The Rich Roll Podcast - Irish Gangster Richie Stephens’ Guide to Sobriety‎ (and Second Chances)

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Drug trafficker. Kidnapper. Alcoholic. Addict. Gang member. International criminal turned sober screen star. Richie’s story is also the subject of his new book, The Gangster’s Guide to Sobriety���a chronicle of his descent into the abyss and the redemptive slog that followed. It’s a tale so absurd and darkly comic, that it’s currently being developed for television by the creators of the hit show Silicon Valley. Today’s episode is also viewable on YouTube: bit.ly/richiestephens684 More about Richie + show notes: bit.ly/richroll684 Heads Up: This conversation is packed with expletives, profanity, and tales of violence. So just an alert that this episode is neither family-friendly nor workplace approved. So pop on the earbuds if you got kiddos in the backseat. And If you’re easily offended, perhaps this one isn’t your cup of tea. Chock-a-block with wall-to-wall stories that will blow your hair back, this conversation will make you realize that if Richie could go from where he was to where he is today, truly anything is possible. Peace + Plants, Rich

Well, the first person to read like my original manuscript was the book agents. They read it twice and they were like, this is crazy, like it can't be true, but there's so much detail in it, it could be true. So I'm driving back to my house out by the beach and the cops start following me and I'm sweaty, and I have an ounce in the glove compartment, and I have a.22 under the seat, so I'm sitting in a jail sentence if they catch me. So they followed me, and then the lights come on and the siren, and I'm like, I'm nearly having a heart attack. And then they turned around and went back.

The way they came, they must have got a call on the radio, and I nearly had a heart attack. My heart was coming through my chest. So I pulled over and I smoked like five cigarettes and I was like, I'm not going to jail for killing this fool. And I decided I would go to Australia. The Rich Roll Podcast. So today we're gonna spin an addiction to recovery yard, old school style.

What it was like, what happened, and what it's like now vibe. So gird your loins because this story is pretty fucking wild. The teller of said story is my friend, Richie Stevens. Richie is an Irish gangster turned actor, turned sober storyteller, best known for playing, you guessed it, gangsters and hardened criminals in a long line of movies and television procedurals. Given his past as a drug trafficker, a kidnapper,

a drug addict, an alcoholic, and basically just an all-around criminal himself, this is a bit of a real-life Barry situation. It's a tale he lets loose in his wildly entertaining and darkly comic new book called The Gangster's Guide to Sobriety, which chronicles his descent into the abyss and his slog to redemption.

And also is currently being developed into a television series by the creators of the hit TV show, Silicon Valley. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share

has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do.

And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Hell of a storyteller. This one is no holds barred and it's coming right up, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So as many of you know, I've been sober for a bit. When you've been around, you tend to meet more than a few colorful characters. You have the privilege of seeing lives transformed. And Richie happens to be one of those guys. I've known him for about a decade. But even as someone who believes in transformation, as I do,

But even as someone who believes in transformation as I do, I could not have predicted the stunning remarkable arc of this guy's life. Richie's somebody I admire for his commitment to service because this guy anonymously, he wouldn't even mention it in the podcast, but I will, helps so many people, mostly some of the hardest, most discarded, down on their luck folks you can possibly imagine.

This conversation is wall-to-wall stories that will blow your hair back and I think make you realize that if Richie could go from where he was to where he is today, that truly anything is possible. A little alert for the more squeamish, there's a fair amount of profanity in this episode,

tales of violence throughout the conversation. So maybe not ideal to play in the car with the kiddos in the back seat. And without warning, let's do the thing. This is me and Richie Stevens. I'm just super excited to talk to you. It's always cool when I get to have friends on the show and I was thinking back to when we first met

and I can't remember the very first time, but it has to have been at least 10 years. Maybe nine at least. Yeah, yeah. So you moved to LA in 2010? No, I think it was 2013. Yeah, oh, yeah. So you moved to LA in 2010? No, I think it was 2013. Yeah, oh, 2013. Yeah, 2013.

So yeah, maybe just under 10 years. And I just remember, I have like a vague memory of you just telling insane stories. And I was thinking, this is God, man. This is disgusting shit. There's no way this stuff is real, you know? Well, the first person to read like my original manuscript was the book agents

well besides my partners and the original one was like really long it was like 105 000 words 430 pages and they read it twice and they were like this is crazy like it can't be true but there's so much detail in it it could be true and then they were like, did this really happen? You know, like, this is great, but how do we sell this? Because it's just like a crazy, just on and on and on with like one insane story after the next. So what was the decision to cut it down to be, you know, such a relatively small book? Well, so we rewrote the book. Like my original book was just all my experiences written down. And then I partnered up with John and Dave because they want to make a TV show out of it. And they were like, it's not really accessible, so we need to, like, reformat it somehow so it's relatable to people.

Because most people don't know who I am, so why do you care about this guy? You know? But so I got sober with using the 12 steps by going to meetings and uh they were like why don't we format it like uh how you got sober through the 12 steps and each chapter will be thematically written around a step right so each chapter is a step with your own kind of like spin on the subtitle for that step. The guys wrote a foreword. And then the first chapter is you breezing through the whole story from like 10,000 feet.

So you get a sense of just how crazy your life has been. And then each chapter takes you through the steps and uses stories from your past to illustrate how you work the step, which I thought was a really cool kind of narrative technique. Yeah, exactly. And I guess it's more relatable for people.

It's not too long. It's under 200 pages. So, yeah. It's a good yarn, dude. And nobody loves a good addiction recovery yarn more than this guy. So well done, my friend. And it's exciting that it's gonna be out in the world

and such an amazing arc, given where you came from to where you are now. And I thought it would be cool to just format this conversation around what we know best, which is what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. We can kind of do it like a meeting, you know?

So take us back and like paint the crazy picture of growing up in this small town in Ireland and how it kind of all went insane. Yeah, so I'm born and raised in Ireland. I came to America in my early 20s and where I'm from, it's like middle of nowhere, countryside and when I was a kid, I was like, I was really shy and quiet.

I didn't have a lot of self-confidence and where I grew up was like a tough place, you know, like if you compare it to America, like when I was growing up, men where I'm from don't drink cocktails, you know, men don't drink cocktails, men don't really use umbrellas, like it rains a lot in Ireland and you might see like a doctor or a teacher maybe carrying an umbrella, but it's pissing rain all the time. Everybody's just standing out in it.

Yeah, I started smoking when I was a teenager and cigarettes were a bit harsh on my throat, so I saw these menthols, so I started smoking menthols at the start. And somebody saw me smoking menthols and they said, Are you fucking pregnant? You know, like that's the kind of spot it was when I was growing up. So the town is called Cavan. How do you pronounce it?

Cavan's the county, C-A-V-A, Cavan. And what's interesting about that, I actually like went to Google Maps and pulled down pictures because I wanted to get a visual sense of what that place was like. and not a lot going on. A lot of pictures of like a church, it's kind of it, but you grew up close to the border of Northern Ireland.

So you have this spillover of Protestants, right? So you have the Protestant Catholic kind of tension that was going on that I'm sure kind of underscored, you know, just the whole vibe of growing up there. Yeah. Like, so where I grew up, it's at the border. So the border of Northern Ireland, there was a lot of like, I guess, terrorists around there, you know, because it's at the border and I'm Catholic, you know, I was raised Catholic, but my dad was a Protestant. So I have a Protestant name. Like in Ireland, if you're a Catholic, you'll have a name like O'Reilly or McDonald or something like that.

But if you're Protestant, you have like a British sounding name. So my name is Richie Stevens. So like I sound like I'm Protestant and then I was sent to like a Catholic school. And it wasn't a whole lot of fun, as you can imagine. Like in Ireland maybe, when I was growing up where I'm from, maybe 90% of people were Catholic, 10% were Protestant. Well my mother was like devout Catholic so we were all sent to Catholic schools but I hated it, you know, it wasn't easy. A lot of people kind of romanticised the IRA, you know, a lot of people kind of romanticized the IRA, you know, the terrorist group over there. And, you know, I got dogs abused in the school because, you know.

Right. Even though you were in Catholic school and were raised Catholic, you have this Protestant last name. So it puts like a target on your back. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I was, you know, I used to let myself get pushed around and I used to always worry about things. It was like, I was very, very self-conscious all the time. Like where I'm from, the first thing they'll say is, does this man play football? And you could be a fucking brain surgeon, and if you didn't play football, you were no good. So I played football, but I was no good at it. I had zero talent for it, no matter how hard I tried.

But it's kind of like if you didn't tug out, that's what they call it, like just show up, you were no good. So I played football, but i was never any good at it you know every time i would play a game if i get the ball i'd be so self-conscious i wouldn't even know what to do like and i would just get nailed all the time by the other players and you know i tried to fit in as best as i could but what really did it for me was the drinking you know i started off i went to a concert one time like i was about 14 or 15 i went

to this concert over on the west coast it was beastie boys garbage all these kind of bands and a girl on the bus on the way home gave me gave me a beer to see if i if i wanted a drink like and uh i said okay i tried this drink and then i was then I was like, it was like, wow, it's like- Lights went on. I didn't care what anybody thought about me. I had zero fear about anything. I was like, this is like the special sauce that I wanna drink all the time. Yeah, I mean, I really related to that sense of internal turmoil that you experienced as a young person,

just feeling like out of place all the time, not comfortable in your own skin, that sense of self-consciousness and kind of free flowing anxiety. And what was interesting, what I didn't know was that you grew up like a pretty good kid. Like the book's called the gangster's guide to sobriety, but it's not like you grew up

in a notorious Irish crime family. Like you grew up with parents who cared for you and your needs were met and you were kind of a shy introverted kid. So all the insanity doesn't spawn from like a completely dysfunctional family situation. Yeah, I can't blame that on anybody. Like I have a brother and sister who are normal.

