor in getting a loan. So therefore, it didn't matter whether it said $5 or $5 million in the income slot.

That wasn't an actual—it didn't matter. know if you had a pulse you could get a loan and they were these guys were all found not guilty yeah even though they actually readily admitted to sort of the shenanigans that they were doing but it was yeah the the the fact that income was never checked on and was a non-issue is the defining character. It wasn't not checked on, dude. It was actively not checked on. On my loan application, there had been a big black X that said, no income needed put on there by the mortgage broker. Seriously, because what they do, and they called my employer at the time,

who was Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I was working on that show. They called, and the very first thing they say when they call is, please don't tell us the amount of income. All we want to verify is, does he work there? That is so insane. And the guy says, yes. So they actively avoid getting the information that would actually decide

whether or not someone qualifies for a loan. And in my case, it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that my loan application was forged and signed by the mortgage broker. The initials were the mortgage broker's initials. And yet, somehow, I was still held accountable for that mortgage application. Yeah. Fascinating. And what happened was what happened millions of times over with homeowners. Whether I'd done it or not even was, it's a crazy thing to think about prosecuting people

for a situation where there was no regulation, there was no due diligence. This was a time when, and I'm not going to be political here, but where the administration in power wanted to grow the economy. And the way they did it was by making sure that absolutely anyone could buy property with no checks and balances. So for a while, this inflates properties, right? Yeah, the scene in the big short where there's the stripper who owns like five properties. That's it. That's it. I was the stripper, so to speak. And in the book, you have this beautiful kind of foreshadowing moment when you're buying your first house and you're like, I don't think I can afford this. And the guy's like, don't worry,

it'll work out. And you're in on a house that's a little bit over your head. And I think that's something that a lot of Americans do. And I don't want to belabor this because we're going to bore people, but how does it work in the industry where magically the appraisal comes out for the exact amount that you're going to need for the loan? How does that, what? So they don't talk to each other? I mean, basically the, it's a wink, wink, nod, nod thing where, you know, you just get. Has it changed? No.

It hasn't changed? No, I don't think it's changed. I mean, I think it probably got tighter for a while. It has to be tighter now. I'll never buy another house. I'll never be able to, actually. And, you know, just like this Google conference, there was a lot of talk you know jeb bush came and spoke and there certainly was talk of politics because with these big companies in here you know whoever gets in there next and all of that i mean it's it's important to them and um you know the fact of the matter is it's, you know, I don't know.

I don't even want to go there. Somebody's got to change things. And I don't know that, you know, either of the people that are going to do this now are going to be capable of that. But, you know. How are you making it work now financially? So the book was, although you know from, I i don't know i have no idea about your deals with books but you know there there's money but it it you know you make a deal with a publisher and that money comes over a very extended period of time yes so you know you get a little bit now

you get a little bit you know when you turn in the manuscript you get a little bit when there's you know a finished product on the shelves and then maybe you get a little bit now, you get a little bit when you turn in the manuscript, you get a little bit when there's a finished product on the shelves, and then maybe you get a little bit when it goes into paperback. Yeah, a year later. Right. So it's a long process. It certainly wasn't enough. And you take out what you're paying your agent and also what you're paying in taxes. Exactly.

So when all that, when all is said and done. That number you were excited about two years ago. Wow, that's a huge number. Right. Well, and so what I've been doing, though, is I mean, I still fix hail-damaged cars. Are you still doing that? And I don't do it very often, but the beauty of it is- A thousand bucks a day.

And look, right, so I humbled myself. I hadn't done the work for 10 years before the thing happened with prison. Because the business was very hard, and you had to travel six or eight months out of the year, and I didn't want to be away from my kids like that anymore. And while the money was good, it just wasn't worth it. Well, you get out of prison and you need a job. And I still had this skill to make more money than I could make doing anything else. So I was very lucky that I had guys who had worked for me before

who now had their own companies. And I called them up and said, look, man, I need some work. And it was a great exercise in humility. Because it wasn't just that I needed work. I now sucked at this work. because it wasn't just that I needed work. I now sucked at this work. Like the job had far, the skillset has far surpassed me in the years that I was away from it. New tools, new techniques, new lighting, you know, the car, because car metals, I don't want to go into all this because it would be tedious, but you know, metals on cars have changed. A lot of hoods and stuff are

aluminum and it's fixes differently. Anyway, there. A lot of hoods and stuff are aluminum, and it fixes differently. Anyway, there's a lot of techniques that I had to relearn, and it's not really their job to hire me to come in there and make a mess of a car I'm trying to fix. But anyway, I got to fix some dents. Still do it whenever the opportunity comes up now. I will say I'm very happy that even being here at this conference, I gave my talk yesterday, and it went very well. And I have a great speaking agent again up in New York who was the same one I had before all this mess happened. I mean, I got arrested, and I had like six speaking gigs on the books.

And of course, all those went away. Went away. Did you have sponsorships too? Like product sponsors? Sponsors went away. Dollar sponsors and product sponsors went away immediately. I lost two board positions on nonprofits, one that I helped found with water. And I mean, it is a... with water. And I mean, it is a... Anybody who believes that, A, guilty until proven innocent... Wait, sorry. See, look at that. I said it backwards. No, actually, that's the way it is. Guilty until proven innocent. Actually, that is the way it is. You are assumed to be guilty. And the other travesty, if you will, is now that I'm out, like I don't get to vote. Right. And I, you know, I'm a middle-aged white guy. And you think about all of the incredibly disenfranchised people of color out there who are inordinately in prison and huge numbers, you know, who are taken out of

the system and don't get a voice again and making a decision about who's going to be their leader. You know, we're supposed to be a place where you do your time and it's forgiven or it's if not forgiven, you get a second chance. And that is not how it works here. And it is why it's the only, I think it's one of only two bipartisan things going on in Congress, even though they'll screw it up, I'm sure, which is, you know, that everyone understands that mass incarceration is a waste of time and money and people, you know, we weren't supposed to, you know, prison and jails are supposed to be for people we're afraid of, not for just people we're mad at.

And that's actually a paraphrase from Jim Webb, a senator from Virginia. But when it comes to the other one, addiction is pretty much the other bipartisan thing. And there is movement in both of those areas because I'm not convinced it's for any actual good reasons other than it costs a shit load of money. And these people finally realized that, hey, we could be spending that money somewhere else. Is that part of what fueled the icebreaker run across the United States? I mean, sort of this, like, I can't vote. Like, what can I do? How can I influence culture? How can I address some of these ills that I've seen as a result of my experience? Absolutely. And the icebreaker was... It might

be my favorite project that I've ever done because... So just describe it. So I basically came up with this idea with a friend of mine in Wilmington, Chris Martin, not the singer. And we decided we wanted to do this. He's had depression issues his whole life, and I'm a recovering addict, and we wanted to do this run for mental health. And I convinced him that I knew the right people, and it was, you know, I chose six people because I did the numbers, and I thought it would be a good number where everybody could run about a marathon a day

and not be totally just crash. So, I mean, Catra Corbett, obviously- David Clark. David Clark. Sophie Koshurba was the young person on the team and not all that well-known, but a nice following. And then, of course, Pam Rickard. And so I had this- Tell me a little bit about Pam. She's interesting. and so I had tell me a little bit about Pam oh she's interesting fantastic she is she is one of what's funny is she's so nice and and so enthusiastic about recovery that and I've

told her this so this won't be news to her that I actually uh you know she's at the Heron Project now and I actually like I eyeballed her sideways for a while thinking this has got to be some bullshit because she was just too damn happy, you know? And now that I've gotten to know her better, she's not always happy. And what she does is very openly share her struggles, her highs and her lows. And she's just wonderful on social media she she actually does social media the way you're supposed to do it like like realistically using it for good or just being transparent on there sometimes she say my day my day sucks right instead of just putting out like a version of yourself a beautiful picture and you know every day you know we should all be thankful for what

we've got today it's like you know piss off off. I don't feel like that every day. Or a platonic sort of inspirational quote. Yeah. So this team of people, we ran for six. There were six of us. So we ran for 24 hours a day for 24 straight days from- 24 hours a day. Yeah, just like cross country, no stopping.