Like, and as far as I know, like nobody in my family has ever been in trouble with the law before. So I'm like the black sheep, but it was weird because some people can just have a few drinks and nothing happens. And then there's just certain people who just, the rule book goes out the window.

And I was that kind of a person, you know, and that's how it affected me. Right, and I would suspect like in the area in which you grew up, there wasn't a real appreciation for the disease of alcoholism. It's just like people drink, that's what happens. Yeah, you get out of control once in a while, but that ain't nothing but a thing.

Yeah, like where I'm from, it's like a sign of masculinity to be able to drink a lot. You know, like where I'm from, they'll say, oh, that guy's a warrior for the drink, you know? So if you can't handle your drink, that's not a good thing. But my definition of what an alcoholic was, was somebody who's homeless, can't hold down a job, you know, maybe they're smelly, you know? Like that's what I thought an alcoholic actually was. So I had a problem with the sauce from very young, but I never really made the connection

until I was a lot older because I know now that I was like a functional, quote unquote, alcoholic, if you could call it functional. And very industrious and entrepreneurial. Yeah, in my own head. Yeah, I was keeping the show on the road. Yeah.

Yeah, but it did something for me that I didn't have beforehand. It was my solution to how I felt. Yeah, but it did something for me that I didn't have beforehand. It was my solution to how I felt. So you have that epiphany on the bus ride, coming back from the concert, having the drink because the pretty girl asked you to, you have this sense like, oh, this is the solution

to the problem I didn't even know that I had. So where does it go from there? For me, like just in reading the book and knowing you, it's pretty incremental. Like that's a very innocent kind of introduction to alcohol that probably is extremely common. Like a lot of people have their version of that, but that relationship to alcohol

and what it meant to you at that time sets in motion a chain of events that just spiral crazy out of control. Yeah, it didn't happen overnight, the craziness. It was kind of, the problem was with me, there was no predicting how it would end up. Like sometimes I could have a few scoops and score with a woman and go home and everything was fine. And then there's other times I would black out, wake up on the floor of someone's living room. There was no predicting, you know. But I didn't care.

Like, for me, it was worth it. For the ease and comfort that I got out of it, it was really worth it. And, like, the way it works in Ireland, it's 18 to drink in a bar or a club, right? And I was 15, maybe 14 or 15 when I started drinking and I wanted to drink with the grown-ups like I wanted to go to clubs and bars but the problem was you need an ID because I still look pretty young I have a baby face like and um so I decided to start making fake IDs and first I just made one for myself and a couple of my friends and it was great, it worked, I could go to all the bars

and all the other kids heard that I had a fake ID so a few people asked me to make them and they said they'd pay me and that's how it started. I had this buddy, he was a year older than me in school, we'll call him Walter

for the sake of the story. Yeah, I was wondering if you anonymized all these people. I had to. The lawyers made me, you know. Well, some people are dangerous. You don't want to tell them fate. So yeah, Walter, he came up with the idea.

He said, why don't you make the IDs and I'll sell them and we'll have a business and we can make a bunch of money. And I said, okay. And first I started making IDs for all the people in my school. And then I was making them for people in other schools who I never met before. What were you charging for an ID? It was really cheap.

It was like five bucks. You should charge more. Yeah, I know. But I was only doing it for some drinking money. I wasn't trying to become a kingpin or something like that. But yeah, it just got out of control. But it was great because I would go everywhere around the country. You're popular.

Yeah, I was popular. You go from being this kind of quiet kid to suddenly being the guy that is in high demand. Yeah, yeah. It was fun. And I was broke, so I got all this drinking money from it. And I could go to different bars and clubs and people would, like I'd already shown them my ID before. So they knew my name and what I drank

and all this kind of stuff. It was, and I was just a kid. What's great though, is that you get busted for this racket, right? And you get charged with like offense of the state or something like that because of the official seal or something like that, that you figured out how to create in a unique way

that like freaked out the authorities. Well, basically the way IDs worked in Ireland back then, you get what's a police ID or in Ireland, it's called the Garda. So you have a Garda ID. So I was copying the Garda ID because it was an official ID. But back then it was like, it was easy to make one. It was kind of like, it was like a card, a blue card,

and then typewriter would have your name and your date of birth. And then in the back there was a stamp. It was like a police stamp. And I was able to forge the stamp in order you know that was tricky enough and but what happened was Walter got caught and he rolled over on me and you know I found out about it I was out of the house one day and I came home and my mother says the police were looking for you I was like fuck what happened she goes that friend of yours fucking told the police you were making the IDs. I was like,

oh God. So I had to go in and like talk to the police, you know, have an interview and it was nerve wracking. You know, they thought I had either stolen

a stamp from the police station or maybe there was some kind of a mole or something, you know, they didn't know how I was doing it. So I had to go in

and explain to them that the way I make these is I just make the stamp on my computer I print it onto like an old photograph you know like a glossy photograph like an inkjet printer if you print onto a photograph and if it's glossy it'll stay wet yeah it doesn't dry yeah so basically I would print it onto an old photo and then stamp it onto the card. And then it looks like a stamp. But you had to print it in reverse, right? Yeah, I had to print it in reverse

because if you do that, it comes up backwards. So eventually I figured this shit out and I was trying to explain it to the cops. And I was like a 15, 16-year-old kid and they're listening. They're like, Jesus, huh? Jesus. You know, because they must have thought

I was some kind of a criminal genius. But yeah, they were like, these are very serious charges because that's like what they charge terrorists with. Because terrorists in Ireland,

they make fake documents and stuff like that. And my friend Walter, his family were known to be terrorists as well. So the fact that I was working with him was kind of, well, they wanted to get to the bottom of it.

And in the end, I just pretended I only met a couple of them. I said, I'm sorry, I only met a couple of my friends. I won't do it again. And I hadn't been in trouble before. So they led me away with it. And I got away. So a couple observations on that. First of all, this is your first brush with the law.

And also, the first kind of like true resentment with a friend, because this guy, Walter, sold you out, right? And that's where the anger kind of enters the picture, right? And anger plays a much bigger role as you walk this path. But I'm curious about like where you think, like what is the genesis of that anger?

Like you would have these crazy outbursts and you get in all these fights later on and stuff like that. Like, what is that about? And how have you kind of made peace with that or resolved it well i think originally because i used to get pushed around in school like because my old man was a protestant like so in ireland where i'm from like a derogatory thing that they'll say to somebody who's protestant they'll say you're a black cunt you know not black as in the color of your skin but back in the old days like in the 19 teens or whatever after world war one there were these uh british soldier group called the black and tans

and they came to ireland and they massacred a bunch of people and stuff like that so when they're calling you black they're calling you one of those black and tans. So I was pushed around at school because of that kind of stuff. So I think when I was little and I had no confidence or no courage, that affected me. And then after I started drinking and I had this psychological change, made me a different person, then I was determined not to take any shit from anybody

because of how I had been treated when I was younger, you know? So I think I probably had a little bit of it. It took a while for that to grow, you know? Like even when I first started drinking, I don't know what it's like now, but when I was growing up back home, Ireland was like violent, you know? Not a lot of people getting murdered, but when you go out drinking,

everybody used to drink a lot. And then at the end of the night, we would go to these fast food restaurants. They called them chippers back home because they sell fries, like fish and chips, you know. And after the night of drinking, everybody goes to the chipper and that's when you would see the fights, you know. It's like sports, like a spectator sport, though. Oh, absolutely, yeah, and I used to sit in the chipper

and watch these fucking boys throwing each other, beating each other. It was mayhem, and when I was, like, when I first came to America, I was only 160 pounds. I was light, you know, so back then then I was like a skinny, light kid, but I'm taking all this shit in. It was really exciting. It was like an action movie in front of you.

And it was funny. Sometimes it would be over nothing. Say you're in the chipper and there's a guy there with his woman and a drunk guy gives her the eye. He could get knocked out for that, you know, or spill some chips on somebody. You'd see them flying over tables. It reminds me of that scene in The Gentleman. You see that movie where Colin Farrell beats the shit out of a bunch of kids in a chipper?

You know, that idea. Yeah, that could happen anytime. But when I first started going out, I used to work at a gas station. Back in the day, there was people called gas station attendants who would come and fill your gas for you. Like now everybody just, everybody fills their own gas. Well, that was my first job. I was like 15 or 16 and i was working with these older boys and one of them i probably shouldn't say his name his nickname is tits because he he had man boobs you know but uh tits used to bring me out and and i used to look up to him you know he was one of these guys when i first met him he had been arrested like 30 times just for like fighting or stupid drunk

shit and and he never went to jail. Because when I was growing up, there was no real penalties for that. Like in California, I couldn't believe when I got here, there's not a whole lot of fights because if you just put your hand on someone or spit on them, you're going to jail. But back home, you could kick the shit out of someone and maybe if the cops got you,

you might have to go to court and pay a couple of hundred dollars fine that's all it was there was like a boys will be boys mentality to the law i don't know it's still like that there i don't know it might not be but when i was growing up that's how it was right and i used to hang out with tits and he'd bring me out and and you know he was kind of a role model for me yeah Yeah. What is the truth or the lived experience of growing up around the IRA? Because my relationship to that is just what I've read in books or seen in movies. Well, you know what? I'll tell you the main thing that Hollywood never gets right about the IRA.