No stopping, right. And so that ended up averaging about a marathon a day per person. And you broke it up however you wanted. I ran with everybody pretty much. And so I paired everybody in twos. And those two people would have basically eight hours to fill. And it was their, I don't care if they ran one hour each and alternated or ran four hours and then the other person ran four, it was their job to fill that eight hours while the other

forerunners would go ahead and sleep and eat and do laundry and all that. And the goal of this was what? The goal was very, very simple. It was simply to bring attention. It wasn't a big fundraiser to bring attention to the need for greater access to mental health services in this country. I mean, that's simple. And I can't tell you, yes, I can, because I'm getting ready to. The reason it worked, and I told everyone, like we had all these promises from different groups. We're going to cover you. We're going to give you this and that. And Chris Martin, by the way, who he ended up getting injured partway through the run and had to pull out. And Phil Nemo, who's Catra Corbett's friend right now, you know, he ended up stepping in.

And Catra's a recovering addict, long time sober. Absolutely. Like 22 years or something like that. Yeah. Vegan or vegetarian, I think, also. Yeah, she's vegan, absolutely, and works at Whole Foods. Yeah, she's living in her own universe. Look, Truman.

She is a trip. Her dog, Truman, has like 3,000 followers on Facebook. So, you know, I mean, it's a fascinating story. And look, I'm not stupid. I chose people who had big followings. But also, I chose people who I knew would trust me. Like I told David, Catra, and Pam, I need you guys on this run. Chris and Sophie were greener when it comes to taking on something big.

But these folks, I knew that they would show up every day. They would understand that it was going to suck at times. We'd have lousy food. You'd get no sleep. You'd have to run in the rain. Whenever it was your turn, luck of the draw, it was your turn. And if you had to run through a city, then you had to run through that. If you had to run through a cow pasture, then that was your turn. Right. But maybe even more importantly, all of them have an experience and something to say about mental illness and recovery and addiction. And it was about mental illness, not about addiction. And I wanted that because there's PTSD. So we had a couple of members of the crew, actually Chuck Dale, who was on my crew in the Sahara. He was on the crew on this. We're still close friends.

And I wanted there to be people that had PTSD and depression and were manic depressive and were, you know, whatever it might be, because those issues are big issues. Hell, general anxiety disorder is a huge thing in this country. And I wanted people to be able to relate to us and not just to addiction talk. But here's the thing that I could not have predicted and that was the best thing that came out of it. We started by all of us using our social media networks, inviting people to the icebreaker page. And frankly, it amounted to not much. So we had maybe hundreds of people that liked our page. And I felt badly in a way for sponsors and whatever, because Chris Martin had gone out

there and gotten, he really got this whole thing paid for. He got enough money to fund the run across from treatment centers primarily. And he had some connections and whatever, but he did that. And then it was my job to help build these social media things, right? Well, it didn't happen. It just didn't happen. And so I told everyone, don't freak out. Like, here's what's going to happen if this goes well. We just have to run and we just have to share our message, you know, whatever they are. And I want everybody to post every day as often as you're comfortable doing it. And just don't make them self-promotional. Just say, talk about your own story. Talk about addiction, talk about depression, PTSD, whatever it is. And man, I mean, within, you know, within

a few days we had, we were in the thousands of likes and then all of a sudden we were way beyond that. And it wasn't just that people were writing messages about how this had, you know, literally, we had a couple of people who were, who at least said they were going to commit suicide. And they saw us, you know, they saw this thing online and they started following. And because it engaged people for 24 days, you know, it gave them something to like follow. Right. And along the way, you're stopping at schools and talking to kids and things like that. Yeah. And we finally start picking up some media. CNN picked us up and in different places. And I think it's probably a one-off. I don't think we'll do it again. It might pop up again. But I still talk about Icebreaker. There's still a page on Facebook.

And we try to post some information so that people who are trying to figure out, okay, if I need some answers, if I need some treatment, if I need whatever, then here's what we need to do. Here's a place you can go. Right. Did it culminate in DC? Was there some kind of formal on the hill kind of thing? MHA is Mental Health America and it was their national conference in D.C., and that's where we finished. And Chris Herron came. Oh, Chris Herron, cool. Yeah, so he came.

Tell people who he is. So Chris Herron played for the Boston Celtics. He was an NBA basketball player, and he nearly died of a heroin overdose. And he played several years in the NBA. He's created like this foundation, right? Yeah, that's what it's called, the Herron Project. He spends all his time talking to kids. I got to get this guy on the podcast.

You do. Yeah, I'll make it happen, you know, and he would love to because he has a great story himself, but he now, he literally on most days, he has two speaking gigs. He's doing like 250 gigs a year at this point. And all he does is travel and tell his story to kids. And having that NBA cachet is really nice.

But he tells an honest story. And he does it with a Boston accent, which is really cool. But he's a good guy. He's a good man. And that's where Pam Rickard works. And the other people that are in that group are very dedicated to addiction recovery. And their mission really is to get people across the threshold, through the door into treatment. And that is their mandate. You said earlier that you were very conscious of, in writing your book, of not giving advice to any people.

And you accomplished that. I mean, it's right out of recovery. You're sharing your experience, right? Everything is, this is what I've experienced. You extrapolate or interpolate as you wish. But what is your aspiration, your hope for somebody who picks this up and reads it? What's the core message that you're trying to convey? Well, and I wish I had a really simple answer, but the addiction stories in there and kind of the,

as I talk about the early sort of planting of the seed of addiction and alcoholism, led me down this path along with genetic predisposition. I mean, you can look at my family history, and it's not hard to predict what was going to happen. So I think what I would say to people is, A, when you look at my story, like many recovery stories, yours included, there is a way out. I mean, there is a way out. I mean, there is a way out. And the worst thing that ever happened, and I say this totally tongue-in-cheek.

The people out there can't tell that. But treatment, when I finally went to treatment, it really screwed up my drinking and drug addicts. Yeah, it took all the fun out of it. Because before then, very often, I sat there on my bed going, oh my God, what am I going to do? How do I get out of this? And then after that, I knew how to get out of it, and I just chose not to. And so I could no longer, yeah, I could no longer be ignorant. It makes it so lonely and despairing. It is. I'm lucky that I survived it because I didn't want to face it. I didn't want

to deal with what I knew was there. And I was too afraid to let go of the drugs though, because that was the relief that I still needed. Of course. From what? Who the hell knows? It's the solution. The drugs are the solution to the problem, not the problem. And so I think what I also want people to get out of the addiction part of it is that, yeah, you do need to go then replace it with something. You know, some people choose to go to two meetings a day for the rest of their lives. Other people, you know, use addiction recovery. And I still believe in the power of, you know, addiction recovery. And I still believe in the power of, you know, going to meetings and remaining, remaining grounded in the fact that if you choose to ignore that part of your life, you know, you could very well end up there again. Yeah. Or maybe even worse, you could just be miserable and not use drugs or alcohol, but just be, and that's my big danger. You know, I'm, when I don't go to a meeting for a while, I'm just an ass.

You know, I snap at people and I'm the worst of who I am under those circumstances. And so I need the relief of having relatability with other addicts. And I need running. You know, running was my, running saved my life, but then it actually gave me a life. You need running, but you also need everything else that comes with sobriety in 12-step, right? You need surrender. You need a higher power. You need that call to purpose. I need community.

Call all the service and all of that, right? I need community. So here's – yeah, you need community. And I think – tell me if this happens to you. I need community. message that I'm putting out there, maybe I'm not being clear, that if you go vegan and start running, that this is going to solve your drugs and alcohol problem, which completely mystifies me because it's not what I'm attempting to put out there. For me, it's a spiritual program. It's a spiritual solution. And in your book, you try everything to no avail until you come to that place of understanding that that is what it's going to take. Like, you explored every avenue and looked under every cushion on every couch to try to avoid that inevitability, right?

Like, running in itself, I think running, you're very clear that, like, running is a huge part of your sober equation. But it's not running that is keeping you sober. No, it's not. And man, I mean, you said it beautifully. And the spirituality, you asked a moment ago what I'd want an addict out there who might be listening and trying to figure out how to get in. Don't be afraid of spirituality. It is a- That's what freaks people out. It's everybody's choice on how you want to do that. And I am not a religious person in any traditional sense.

And I do battle with myself. I mean, not in a huge way with finding a happy place and with being a little zen here and there. And then I curse because I stubbed my toe or whatever it might be. So what does it look like for you? Yeah. So what it looks like for me is meetings as often as I can, which these days probably means if I'm in town at home a couple of days a week, if I can. If I'm traveling, I might go a couple of weeks without any meeting. But so that handles the relatability part. The spirituality part is, for me, it's taken on a, it manifests actually during running. I call it kind of my running meditation or my running prayer.