Like whenever you see the movies or anything like that about the IRA, they make it out like it's this really fucking secret thing where these guys come out of nowhere and nobody knows who they are. But in real life, you know exactly who's in the IRA. Because in Ireland, it's a small country. Everybody knows everybody. So if your neighbor is in the IRA, you know. If their kid is on the team with you,

everybody knows because they have marches and shit and you see them at the marches or they might come to the bar to collect money for whatever, the prisoners or whatever the fuck they're collecting money for. So in real life, everybody knows exactly who's in the IRA. So there's no secret, you know, but still. And you just sort of tiptoe around it and tread lightly?

It depends. I have a load of friends who are in it and whose families are in it, you know. The way it is as well, it's like a volunteer sort of a thing. So they're called volunteers. So some people join up for a while and then they go away again and that's how it is. Right. You know, but I always ended up with being friends with a bunch of their kids

because there were, a lot of them were kind of wild like I was, you know? Yeah, wow. So the drinking starts to escalate, hash enters the picture. At some point,

you start kind of selling, dealing a little bit, like walk me through that next phase. It was the exact same shit as the drinking. With the drinking, I started selling IDs

to fund my drinking. And then with the hash, like, I started smoking hash when I was maybe 16 or 17 too, because it was, I knew I couldn't kill you, and it looked cool, you know, and I had seen it on TV and movies and stuff like that,

and so I wanted to try it. And I met these guys one night in Cavan. Can't really use their names let's call them this guy has a really obvious name we'll call him Pigeon right alright there you go so I met Pigeon

and his buddy one night and he goes you want to buy some hash high they have all this funny way of talking you'd think my way is funny they have all this

weird lingo like where i'm from they say hi sham or hi so blah he'd say hi sham you want to buy some hash hi they say hi about everything it's weird so i says yeah how much is it he goes i'll give you a five spot it was five pounds at the time now we have euros but back then we had pounds so he like sold me this little ball of hash and it was in a matchbox and he said, do you know how to smoke it? I said, no. And he rolled me a joint and we smoked it together and it was like discovering alcohol all over again, except not so crazy.

It was more chilled, like there was no, you wouldn't fall down on hash really, you probably couldn't crash a car on it. wouldn't fall down on hash really you probably couldn't crash a car on it you know but but uh i once i discovered the hash too it was something that i i wanted to do all the time even though i knew it was illegal had to be careful not to get caught but uh yeah i started to sell it to fund my my use of it yeah and what's going on at home at this time like what's mom oh i kept it quiet from from the parents you know, like I led a double life really with my folks and even with my wife and everything down through the years. I would do a lot of secret shit. You know, I would stay over with friends and, you know, sometimes I would come home and my poor mother would be like sitting in the kitchen at four o'clock in

the morning waiting for me. I'd walk in the door drunk and, you know, I felt bad about it, but I still felt like it was worth it at the time. Well, it's also that thing where you think you're getting away with this, that double life that they're not aware of what you're doing, but it's pretty transparent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is what it is. Like, yeah, I put my poor parents through a lot, like, you know, because later when I got into trouble, everybody around knows everybody and stuff like that. So when I got into trouble later, I got caught dealing, everybody knew.

Right, I mean, how are they now? What do they think about this book and this potential TV show and all of that? It must be a mind blower. Well, back, have you, you probably haven't been, have you been back home at all? Yeah, I've been home a lot of times. Yeah, I'm sure they don't like the stuff being brought up,

but it is what it is. It's a positive story. I turn my life around. It's not like I'm still doing this kind of stuff. Yeah, but just the idea that like, there's a book out there and you're kind of being fetid celebrated yeah well you know my mother like said to me she goes jesus christ you're not worried about people

knowing what you did and i'm like if i gave a fuck i wouldn't have wrote in a book like you know i'm sorry you feel that way but um that's only natural i suppose but that's that shame thing right that kind of emanates out of cathism. Like we keep our weaknesses private. Yeah, yeah. And you know, when I was a kid, I was like, I was super into the Catholicism. Like even though I didn't like been forced to go to church every week,

I was an altar boy at the church. And that shit used to make me nervous as well because you got to sit up in front of everybody at the front of the church. And, you know, if you're an altar boy, you have to like ring the bell at certain times during the thing. And I would always be so nervous about that shit as well.

I'd either miss the fucking time I was supposed to do it or ring it too early or it was fucking mortifying. You know, same shit with the water and the wine. You bring over the water and the wine to the priest at a certain time. I was always fucking that up, you know, same shit with the water and the wine. You bring over the water and the wine to the priest at a certain time. And I was always fucking that up, you know? Well, when you get sober though, and you're kind of confronted with the idea of embracing a higher power, Catholicism didn't exactly, you know, strike you as a good option at the

time. No, by the time I got sober. Like there's a soured relationship. Yeah, well, just God in general. When I got sober, I was a complete atheist. I didn't believe there could be a God. Like the way I saw it was God is like something that people believe in when they're children, like Santa Claus, you know, and all these bad things had happened to me. And I just didn't believe that there could be a God, you know, and that's the way I felt before I got sober.

All right, so let's pick the story back up. Like you're starting to deal a little bit, you end up going to college, you kind of put the foot on the gas on the dealing. Ecstasy enters the picture. Like let's, you know, this hurricane is starting to pick up speed. Yeah. So I got to college.

And by the time I got to college, I was a regular hash smoker and a regular drinker. And, you know, I wasn't afraid to fight or I wasn't afraid to score with the women. And I was just, I was dealing a little bit of hash. And then I met my friend Tomo. So Tomo kind of changed everything. I was introduced to him by my friend Ferret. And he was called Ferret because he talks really fast. He sounds like a Ferret.

But yeah, so Ferret introduced me to Tomo. And he was a real character. He was always talking about where he's from. Apparently he used to deal a lot of ecstasy. People talk a lot of shit so I was always skeptical. You know, and we used to hang out with Tomo. He'd be telling us about these

tall tales about how he was dealing ecstasy in his hometown and all this kind of shit. One night, we were all drinking around Halloween. We were over at my place. We were drinking a load of beer and smoking hash. And we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. And there was a house party going on. So we walked up to the house party. It was like four or five of us. It was me, Ferret, Pat the Rat, and Tomo. He was called Pat the Rat because he kind of looks like a rat.

He wasn't a snitch. Also, lots of Pats, right? So every Pat had to have like an appendage. Yeah, if you're Irish, you'll know a lot of Pats, a lot of PJs, all that. So a lot of boys that I knock around would have nicknames. So we saw this house party going on. We walked up and we rang the doorbell. Some dude answered the door. And we're like, oh, so we saw this house party going on and we walked up and we rang the doorbell some dude answered the door and we're like oh can we come into your party and they were

like uh no no we don't know you you can't come in so like fuck and uh then they closed the door on us went back to the house and we're drinking again we think fuck those pricks wouldn't let us into the party like and tomo had like a bottle of wine there and he goes he goes Mush do you dare me to come back and put this

through the fucking window we were we were Tomo's full of shit he's never gonna do that and we're like yeah we dare you

do it so we walk back round the block again and Tomo got the fucking wine bottle and just fucked it through the window like straight through the window of the fucking house.

We were like, wow, Tomo's fucking crazy. He actually did it. We all ran away. And then after that, I was like, wow, Tomo's the real deal. This guy isn't a bullshitter or anything. And then so me and Tomo were out one night. There's a bar called the LA Leinster Arms. We were in the Leinster Arms, and I knew Tomo were out one night. There's a bar called the LA Leinster Arms. We were in the Leinster Arms and I knew Tomo did ecstasy,

but I was afraid to do ecstasy because I thought, you know, in the news you read these stories about how people took ecstasy one time and they fucking died. And then I always thought, like, I'm kind of unlucky, so that would probably be me if I took the ecstasy one time. So Tits used to do it, my old friend from Cavan, but I used to hang out with him while he was on ecstasy, but I was always scared to do it

because I thought I would be that unlucky person that it kills. And then one night we were out in the LA, me and Tomo, and he goes, Mush, do you want to try one of these ecstasy? And I was like well I don't know I fucking I'm afraid it might kill me you know

he goes Mush these are light ones they're really light they're not strong you'll be grand so he handed me this beige pill with 007 on it

and I saw this pill and he goes go on take one to fuck go into the bathroom take it so I went into the bathroom.

I was really scared. It had this fucking 007 pill in my hand, and I was thinking, hmm, Tom was smart, and if they haven't killed him, maybe I'd be okay with it, you know? So I said, fuck it. A half wouldn't kill somebody. A quarter definitely wouldn't.

So I broke it in half, and then I broke it in half again, and I took a quarter, and I put the other three quarters back into my pocket. And I came back outside, and Tomo goes, did you take it? And I was like, yep. He goes, all right, let me know when you're coming up. And then coming up means it started to take effect. So maybe a half hour later or three quarters of an hour later, I'm not feeling anything. Tomo says, are you coming up yet? I was take effect so maybe a half hour later or three quarters of an hour later i'm not feeling anything thomas says are you coming up yeah i was like oh no he goes did

you take it all i was like i only took a half and he goes take a whole one these are really light you gotta take a whole one so i'm back in took another quarter i'm back in took another quarter and then uh eventually it started coming up and ecstasy was like nothing I had ever tried before. It was, it's called ecstasy for that reason. It actually feels like ecstasy. I came out and I was like, I loved everybody in the fucking place. You know, I had no bad feelings. It was overwhelming.

And I was just thinking, fuck, why doesn't everybody on earth take these all the time? You know, I was thinking there would be no wars or anything. This is fucking great. And that night I ended up, like I would be all sweaty and my jaw would be hanging and my foot would be tapping and music sounded good. And I ended up taking two on my first night and it was kind of like, it was like discovering alcohol all over again except a hundred times better.

And I loved it. And then ecstasy costs money as well. So there was the financial problem of paying for the ecstasy. And I was the first one out of my friends to start taking it. And then Pat the Rat started taking it and other boys as well. So I was sort of friendly, right? Tomo was kind of quiet and antisocial, so not a lot of people knew him. So I was kind of like, all my friends started taking them after me

and we were all doing them together. A lot of people were telling me to get pills off them from Tomo. And so I was ending up getting 10 or 15 a night for everybody and just getting them as a favor. And Tomo says to me, he goes, why don't you take 100 of these, and you can sell some of them, and then you get a bunch of money and you do your own for free. And I was like, oh, no, no, that's dealing.

That's serious. If the cops catch you dealing, it wouldn't be like the IDs. I'd fucking go to jail for that shit for years. And he goes, mush, you're already dealing them. I was like, no, I'm not. I'm getting them as favors. And he says, mush, if the cops catch you,

the charge is for sale or supply. You're supplying them. So you're already dealing them for free. I was like, fuck, he's right. Might as well get it for you. Yeah, I was like, fuck. I'm already dealing them for free. You might as well.

And it made sense, and Tomo was smart. So I was like, okay. And then I, just by default, just like that, I became an ecstasy dealer because I ended up getting them from my friends. And then Tomo started, like, training me how to do it like it's you know say if you're a parent out there and and you're wondering how does your kid get involved in drugs like someone has to show them you know at least the ins and outs of how to do it i get

like bags of a hundred and and uh he like you know he'd tell me how much to charge and not to give people credit and you know all the ins and outs of it, how to watch out for the cops, all this kind of stuff. And just like that, it just seemed to happen in a short period of time. I was supplying the whole college with, you know. Yeah, all of your dealing over the years though

through San Francisco seems to be purely motivated on your part just to have a little extra cash and to be able to have an infinite supply for yourself, right? I mean, you weren't trying to be some kind of gangster kingpin in terms of dealing. You just wanted to make sure that you always had access to the drugs that you wanted.

Pretty much, especially at the beginning. But then later it started to get way more serious in terms of like, you know, doing bigger things. And, and, uh, but at the beginning, that's all it was, you know? Um, but the problem was, so at the beginning, ecstasy was great. There wasn't even much of a comedown. You'd be awake all night and the comedown wasn't too bad at the beginning but what happens when you're doing ecstasy probably the same as everything the more of it you do the more of it you need to do so like one or two pills used to do me for a night at the beginning and then later I wouldn't even come up unless I double dropped like like and in Ireland they were cheap like

back then there were about 10 pounds a piece for one pill. And I was getting them for three or four pounds a piece in bulk. So when they're cheaply available and when they're not working as good, you end up just taking more and more and more, you know. And that's what happened to me. The tolerance went up. But then the comedown, you get that depression. The comedown got worse too.

Yeah, the highs were very very high and the lows were really really low and uh you know i started dating this girl uh we'll call her tabitha i was madly in love with her like before i started doing ecstasy i i don't think i could even experience the emotion of love i was like really really closed off and stuff like that but when i started doing ecstasy, it was like, you know, I think it did something to my personality that wasn't there before. And I was madly in love with this chick and we were going out for a while and she would always end up getting me into fights with people.

I remember one time I was staying at her house one night. Her bedroom was on the second floor. And I was sound asleep in bed. I'd say it was about 1 o'clock in the morning. And I wake up and she's screaming, Richie, Richie, Richie. I fucking wake up, right? And the window was right beside the bed. And it's up on the second floor.

There was a fucking man at the window. And she was screaming, Richie, Richie. I was like, this guy was trying to get into the house and it was a wooden window that opens out i tell you i opened the window and i beat the fucking shit out of him with the window i i beat the crap out of him with the window and he didn't fall off the roof but he got down and ran away and then i woke up and i and i saw uh tabitha and she had her boobs out like you know and then I kind of realized she must have been flashing the dude outside the window while I was asleep and the guy fucking climbed up on the roof to try and get into bed with her and I get woken

up and I'm beating this guy with a fucking window you know second floor I mean if he had fallen and cracked his head yeah and then the next, now this would only happen in Ireland. This would never happen in America. The next day, I'm sitting in the living room with her and her roommate, and the doorbell rings, and it's the guy from last night. And I looked out the window, and I saw him. And the poor guy, I gave him a bad old beating with the window. I probably hit him about 20 times with it.

His face was all swollen and cut. But I thought he was coming back to get me. So I grabbed the poker out of the fireplace and came out like, but she answered the door. But the guy just came

to apologize. I guess he sobered up and realized what happened. This would only happen in Ireland. The guy came to apologize. Can you imagine in LA? That would never happen

in America, you know. But the dude had come back to apologize and she answered the door and she saw his face and I'm behind her with the poker. I was gonna fight him with the poker because I didn't know what was happening. And she was trying to invite him in for a cup of tea because she felt bad.

And all he wanted to do was apologize and hope that she wasn't gonna call the police, you know? Well, now I know why John and Dave wanna make a TV show out of this. Because the thing about the book and these stories as sort of, you know, horrid and awful as some of this stuff is, like there's this undercurrent of hilarity.

Like there's a lot of comic relief in all of this. I mean, without making excuses for your violent behavior and obviously people were hurt and all of that. Like just imagining in my mind, like what that must've looked like. Like it's very cinematic. Yeah, I don't think that one even made it into the book. But I think the thing too,

like to go back to something you said a few minutes ago, you said that you couldn't access that feeling of love until you took ecstasy. And I think it's an important point to make that you make in the book, which is like, these things work, man. And when you're an addict or an alcoholic, something does get unlocked.

Like it is serving a purpose. And I think in terms of talking openly about the nature of addiction and recovery, it's important to acknowledge like that fact, like they serve a purpose. And in recovery, when you look back and kind of regale in these stories to acknowledge like I needed that

and actually it did something for me and it worked until obviously it stopped working and then it became very dark and terrible. But there is that piece there that it's important to be honest about that. Yeah, I'll be real about everything. Obviously some of the stuff is very embarrassing, but if you can't be honest, what's the point?

That's the way I see it. But basically anyway, I was madly in love with this girl and we ended up breaking up and I was pretty I see it. But basically, anyway, I was madly in love with this girl and we ended up breaking up. And I was pretty down about it. And by that stage, I was probably doing ecstasy three or four times a week. I was averaging 15 or 20 pills in a night. So I was like all over the place.

The head wasn't working right. And, you know, I was feeling really down, it was around the time of 9-11, and I remember one day I decided to get two bottles of Jack Daniels, I was just kind of drowning my sorrows, you know, so I brought them to the house, and it was like, I was drinking these bottles of JD, and I got more and more depressed, bottles of JD and I got more and more depressed and I said fuck it I'll just kill myself you know and I had a hundred ecstasy I started with a handful of five so I started just drinking and swallowing the ecstasy started putting out cigarettes on my arm I still have these scars on my arm from where I was doing that and got a knife and started cutting my hand. It was like, I barely even remember it, but what happened was I took about 30 pills and

one of my roommates, this guy called Travis, we'll call him, Travis hid the rest of my pills and saved my life. And I was like shitting myself and and uh i blacked out nobody brought me to the hospital would you believe yeah and uh but i survived like you know it was crazy that was like my first suicide attempt i'd say i was about 19 years old but uh yeah like down through the years i'd say i probably before i got sober like I'd say I probably I lost count of the number of times I tried to kill myself and like that one was pretty pathetic but some of them were kind of funny if you have a dark sense of humor like uh I remember one time around 2008 2009 I had a life

insurance policy right in case something happened to me the missus and the kids would be okay you know and I used I used to uh used to party with my life insurance agent, this guy called Chris. And anyway, I was on the tear, drinking loads and doing loads of drugs. And I decided, fuck it, I'll just kill myself. But I was like, oh, if I kill myself, will that nullify the fucking policy for the life insurance?

So I'm outside my house smoking cigarettes, like planning my death. And I ring up Chris. He's like, hey, Richie, what's going on? I was like, hey, Chris, if I kill myself, does that nullify the policy? And he says, yeah, you fucking idiot. It's fucking suicide.

I was like, shit. I don't want to fucking leave my fucking kids penniless. And you know what he said to me that just snapped me out of it that night? He said, Richie, you're like a fucking fat kid who's crying because he can't eat his fucking cake. That's what he said to me. And for some reason, that just snapped me out of it. It was weird. I had loads of incidents like that.

Like another time, I'd say it was maybe around 2007, 2008. I used to be a carpenter. When I came to America, I learned how to be a carpenter. I was a drug dealer, but also a carpenter. And this buddy of mine, Dav, he had a side job for me to do on the weekends. He says, he calls me Fetch. So he says, hey, Fetch, do you want to do a side job at the weekend? I says, yeah, what is it? He says, it's at a fortune teller's up in Laguna Honda. You have to, like, she wants to build a couple of walls or some shit.

I was like, okay. But the night before, I was on, like, a really bad bender, so I was dying while I was working. And I was thinking about killing myself while I was working at this fortune teller's. You know, she was very nice. I was working away, I was putting down my plates,

nailing them with a nail gun and she's watching me while I'm working and I'm thinking, you know what, when I'm done here, I'll go to the fucking bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge because a lot of people kill bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Because a lot of people kill themselves on the Golden Gate Bridge. So I'm nailing my plates and I'm thinking I'll go to the bridge when I'm done. And then I was thinking, fuck, you know, there's a net around the Golden Gate Bridge. So if you jump in the wrong place, you'll end up in the net. So I was thinking, fuck,

knowing my luck, I'd probably end up in the fucking net, you know. And I'm nailing my studs and she's watching me and then I'm thinking you know what I'll just go down there to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and I'll blow my brains out nobody ever kills themselves with a gun on the Golden Gate Bridge that's what I was thinking

yeah I'll do that you know and while I'm working I'm debating with myself how I'm going to kill myself and the fortune teller is watching me. And she looks at me and she goes, oh my God, you have a wonderful aura. And I was, I just, it was so ridiculous. I laughed out loud. I was thinking, you fucking fraud.