And I like to run and think. And that sounds like such a weird and obvious thing, but I like to set myself up to think, and I will take a topic or a behavior or something, and I will try to not solve it, because frankly, it's not like a solvable thing, solve it. Because frankly, they're not, it's not like a solvable thing, but I'll try during my run to focus on that thing as if I were, you know, as if I was trying to like move a pencil across the table, you know, like I focus so hard on it that I want it to, to change or morph or to mean more to me. That's so, I do the exact opposite. Really? Yeah. But I think we arrive in the same place. Like for me,

if I'm having that problem, I know I need a solution to that. But for me, the way to solve it is to go running and put it out of my mind and let the subconscious, like the unconscious mind work on it. And then I'll be thinking about something completely different. And then,

you know, then it's like hour and a half in, you're like, yeah, that's what it's like trying to remember the name that you can't exactly yeah the only way to do it is to like forget about it and it will come to you well and you know and again the ways that it is so poignant for me is in my relationships and in particular my relationship with my wife because she's this she's this beautiful person who doesn't like to argue,

who, you know, she's so emotionally mature compared to me. And so my way when I get, you know, antsy or I haven't been to a meeting or I'm just, you know, my habit is to not necessarily pick a fight, but to pick in general and to pick on small things. And I'm trying to- I don't know what you're talking about. And so when I say I focus on something, what I try to do now is admit responsibility. And if I just turn around and apologize to her, like if I say or do something, it doesn't mean that I shouldn't immediately if it's so self-evident that it needs to be apologized for right away. But very often what I need to do is go to my room and think about it because I need to actually think about it and mull it over and get over my rightness because I am that man. I'm that guy who-

You'd rather be right than happy. Yeah, and no doubt. But I will say, prison, to bring it back to that, and I've had lots of close friends. And the last time you and I talked, that experience was pretty fresh for me. last time you and I talked, that experience was pretty fresh for me. Now it's been years, and I have a lot of people who have known me a very long time who actually do say to me, and I call it the greatest compliment ever, they do say that, man, you're different. You're more mellow. Things don't bother you as much. I'm way less likely to have an explosion or that same need to be right or that same anger doesn't live nearly as... I can still get there, but it doesn't live nearly as close to the skin as it did.

And you attribute that to just dedication to continual sobriety? Absolutely. Evolution and growth. That, and strangely, again, prison, getting an inside view of the life of people whom you can't get away from. I mean, that sounds funny. In normal life, if you encounter somebody that's uncomfortable to you, what do you do? You go somewhere else.

And you don't answer their call, or you don't go back to that place where you encountered them. Well, that's not possible in prison. You are stuck with these people. And if you don't figure out how to get along with them, then you're going to have a really hard time in there. You're going to have a really hard time in there. And so I had to set aside the comments that might be made to me or the hurt feelings that I might get or whatever it might be. And I had to learn to set those aside, not the least of which a little bit was for my safety.

I had no desire to get my ass kicked in there. So there was that part of it, but it was. I actually walked away from stuff that I would have so long ago had a real problem with. And I would have made a big, big issue. And I learned not to do that. Does that threaten your sense of self, your identity, like that part of you that's so driven to, you know, achieve and push the envelope in running? Is there that fear that, well, if you mellow, then so goes that impulse that made you who you are as an athlete? 100%. I mean, I worry about it, but I don't worry about it too much because the benefits so far outweigh any of the negatives about that.

And I know, look, I know that I still am, you know, I'm still the decent runner, but the reasons that I run are certainly different. I never really ran to win, per se, but who doesn't want to do well in a race? If you're going to go do one, it's nicer to do well and feel good at the end than it is to not have that. But I do think, look, the book, and you've now written too, the book really helped me because I had no choice but to sit down and analyze these things. And now I'm stuck with them. You know, they're right here and they're written down. And now people get the chance to like say, well, it says right here on page 139 that you said, you know, you said this. Did you have that? One of the experiences I had when I was writing Finding Ultra,

you know, when I was thick into it, is, you know, patterns and themes would emerge. Like, this is, when you do the step work, you kind of have this experience of like, oh my God, this is how I am. I could never see that before. But I started to realize like, oh, this is what's behind this thing, you know? And I started learning about myself through that exploration. Well, and so, prison was actually great for writing too. I mean, it sounds strange, but I became disciplined in there because I wrote for three or four hours every day. And very much like, I think I was a good writer when I went in and I didn't come out like a great writer, but I came out a much more disciplined writer because I tend to write

very floridly. And what I actually did with this book was tone some of that down and try to tell a much more straightforward story without explaining myself and with also without drawing conclusions. And those were hard things for me to do, because I think I know answers. So if I'm going to tell you a story, I would tend to end that story with, and here's what you should think about it. And maybe in my case, I might say in here in the book, I might have said in an early draft, I'll never tell, I might have said, how could this happen in America? Here's his story. Whereas what I had to learn how to do was actually just tell the...