I didn't say anything to her, but the ridiculousness of what she said to me snapped me out of it for that day. It was so, so bizarre. Like I had so many of those moments. Yeah, little interventions you weren't even aware of. But amongst all of these efforts to end your life, did it ever enter your mind? Like maybe I should get off the drugs and alcohol?

Like a normal person who's listening to this, like I understand where you're coming from, but a normal person is thinking, dude, it's the drugs and the alcohol, man. Just quit that shit. Well, you know, I knew I had a problem with the drugs and alcohol, but I didn't put two and two together about the depression being linked to the drugs and alcohol. Like, as I said, growing up, I had no idea of what alcoholism really is, you know. I just basically thought it was someone who couldn't handle their shit.

I didn't realize that part of it is it can make a person so depressed that they want to end their life, you know. So I thought there were two separate issues, you know. Until I got sober and I found out, oh, that's part of the deal, you know? Depression is part of the deal. But yeah, no, like it crossed my mind.

But when I was younger, like in my early 20s, I was like, this is what people do in their 20s, right? And I kind of thought, maybe I'll quit sometime in the future. Maybe like when I'm 30, you know, if I live that long, that's kind of thought maybe i'll quit sometime in the future maybe like when i'm 30 you know if i live that long that's kind of what i thought and what those goal posts keep moving exactly yeah i move the goal posts every time and the funny thing was a lot of times after a really bad bender i'd be fucked for a day or two after it and then during that day or two i would kind

of think maybe i need to quit this shit. Or maybe if I pissed off the wife or if I did something or maybe went missing or whatever I was doing, I would make promises to her as well. Because I wasn't fucking behaving like husband of the year or anything like that. And at times, I would really mean it. I'd be like, okay, I'm never drinking again. Never doing coke again. And then after I would feel mean it. I'd be like, okay, I'm never drinking again. Never doing coke again. And then after I would feel better,

after whatever week, once I'd start to recover, I thought my mind was changing. For a lot of years I thought I changed my mind. I wanted to quit last week, but I don't want to quit this week. And then my mind would change. And I thought that was me changing my mind. For a lot, a lot of years, I thought that was me that was changing my mind would change and I thought that was me changing my mind for a lot a lot of years I thought that was me that was changing my mind each time but then eventually after a lot of years

I was 28 when I got sober eventually it became obvious to me that it wasn't me that was changing my mind it was something else that I was fucking powerless over. Like, you know, if you have a problem with the booze and the drugs, it's a very sneaky fucking mental condition because it'll tell you you don't have the problem, you know?

And I used to hang around with a lot of dudes who like in my perception were worse than I was because I could look at Eric or whoever I'm hanging out with and go, I'm not as bad as Eric.

Look at him, you know? But it's a defense mechanism. Sure. It's a wise strategy though. Yeah. at Eric or whoever I'm hanging out with and go, I'm not as bad as Eric, look at him. But it's a defense mechanism. Sure, it's a wise strategy though. Yeah. So that you don't really have to own your own shit. Yeah, but it happens even, it happens beyond your own consciousness. It fucking works in the background, it's weird.

Yeah. You mentioned Travis and Tomo. I wanna talk about the kidnapping. This is where shit gets serious. Oh, God. So after a couple of years of working with Tomo, working for Tomo, I could never seem to get ahead. I always ended up owing him more money.

He'd give me 100 pills, and I would end up either taking most of them myself or giving them away and not being able to collect the money. And he was throwing good money after bad. He would keep giving me more chances, giving me more pills. This guy seems incredibly patient, given the fact that you were a terrible drug dealer. In fairness, yeah, he was.

So I was my own best customer. That was the problem. So I never got rich or anything like that. That was a disaster. And so I ended up owing him a lot of money. And this guy, Travis, that I used to live with, we were only 19 or 20 at the time. We were only kids still.

But this guy was in his 30s. He was a good dude. He was kind of a hippie. you know, he was from down south in Cork and like a nice fella, wore glasses, you know, harmless, right? And Tomo was a wholesaler. I was like a street dealer that time and Tomo was a wholesaler. So he would be given large amounts of drugs to different people. And this guy Travis, he got a few kilos of hash on credit. So in Ireland we say on tick, that means basically on credit. So he gets the couple of kilos and then just disappears, just stopped answering his phone,

no intention of paying it back, you know. He wasn't telling Tom to fuck off, he was just saying, just ignoring him. And then so Tomo had got that on credit from his supplier. We had a bigger supplier, we used to go to a place called Navin. We called this boy Smiling Pat, because he was always smiling, but he was really dangerous. smiling Pat. Because he was always smiling. But he was really dangerous.

Anyway, Tomo's supplier, Pat, was getting impatient for the money. He's ringing up Tomo and putting power tools on the phone, like saws and shit like that,

and saying, this is what you're going to get if you don't pay that fucking money for what you owe. So I owe money to Tomo, Travis owes money to Tomo, and Tomo owes money to Pat. So that's where the dilemma started. At the time, Tomo had this roommate up in Dublin,

this guy called Mick. He was a British guy. Mick was like a shitbag. He borrowed a load of coke off a bunch of different gangsters up in Dublin and they were shooting at Tomo

on the street and everything like that they tried to kill him over that like so I was like Tomo told me I was like

what kind of a gun was it you know he goes mush I didn't stop to look at it they were firing shots at me

in the fucking street you know so we're all in a lot of trouble right but I'm trying to

pay Tomo back I'm his friend so he's not really mad at me but he's getting upset and so the word is

that Travis's parents have money so Tomo says okay Mush if you help us kidnap Travis I'll write off your death and we'll get his parents to pay the money that he owes

so I'm like fuck that's really serious shit and Travis had saved my life before he wasn't a bad dude even though he owed the money

so I was like if you guys are gonna kill him I'm not fucking helping you with that he doesn't deserve to die you know so he goes no I swear to God

we won't kill him and Tomo was actually Catholic enough like if he swears to God, you believe him. You know, I did anyway. So Tomo lived in Dublin and I lived outside Dublin in a different town. And Travis lived in my town.

And he goes, Mush, as soon as you see him, fucking call me. I'll be down with the boys from Dublin. We'll take him to a safe house and make his parents pay the money. So my job was to like find him and let the boys know. So one day I'm down in this bar called The Roost. It's like a

busy fucking crowded place with like a DJ you know. Kind of a college bar. So I'm down in the roost one night and I see Travis and I message Tomo and I said he's here in the roost and Tomo rings me. He goes stay on him. We'll be done from Dublin. Stay on him. Don't fucking lose him. Let me know if he moves. So I'm watching him and then eventually he moves to

go to another bar. There's one up the street called Caulfields. It's like an old man's pub. Quiet fucking. There's one up the street called Caulfields. It's like an old man's pub, like quiet fucking. There might be five people there dead. So I follow him up to Caulfields and I'm waiting there with Tomo. He's just having a pint of Guinness

by himself, just fucking enjoying himself. The place is empty and quiet. And next thing, Tomo arrives. He had a separate crew of boys from Dublin. Like there was me and the other

boys we hung around with who were young lads, but Tomo was like my age, he was only 19 or 20, but he had these older ex-cons who, like, followed him around up in Dublin, and, like, he had a separate crew of boys from Dublin who were, like, really dangerous fellas, you know, like ex-cons, you know, they were probably in their 30s i'd say by that point but uh in he walks with the boys uh with his crew from dublin and i'm standing there watching and travis just looks up and he sees the boys fucking in front of his table and he looks at him and he goes mush come on you're coming with us up to dublin and uh he didn't fight he didn't kick or scream he just fucking got up.

He took it like a man. Right. But he knew the shit was real. Well, yeah, because he owed like thousands of pounds at the time. That was before the Euro changeover. So it would have been pounds. We had pounds at the time.

Actually, when we changed from pounds to Euros, Tomo had to change my debt from, okay, so you owe me a thousand pounds. That's equal to 1,256 euros. We had to like change over what was owed to fucking euros. But yeah, so the boys walked out with Travis and then until I seen them walking out with him, I felt okay about it. I was like, the guy owes the money, we're doing the right thing. But then when I seen them walking out with him, I was like, fuck, he might not make it back alive. And then I felt really bad about it.

And he had saved my life before too. That time I was going to kill myself. So I felt terrible about it. Right. Yeah, but it was out of my control. So then later I found out what happened off Tomo. Basically, they brought him to the safe house. The safe house was Tommo's own house in Dublin.

They didn't have a fucking safe house. No real safe house. They didn't really have a safe house. They brought him to his fucking house. And they brought him up there and they were trying to scare him. And Tommo's brother, he's a really nice fella. He's a gay dude. Anyway, Tommo's brother comes in with like a tray full of tea

to the boys while they're in the middle. And Tommo's like, Mosh, get to the boys while they're in the middle and Thomas like mush get out the fuck you're rolling in the mood like you know it sounded funny to me like but first of all Travis was saying oh my parents don't have any money you know and then eventually uh Tomo went out to the kitchen he brought out some trash bags and he says mush you pay the fucking money or you're going into fucking bin bags and then at that Travis rang the parents and they drove up with the money

I don't know what it was five or six grand I think plus each of the kidnappers got five hundred a piece plus whatever I owed like

so they came up with the cash and Tomo told me they met in like a deserted parking lot

you know Tomo came and he put one like a deserted parking lot, you know. Tomo came and he put one of those scarves around his face so they couldn't see his face. Travis' mother had the money and she said, please don't hurt him. And Tomo was like, I don't know nothing about it. I'm just here to pick up the money, you know. And she gave the money.

They let him go. That was the end of it. Yeah, so when it comes time for you to make amends for your role in this whole thing, it creates quite a dilemma for you. But now you've written about it in a book and even though you're using different names, these people have to know.

These are all real people, yeah. But yeah, it's not fair to use the real names. Yeah. So that's a tricky one, right? Like how do you make this wrong right? Yeah. Later on, like part of sobriety is when you're working the steps, you have to make amends to people you've hurt.

Like when I was doing my amends list, he was the top of my list. Like my sponsor was this guy called Bernard. And he says, well, show me your list. And I took out the list, and the top of the list was Kidnap Travis. And, you know, for the amends, you're supposed to run it by your sponsor. So, you know, it might be something like money owed or whatever.

So I would always try and figure out in my head, ahead of time, what the amends might be you know and so I was thinking what's the opposite of a kidnapping I could send him on a lovely vacation you know that's what I was thinking in my head when I first got sober

and I was talking to my sponsor about it and I told him I says do you want me to send him on a vacation he says does that man know you're involved in the kidnapping I says no he says well don't fucking tell him do you want me to send him on a vacation? He says, does that man know you're involved in the kidnapping? I says, no.

He says, well, don't fucking tell him. He says, it's probably the worst experience of the man's life. Just don't fucking kidnap anyone again. And that was the amends. He just told me, leave the guy alone. Just don't ever do that kind of stuff again. But now at some point, he might come across the book. I'd make amends to him. So you might have to reopen that case.

Yeah, Travis, if you're out there, let me know what I can do. Right, there might be a vacation coming. Might be a vacation in your future. Well, at some point you pull this geographic and move to San Francisco, right? Thinking like, oh, if I just get out of Dodge, all will be rainbows. Yeah.

Make a long story very short. I thought that Ireland was the problem. Maybe if I got out of Ireland that my fortunes would change. And I got married really young. My ex-wife was from San Francisco and that's how I ended up moving there when I was 22. I became a dad. And I tried to be I ended up moving there when I was 22. I became a dad. And I tried to be good really at the start when I got there and I was good for a few years,

but eventually things, I couldn't keep myself. Well, you brought yourself with you. Exactly. Yeah. The only thing that changed was the location. I didn't change. Right. I mean, there's so many stories and incidents that you have.

But the one thing that I do want to hear from you about is how you got involved with this Asian gang. I didn't even realize that was funny until I started working with John. You know, I told him I was in this Asian gang. He's like, you were in an Asian gang? I'm like, yeah. And he goes, but you're not Asian. I was like, oh yeah, I guess I'm not. He's like, well, what were you doing with the Asian gang? I was like, well, they had the best cocaine. Around recession time, there was no more work for a carpenter.

And I was broke. And I had a bad enough cocaine habit. I was broke and I had a bad enough cocaine habit. So I started dealing again because I couldn't afford to just be a user anymore. And I started off getting this like crappy coke from this Irish guy I knew, this little Irish guy. His nickname was The Pony. So The Pony was giving me this crappy coke for 800 bucks an ounce.

And it wasn't that strong. And I don't know if you know anything about drug dealing. It's way easier to sell stuff that's strong than not. So I was selling this crappy coke that I got off the pony. And I used to get my own coke off these Asian guys. They were like organized crime, like professional dudes. And they had really, really strong coke. It was extra money per gram, but it was like pure,

like uncut, fish scale, the shiny, rocky stuff, the good stuff. So I was getting my own stuff off them for whatever, a couple of years, and I was finding it hard to sell the shitty coke. And then I came up with the idea, why don't I ask these guys to buy the bulk off them, you know? And the main guy, we'll call him Ronald. I says to Ronald one day, I says, hey, can I start getting ounces off you guys?

And he knew me for a while at this point. And he goes, you can get it under one condition. And I'm like, what's that? He says, if you start getting it off us, you're not allowed to get it off anybody else. I'm like, why? He says, because we have really good shit, and if you're working with us, and then you stop working with us, and then you start selling crap, then it'll ruin our reputation.

So I was like, fuck, that's a bit of a commitment. But they had the best coke around, so I was like fuck that's a bit of a commitment but uh but they had the best coke around so I was like okay and then he says there's one other thing if you ever rat on us we'll kill your whole family and uh I was like fuck like well I never ratted on anybody before I wasn't gonna start now so I was like yeah I can I can I can like that's not a problem yeah I was like but you were the I mean were you how did you I guess you had established some level of trust but like how do you ingratiate yourself into that community of people I mean you were there couldn't have been any other non-Asian people working with that gang I'll tell you now right so just to finish how I was how I joined those guys um so he says if you ever

rat on us we'll kill your whole family and i said okay i won't rat on you and he goes if you're ever arrested just keep your mouth shut and the lawyer will be provided for you that's what he told me and he said and the other good thing about working with us if anybody fucks with you we'll be up there with machine guns i was like okay this is really serious so that was me in with them but before that I had had got coke off other people as well but in San Francisco might be the same now I don't know but there's a few Asian gangs that supply all the Irish people with coke there's a chick a Vietnamese chick I won't tell you what her name is but she she's one of the big suppliers there. And then there was my guys, Ronald and Leroy. Leroy was kind of like off the boat Asian dude.

He never wore any shoes or socks when he was driving. And then there was another guy called Johnny Go Anywhere. He was another Asian taxi driver. He had these business cards that said, Johnny Tax go anywhere. So his nickname was Johnny go anywhere But Johnny got killed around 2007 2008 Yeah somebody called him to go somewhere and he pulled up in the sunset and they shot him in the head and his car drove into a

fucking house and exploded but Yeah, the word was that the chick the other rival killed him, but I heard it was Chinese moneylenders. But yeah, long story short, there's a lot of Asian gangs up there. Yeah. So you start working with this Asian gang, you're dealing, you're married, you got a girlfriend, you're out all night. Like it seems pretty insane. Then you have this accident on a construction site that breaks your back.

Like there's a lot of chaos that's coming into your life. I had the accident after I got sober. Oh, that happened after. Yeah, yeah, I was all good while I was using and you know, things, well, I wasn't all good, but yeah. So yeah, I was working with these Asian guys for a while and selling coke and I was selling with these Asian guys for a while and selling coke and I was selling Viagra as well

yeah there's a thing I don't know if any of you coke heads out there there's a thing where if you take too much coke you get this thing called coke dick so if you have Viagra with you you can avoid that situation

right you know right right right yeah so I used to sell the little the little blue pills as well that was part of my thing. But yeah, things got really crazy around 2009.

But walk me up into the bottom. Yeah, this is coming to the bottom. Yeah, this is coming to the bottom. So let's just say somebody hurted somebody i i really cared about and and uh and i decided they'd have to be be killed right and um so i went about hiring a hitman to to to kill this guy and uh first i tried my gang i asked ron Ronald would they do it for a price and he said that they would only kill somebody who had fucked us over in business he wouldn't kill anybody for personal reasons and he told me he had killed a bunch of people when he was younger and he told

me that they they haunted him you know so so he was trying to talk me out about it or he didn't want to do it and then I knew this Norteño guy Mexican Mafia fella called Joe and I asked Joe would he do it and Joe said he'd do it for 5,000 I only had 2,000 so I says Joe I'll give you 2,000 I only have 2,000

he's like no no that's not enough money. So then I decided I was gonna rob this bar in San Francisco. So there used to be, it's gone now, but it was a money laundering operation for the Irish terrorists. And- This just sounds like such a good plan.

Well, cocaine gave me these kind of good ideas. I mean, it's a comedy of errors, like out of a Coen Brothers movie. Yeah, but the sad thing is it's fucking true. So basically this place would have a half million dollars behind the bar every Friday. So if you had a check and if you were, say if you had problems with the IRS or child support, or you were an illegal immigrant, you could bring your check into the bar and they'd cash the check for you and give you cash for it and you tip the barman. That's how the thing worked. And I knew somebody who worked there and I said, well, I knew it could be Rob, but it was like a two-man job.

Like one person would have to watch the customers and the other person could go in and get the money. And so I was like trying to get some of the guys I hung around with to do it, but they were all too scared. And then I asked the girlfriend to do it with me and she was scared too. And we ended up not being able to do it. And then I get a call from Joe.

Joe got a DUI. So he badly needed the money. He says, I'll kill the guy for 2,000. Just, you have to get the gun. So, 2,000 isn't a lot of money, so he's not spending that fucking money on getting the gun. So I had to provide the gun for him. And I had my own gun, but it was a legal one. And you can't, if you have a registered gun you

can't kill somebody with that because it can be traced to you so I hit up this guy Silva another fella I knew um asked him if he could give me a gun and uh he said yeah come to the mission and before this I had been on like a really bad bender it was around burning man time and this undertaker from Ireland was going to burning man and he wanted a half ounce of coke so I got I got an ounce give him half the ounce and the other half went up my nose so I was awake for a few days and and I drove down to the mission to meet Silva. And I was sleepwalking around the place, sweaty, fucking on edge. And when I got there, he saw how bad I was and he's like, I'm not giving this fool a gun.