Did you have an editor? Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was like... Yeah. Dude, I wrote 750 pages for this 270-page book. There's great little kind of Easter egg nuggets, though. There was one line in there. Hold on, I'm going to find it right now because I love this. But you were like... What did you say? It was like... Oh, yeah. Based on no tangible evidence, I hope that a change of venue would straighten me up for a while. Like, it's just like, it's a very subtle little, like, based on no tangible.

Like, you could just read that and miss it. But, like, I'm like, that's such a hilarious, like, little thing to throw in there. You know what I mean? So, the book is full of all kinds of little gems like that that I appreciate. And I think if you're in recovery, you're more able to kind of see those as they pop up. But if you're not, it might hit you like a boomerang later if you ever manage to get into recovery. Right, right. But it was a cathartic experience writing the book.

It was also gut-wrenching because I sucked at putting my ass in the seat and writing. wrenching because I sucked at putting my ass in the seat and writing. I could go run 20 miles anytime and felt the great need to anytime I had a deadline on a chapter because I just, it was hard. It was hard. And I decided to write it long form, if you will, because I realized I wasn't capable of self-editing. So if I was going to write the story of the Sahara or some crazy escapade in Orlando, I couldn't edit and write the short version of it. What I needed to do was dump everything that I could remember about it into story form and let someone else, you know, if my wife was really the first line editor, and then Meg Noonan was my, you know, my collaborator editor too, she would look at it

and read it and then she'd send it back. And, you know, here was my favorite thing. Like I told this great story about my grandfather, the track coach, right? So it's one of the first things we talked about today. And I wrote this beautiful three or four page, what amounted to a tribute to my grandfather. She wrote me back and she said, oh my God, Charlie, that was the most beautiful story ever. But like, no, it's not going to be in the book. Yeah, you got to kill your babies. You got to cut it, slowing it down. She's like, it doesn't move the story forward. It's like, yeah, it's beautiful, but it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, I mean, the way you create the David is you got to create the piece of stone first. And I did the same thing.

I overwrote everything because then I could give it to a third party and they could help me figure out what was important and what was not mission critical. But you have to come from that starting point. So I'll give you the- Go ahead, sir. No, no, I'm sorry I interrupted you. But the greatest compliment that I've gotten so far, and I've gotten it from several people, and Joe Nocera at the Times was one of them. And he said, you know, he said, I expected you to tell some good stories, but I really didn't expect the book to be so well written. Thank you.

And you know what? I'll tell you the same thing thing i didn't expect it to be so well written you know and it is really beautifully written and and and it's a page turner you're like what you know like and then like and i know you you know what i mean but it was so engaging compliment and you know as of today i mean the book only came out a week ago you have all five star reviews on amazon and you pulled off the coup of getting this amazing review from Publishers Weekly, which is, first of all, like even getting Publishers Weekly to review your book is not a given. It's difficult.

I didn't get that. And they gave you a fantastic review. They said it was very, I don't know what the exact words are, but like cinematic, you know? So I was like, this is a movie. Like, has it been optioned yet there's been some talk it hasn't been but there has absolutely been i mean you can see you know the prison you know the the in the prison with the running and all of that i mean it's made for a movie it is you know

so it is no i'm sure that will happen i i hope so i mean it would be it would be fun you know i know i i don't know who would play me I don't know who would want to so yeah I'll talk about that I don't know right yeah so my audio the audiobook came out too and that's another funny story because I actually had to audition to play myself in the yeah yeah well because this is you write a book doesn't mean you can actually read out loud yeah but who are we talking to here how long we've been talking now we're over two hours, right? Yeah.