He didn't say that to me, but I know that's what he was thinking. So I ended up not getting the gun off him. So I ended up not getting the gun off him. So I'm driving back to my house out by the beach and fucking cops start following me. I was driving up Fulton and the cops followed me and I'm all sweaty and I have an ounce in the glove compartment and I have a.22 under the seat. So I'm sitting in a jail sentence if they catch me.

So they fucking followed me and then the lights come on and the siren and I'm like, fuck, I'm nearly having a heart attack. And then they turned around and went back the way they came. They must have got a call on the fucking, on the radio. And I nearly had a heart attack. My heart was coming through my chest. So I pulled over.

I smoked like fucking five cigarettes. And I was like, I'm not going to jail for killing this fool. And I decided I would go to Australia. Right. Instead. As one would. Yeah. So yeah, I figured I was like, fuck it.

I thought San Francisco is the problem. I need to get the fuck out of here. Right. Like there was a recession in America, but Australia was booming. There was loads of Irish going to Australia. So I decided to go to Australia. Fucking hopped on a plane.

We'll make a long story short. I hopped on a plane on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and I went to Australia. I was never going to come back. I was like, fuck America. You know? Yeah. And you went with your girlfriend. Yeah. And your wife was never going to come back. And I was like, fuck America, you know? Yeah.

And you went with your girlfriend. Yeah. And your wife was at home in San Francisco. Like the insanity level is through the roof on all of this. Different level. And the other thing was, I didn't even want the girlfriend to come with me because like this was towards the end of 2009.

And I was like really suicidal, but I thought if I could get out of America I wouldn't do it like and I was staying at the girlfriend's house and I was I was so fucking high and and uh and I just wanted to book my flights to Australia you could get a visa online it was really easy like I just wanted to book my flights and get the fuck out of there and uh she she was an accountant right the girlfriend was and and so she wanted to give two weeks notice uh she wanted to give two weeks notice before before we leave and i was like no no i can go now and you can meet me over there i can't wait two weeks i was on that store like and uh and i got on the computer in her house to fucking book my tickets for Australia and she turned the internet off in

the house and I was like fuck I'm trapped in Daly City and uh and she came back in and I was high as a kite and she told me the raccoons had eaten the cables outside and that's why the internet was off and I was high but I wasn't that fucking high I knew that she turned the fucking internet off because she wanted me to wait so I was stuck there and I was like so wasted I couldn't go to like an internet cafe

or something like that I would have called the police I was so bad so I was stuck there and I was like mad at her for keeping me there in the end she eventually turned on the fucking internet and everything. And we both left on New Year's Eve. And I was thinking, I'm finishing this chick as soon as we get to Australia. Right.

And you go to Australia, it's a disaster. Pillar to post. More of the same shit. Lots of fighting, fist fights fights lots of visits to the whorehouse lots of drinking it was crazy in australia too like yeah so where do you where do you meet your maker and finally realize like i can't so i stayed in australia for like three or four months and i missed the kids as well so i decided to come back to america and then when i came back two kids at this point yeah two kids yeah and and America and then when I came back. You had two kids at this point. Yeah two kids yeah and I came back and I was trying to be sober and in the end I

just became suicidal. I was going to shoot myself again and you know even though I was a drug addict I was a pretty good carpenter. I could always get work and there's a bunch of Irish guys in San Francisco who were sober and they go to the 12-step meetings and they don't make any secret of it and I ended up working with some of these guys and one of them was a guy called Bernard or Americans would say Bernard yeah but Irish call him Bernard so Bernard he knew I had a problem. And we used to work together. And I would always be curious about the meetings. I would like ask him questions. What goes on at these meetings?

And he didn't want to tell me a whole lot. But he just gave me his number. And he says, if you ever want to get sober, give me a call. So I says, right. And for some reason, that time I was suicidal again. I decided to give him a call. And because I had already tried to kill myself so many times and it wasn't working out and I tried to do it on my own. Like I tried to stop drinking and my record was three months

like off everything. Yeah. But every good alcoholic has that experience of a couple months off, which just fuels that idea that you can do it yourself. Yeah, like the game is to prove you're not an alcoholic. So like I could stay sober for three months, so that proves I'm not an alcoholic, let's drink. You know, by the end of the three months, I will be bursting for a drink. And then there was other rules,

like alcoholics drink in the house, I knew that, for a drink and then there was other rules like uh alcoholics drink in the house I knew that so I never drank in the house I was like oh that's alcoholic shit so I'd always drink at the bar and I knew alcoholics drank in the morning so I never drank in the morning I suffered all those hangovers for all those years and then when I came to the meetings people were like oh yeah I used to drink in the morning to help me feel better I was like fuck I never did that. I suffered all these hangovers for all these years. So it led me to this point where what made me call Bernard,

I was doing this job out in the East Bay and I had just tried to kill myself a few weeks beforehand and I knew I didn't want to drink again. And I would be driving home from work and I could feel something was pulling me to go to the bar because I didn't drink at home drank at the bar and and this something that wasn't me was pulling me to go to the bar and I was able to observe it whereas it had been there all along but when it was in the background but I could I could feel there's some shit that's fucking not me that makes me want to drink.

So I called up Bernard and I said, well, Richie, how are you doing? He says, Bernard, I have a problem with the drinking

and the drugs. Can you bring me to a meeting? And he goes, I'll pick you up this evening. So he came and he picked me up

and that was Labor Day 2010. Right. That's where it all started. That was it. The guy becomes your sponsor, not immediately, but he's your Eskimo. He brings you into this whole other world and hence begins the slog into sobriety.

Yeah, it was really weird. I didn't know a whole lot about sobriety like in ireland it's kind of at least when i was growing up it was more underground like you know you wouldn't know shit about it like even now what the last few years it must be weird in la where just everybody's talking about it like a badge of honor like people in restaurants would be like fucking working the steps in the in a restaurant with their sponsor that was so weird to me like back home

it's like so secret you know when you're there they would say oh he's a member it's like Fight Club or some shit back home

you know in Ireland you have to be really bad to go to AA like cause like when I first got sober

I started coming home and a lot of my old drinking buddies like Tits and the boys like that I go to the pub to meet them, but I'll be like, well, what are you drinking? I'm like, a Coke. Oh, you're not drinking.

I'm like, no, I'm an alcoholic. He's like, oh, you're not a fucking alcoholic. Because if I'm an alcoholic, then it could be- Yeah, they don't want to have to look at their own behavior. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I think to hit that, that grade of, of maybe surrender in Ireland, you probably have to be a lot, a lot worse than, than over here, you know?

Right. So he brings you to meetings in San Francisco. This becomes like your thing, man. I mean, what's interesting is that you didn't relapse. No, I was very fortunate, but it was weird though, Rich. It wasn't, like I never relapsed, but I was at a point where I was willing to fucking do whatever was suggested to me, at least on face value. Yeah, we'll talk about the willingness piece. That's something I talk about all the time.

Like that idea that you can't compel somebody to get sober. Like it has to be this internally driven desire, a true willingness where you're ready and prepared to do whatever it takes. Yeah. And I didn't even really, at the start, I didn't even really think it would necessarily work for me, you know? Because as I said before, I knew I had a problem with the sauce and the cocaine but I thought like maybe I have some kind of mental problems like maybe I'm fucking depressed or manic depressing or bipolar or some shit like you know I really did did because I didn't understand uh the mental traits of somebody who has a problem like this you know and and I knew that alcoholics drank every day but I didn't

drink every day I was like I was a binge drinker. Sometimes I could stay sober for a couple of weeks, but then I would just drink to extreme when I did. So my understanding was that I'm probably not an alcoholic until I came there. And then when I came to the first meeting, I was really nervous, dude. So all the Irish know each other in San Francisco. That's where it was. And I knew that the Irish center had meetings, right? I didn't want to go to the Irish center.

Right, because it'll get leaked out. Yeah, it's like, oh, Richie Stevens has a problem. Like, yeah, yeah. So I didn't mind them knowing I was a drug dealer piece of shit or anything like that. This is how warped my thinking was at the time. I didn't mind them knowing I was a drug dealer piece of shit or anything like that. This is how warped my thinking was at the time. I didn't mind them knowing that I was a drug dealer and I was a bad guy, but I didn't want them to think I had a problem.

So Bernard picked me up that day, and there was another guy with him, Niall. I'd never met him before, but the two guys were in the front and I was in the back. And I was really nervous because I didn't want the fucking Irish people to know. And this guy Niall was Irish too, who was in the car with me. And I was so nervous because I didn't want the fucking Irish people to know and this guy Niall was Irish too who was in the car with me and I was so fucking nervous dude I says where are we going and Bernard says

we're going to the Irish centre and I'm like fuck and the car was already moving so I was like I have to go to the fucking Irish centre now and they knew I was really nervous and it was quiet in the car and Bernard turns around and he says I have to go to the fucking Irish Centre now, you know. And they knew I was really nervous, you know. And it was quiet in the car. And Bernard turns around and he says,

did you bring your passport? I said, what? Did you bring your passport? I was like, no. I thought it was like a set up with the cops to be waiting for me to have my passport to deport me. I says, no, why? And then he started laughing.

He had this fucking Santa Claus laugh. Like this. But he was just breaking my balls, like, you know, and that kind of took the edge off. Like, they were kind of making fun of me because they knew I was nervous, you know. He was just fucking with me. So it kind of broke the ice a little bit. We got up to the Irish Centre, we parked the car and I was like looking around fucking make sure nobody saw me going in

or anything like that, you know. It was in the no Richie Stevens sorts of fucking problem. Like anyone would do shit. Yeah, and this guy stopped me at the door like a northern fella called Stephen. He says, well, how are you? Are you new?