Yeah, come on. It was fun. I enjoyed it. You probably banged that thing out and no problem. It took like five days of reading. It was an endurance event, but it was actually a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. Cool, man.

Well, I think we did it, dude. We did. How do you feel? I feel good. Is it good? It's like a therapy session mixed in with uh you know sort of a rededication to my recovery and and now we just need to cap it off with with going for like a 20 miler i know right got your stuff with you throughout the night

run to the airport i wish um no this was great and i think it i think it dovetails nicely with our first conversation was really kind of the trajectory. We go into all the prison stuff, I think, in a lot more detail and the running and the bad water and all of that. So definitely go check that out if you haven't already. And this, I think, filled in the gaps pretty beautifully. And it's an honor and a privilege to be out here. I'm so glad that we made this happen. And I'm really proud of you, man. I'm happy for your success.

that we made this happen. And I'm really proud of you, man. I'm happy for your success. And, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about your, you, you were mentioning, you know, second chances and how people don't like second chances. And I feel like you've, you know, you've, you know, you're not a cat with nine lives, but you're a survivor and, you know, you got the second chance with sobriety and then you made the most out of, you know, this third chance in the wake of your, you know, federal vacation. And it's beautiful to see you,

um, blossoming. And I think being at Google zeitgeist is, is really, you know, a very symbolic, uh, um,

you know, occurrence in your life to tell you that, you know, you're on the right track and things that are going to be okay. And you have a really powerful message, man. I hope you continue to share. I'm going to do my best. And it was, it was my honor to once again, you know, be here and, and it's evolution, you know, and I think that I, you know, you've also evolved incredibly since the last time I was on the show. And I congratulate you for that because it's, it's a, you know, you,

you were, you were really good at, you've been really good at what you do for a long time, but this, the reason you have such a diverse, not only audience, but people that you talk to now, it's, it's, it's a, it's actually a total tribute to you and where you've taken this podcast in particular. It's not just a podcast anymore. I think it's a lot of people's like, you know, truly their therapy and their, you know, their learning and the success of your last book, you know, the cookbook was fantastic. My wife is in love with the book and she cooks out of it all the time. And, you know, it's amazing.

So I appreciate being here again. And let's, you know i don't know we should uh channel all this love energy into an event man i'd love to like try to it's time for me to get back into it in a way that i haven't been i wasn't gonna say anything to you yeah it's been a while that you mentioned it no it's uh it's been too many years and i think i'm feeling the call and it's time for me to dip my toe back into it and i'm looking for something that that scares me a little bit and excites me to dip my toe back into it. And I'm looking for something that, that scares me a little bit and excites me because I think I need that in my

life. Yeah. And you're, you're the man to do it. So, so give me, give me a call. We'll figure it out.

I got lots of bad ideas. I know you always got some crazy, you're pushing somebody up a mountain in a wheelchair or like running. I don't know what, you know, what is next? Do you have something right now? I'm still very much, at Dead Sea to Everest,

which I've been talking about for years. And it's been sort of reignited here. There's some interest. And I want to go lowest to highest. What's a better metaphor for life than to go from the lowest place on earth to the highest? And I still want to do it. And I'm also hoping I've got a planned run across Cuba coming up in the spring with another guy, with Pat Farmer.

You know Pat? He's gone pole to pole and gone around the country. And anyway, he's an Australian that's done a lot of stuff. But anyway, I think it just shows the things I want to continue doing or the things that take me to places that I haven't been. And that's what I hope to... Oh, look, I know we've been on forever, but I'm going to leave you with this nugget. So here's what I want. I had a question recently about what if I died on one of these expeditions? What would happen to me?

What do I want to have done? I think that was the question. I think it was meant to be buried or maybe just would I be sorry? And I said, yeah, I would be. But here's what I said. Here's what I said I want you to do. I said, I've instructed my wife. But here's what I said.

Here's what I said I want you to do. I said, I've constructed my wife. I want to be cremated, and I want to be divided into 100 equal vials. So I want these 100 vials, and my wife will be in possession of it. And if you want one of these, you have to apply. And the application is, and I want to fund it, though. I want there to be enough money where this can happen. And when you apply, the only rules are you have to take me somewhere that I never got to go when I was alive and dump me out. And sprinkle the ashes.

Yeah. So, you know, and I- That's a new one. Yeah. You know, I think there could be a book there. The problem is I wouldn't get to enjoy it all that much. But, you know, there's a lot of places left to go and if there's any chance that i could actually enjoy it when they take me you know i'll take that and i i don't know that's that's a very cool idea yeah because then the person gets to go to a cool place too right that's the point they it's a place they've never been and they have to take me there to this place i've never been and they have to you know they have to enjoy it've never been, and they have to enjoy it. Except then you got the guy who's like, I paid this money for this, and I'm going to Kazakhstan?

Like, come on. Piss on this guy. I'm coming down here. Kazakhstan is probably beautiful. Probably great. It's probably great. Well, I was going to call it dumping Charlie, but then I was afraid that would take me back to my dating days. So it's very popular, all right there you go well

the book is beautiful uh definitely pick it up uh amazon wherever use that rich roll amazon banner ad uh to pick up your copy of running man uh it is a page turner you can read the book in like i don't know a day it's like in one sitting. It's really great. So congratulations. Thank you. And I love you, buddy. I love you too, dude. So let's continue this conversation at a later date. Yeah. All right. Well done.

All right, buddy. Peace. Blitz. I don't know about you guys, but I think that was really something special, something quite extraordinary. think that was really something special, something quite extraordinary. And if you're listening to this, you're out there in the world and you think you might have a problem with drugs or alcohol, you just can't stop drinking, or perhaps you can't control yourself around these substances or other behaviors that have that pull, that thing you can't deny, you can't describe, and you're feeling alone, you're feeling lost, and perhaps you're feeling like there isn't any hope or there's no way to see your way through to the outside of this.

I want you guys to know that there is help. If you don't want to drink or use again, you don't have to. And my call to you is to reach out for help. I get a lot of emails. I can't always respond to everybody who reaches out to me. But when people reach out to me over an issue related to drugs and alcohol, I do my best to respond to each and every one of those inquiries. But generally, my response is the same, and that's that you've got to raise your hand. You've got to seek out help. You

got to take action in your own community, whether that is finding a 12-step meeting in your area, or seeking outside help through a therapist or somebody like that, or just finding somebody that you can trust, that you can talk to, that you can be honest with. I think the first step is recognizing the problem and finding somebody that you can communicate honestly and openly with about that. So yeah, it's hard, but it can be done. And I know it might sound crazy, but the truth is, if you don't want to drink anymore, you don't have to. You do not have to pick up. All right, if you enjoyed today's show,

please make a point of checking out the show notes at richroll.com on the episode page. Lots of links to learn more about Charlie and what he's up to. And I just wanted to thank you guys for tuning in today, for sharing the show with your friends and with your colleagues at work, et cetera, on social media.

If you have a moment, it would mean a lot if you could leave us a review on iTunes and make sure that you subscribe to the show on iTunes. That helps us out a lot. And mad love to everybody who has made a habit of using the Amazon banner ad for all your Amazon purchases. Definitely pick up Charlie's new book, Running Man, by clicking through the Amazon Manor ad at richroll.com first. It doesn't cost you anything extra, but Amazon kicks off some loose commission change. And that has been a boon and allowed us to keep the bandwidth flowing. So thank you so much for that. If you're inspired to support the show even a little bit further, we have a Patreon page now.

And there's a banner, Patreon banner, right next to the Amazon banner on our site, so you can check that out as well. Would you like to receive a short, free, weekly email from me with just a few tips, tools, resources, things I've enjoyed and discovered over the last week? Then you can sign up at richroll.com. I send them out every Thursday. I've put out nine of these already, and I don't end up sharing any of this information on my blog or anywhere else. So if you want in on it, you just have to subscribe. And again, it's totally free. Don't forget to check out all the Plant Power swag and merch you ever would want at richroll.com. I got signed copies of Finding Ultra and The Plant Power Way.

We got t-shirts, tech tees, all kinds of cool stuff. I also want to thank everybody who has helped put on this show today. Jason Camiolo, not only did he do the audio engineering and production, he was with me in person in Phoenix

for this conversation with Charlie. So thanks, Jason. Sean Patterson for all your wizardry on graphics. Chris Swan for production assistance and work on the show notes and all kinds of miscellaneous things. And of course, theme music by Analema. Thanks for all the support, you guys. I'll see you soon. Peace.

Plants. Thank you.