And I was thinking, how the fuck does he know I'm new? You know, but the thing is if you ever go to the meetings of course they know if you're new because the same fucking people go every week and if you're new you probably look like shit as well so I couldn't have been looking too hot after the session

I had been on so I was like yeah I am new he goes do you think you have a problem with drinking? I says yeah he says what makes you say that? I says, well, I just tried to kill myself a couple of weeks ago. And he goes, that'll do it. And then I went and I sat down and it was a fucking,

it was a men only meeting on a Friday night. And there was a good few Irish lads there, you know, like people like me, construction workers. And I came in, I sat down and, you know, I knew that like

from whatever I had seen on TV or any of this shit, I thought if you come to a fucking meeting, you have to tell everybody your story or you have to talk in front of a group. And like, that scared the shit out of me. You know, I could go around carrying a gun

and deal with the people I was dealing with. That didn't scare me. But being honest in front of a group of other drunks about my embarrassing shit, that scared the shit out of me. So I was like intent on not fucking telling anybody anything sit at the back you know keep to myself and uh so I sat down in the back and and uh everybody was was shaking my hand and saying hello and I was just trying to keep a low profile and uh at the start of the

meeting the guy says uh have we any newcomers here tonight? And everybody turns around and looks at me. And I would have like pretend fucking or give a fake name or something like that and just leave. But Bernard and Niall already knew who I was. So they put up the hand and I was like, I'm Richie. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I don't think I had ever admitted that

before in a group. And I couldn't believe it they all fucking clapped and I was like wow do you people know who I am like the things I have done

and but didn't give a fuck some of them did but they didn't give a shit all they cared about was there's a dude here who has a problem

and you know we're gonna help him out for fun and for free. I couldn't believe they were clapping for me. They're really like not what I was expecting. Yeah, so you say that out loud for the first time, but at what point did you believe that about yourself

like prior to that? Because you thought it was some other mental defect or you were making rationalizations or excuses for yourself but deep down when your head hit the pillow you knew like well you knew you were an alcoholic when i started drinking at the age of 15 or 16 i knew i had a problem back then but you push it way down yeah like i remember one time going to the doctor you know when you go to the doctor's office and there's a bunch of leaflets and shit like that sitting around

and in Ireland, same as here, you'd have a bunch of leaflets and shit in the doctor's office. I remember when I was a kid, like a teenager, I saw one of these leaflets and it was an alcoholic questionnaire. I think it's called the 20 questions. I think that's what it's called. So I remember as a

kid fucking opening this shit up when I was at the doctor's office and I had just discovered drinking at this time and I'm reading through the questions. Do you ever do things you regret while you're drinking? Who doesn't? Do you ever lie about your drinking? Of course.

Have you ever blacked out? That happens to everybody. And I remember back then when i had done the questionnaire i probably got 16 or 17 out of 20 and if you ever do that questionnaire they say they say one yes means you might be an alcoholic two yeses mean you're probably an alcoholic three or more you are definitely an alcoholic so i saw it in black and white when I was a fucking teenager, but I thought it was a joke. I was like, everybody drinks in Ireland.

It's in our culture. It's in our blood. So I knew I had a problem from the start, but when you're doing the steps right, it's admitted you're powerless over drugs and alcohol, and your life is unmanageable. So I knew I was powerless from a teenager, but I thought my life was manageable.

If you looked from the outside looking in, you'd say, this guy's a fucking, a fiend like, you know, but until the very end, I probably hadn't admitted that second part that my life was unmanageable. Right, and that's the baffling thing because any outside observer would say, this is nothing but chaos and insanity,

but your lived experience was, this is under control. I'm managing this all right. Yeah, in my own head, you know, but obviously not in everybody else's head. The people I was working with, you know, but obviously not in everybody else's head. The people I was working with, you know, the dolls I was seeing, my wife, obviously. Yeah, we're gonna get to the wife. But first, you know, one of the things I appreciated

about the book is your candor around the character defect piece, because there is this idea that when you get sober, like it's just about getting rid of the drugs and alcohol, and then all my problems are gonna go away. And what you don't realize is that then, you know, you have all of these emotions that come to the surface that become very unmanageable

until you learn these new tools for how to work through them. And in your case, like a lot of it goes back to the anger. Yeah. Like basically when you, when you're getting sober, right, it's really difficult when, when to take away your medicine because the booze is your medicine. If you're an alcoholic, the booze is what you use to feel good or to deal with all your problems for me like anytime i had any kind of a feeling the impulse was to to drink or get high like if i was happy about something yeah let's celebrate if you're sad about something drown your sorrows if you're angry about something need a drink to calm you down it was literally my solution for everything even boredom fuck i've

nothing to do let's go to the bar so if you have a problem with drinking and drugs like that's your life and then to suddenly have your your comfort taken away you're raw as fuck like you know so um when when someone's newly sober they're definitely really irritable and like you were saying with the the defects of character there's no such thing as a perfect person i still have defects of character obviously but um they're more obvious when the booze is gone and your head is clear and you have to get real about what these what these problems you have like for for me, I would say, yeah, quick to anger was one. You know, I probably got as many beatings as I gave, you know,

but violence was a way to solve problems. I never hit my missus or my kids or anything like that, but other dudes, like, you know anything like that but other dudes you know that's not how you behave when I came to the meetings they said it's a spiritual program and I said what the fuck is spiritual

and I have a college education but I never used the word spiritual it wasn't in my vocabulary I was like what does that mean? Do we all fucking sit around and do yoga or become vegan or what the fuck is that? That's what I thought originally. Not me.

But yeah, so I heard these people at the meetings. They'd be like, it's a spiritual program. This is what the fuck is spiritual? And the best definition I got, an old priest I talked to at one of the meetings, he said, spirituality is freedom from the bondage of self. So I had bondage of self. That's why I was drinking and doing all these drugs. I was like, okay, that sounds cool.

The booze and the Coke used to be my spirituality. How the fuck do I feel good now without that stuff? And they said it's very simple. You just do whatever your sponsor suggests. You try to be honest. You try to help other people instead of just thinking about yourself. And you do other shit like praying and meditating if you want to do that kind of stuff. I didn't do that kind of stuff at the beginning.

But yeah, I slowly learned the tools to not have to drink and get high anymore. And it was a learning process. And slowly my feelings started to become more normal. The highs weren't so high, the lows weren't so low. Right. And there's that fear that comes with that because there is an addiction to those highs and lows on some level. Like what is my life going to be like if I'm just flatlining all the time? I can't live that way. It's gonna be boring. It's gonna be intolerable.

Yeah, I thought before I actually decided to get sober, like when I decided to get sober, there was no more options. I was like, it's either do this or die. But before that, the concept of like getting sober, maybe even going to meetings or something like that, I thought it would be like the most boring shit ever. I thought it would be like a bunch of people fucking hanging out in a room,

trying not to drink, you know, like kind of sad and pathetic. But it turned out to be the exact opposite for me. The people I've met in recovery are the most interesting people the people who were like me so fucked up that they couldn't do it anymore you know and and there was a lot of fun around and i learned how to do normal things sober like does this thing that they do. Another new word for me was fellowship. So, what the fuck is fellowship? Bernard said to me one day when I was new at the meetings, I was just getting stuck in at the start.

He says, we're going to meet for coffee. Meet me at the coffee shop. I says, go for coffee? The fuck are we going to do there? And he goes, we're going to talk and drink coffee. And that was weird to me as well, because since I was a kid, when you're in a social fucking surrounding,

you want to have a beer, but it was a catch-22 with me. Before I got sober, if I was in a social setting, some shit like this, where I didn't really know the people and I might feel nervous I'd want a beer just to feel okay and then the problem was once I started drinking the beer I drink too much beer and then I started making a fool of myself so it was even when I was drinking it was a no-win situation so we had to like so so I remember the first time we went to the coffee shop and we were drinking coffee and just chatting.

It was like, it was weird. But I got used to it fairly quick because there was something about being around other people who were the same as me, who had the same problem as me. I found to have a connection to other people who have my problem. There's something about talking to another fucking drunk or another addict

that they understand you. And I used to trip out so much about it at the start. I'm like, oh, how am I never going to drink again? What if my parents die? Or what if my daughter gets married in 20 years and I'm at her wedding, will I not be able to have a glass of champagne or whatever? And Bernard, he says to me, he says, never mind that shit. He says, we do it one day at a time.

So today you don't feel like drinking. Maybe tomorrow you won't either. Don't worry about fucking 20 years time. You know? Yeah. Yeah, man. Those annoying adages that are so true. Yeah, yeah.

There was a bunch of them like fucking easy does it. That was an important one for me too because everything was such a big deal when I got sober. Like, oh God, the wife annoyed me or some of the boys that work would be like fucking Greek tragedy. Like, you know, they'd say easy does it. Yeah.

That means just take it easy. Don't worry about that shit. And the other thing is like the levity, right? You talk about in the book, like the first time that you kind of really shared your whole story in a group setting and the fear around that, but in that community, like it's so welcomed, right?

Like that level of, because it takes courage to be vulnerable on that level, right? But tapping into that vulnerability becomes part of the healing process. And we can laugh at this stuff that we've done and that has happened in the past, even though we're also appreciating the heaviness of it and kind of where it took us. And that's like a salve in the wound, right? To sit and listen to other people's version of your story, how they got through it and the kind of ownership, like this is what happened. I'm not ashamed to talk about it because I've done all of this work to repair my relationships, make peace with my past, overcome those resentments and everything

like that. That is really like when someone walks into the room and can share as openly as you just have about all these things that you've done, like I think that's something that helps us feel more connected to other people. Yeah, like for me, it didn't come easy to me. Like, you know, I'm nearly 12 years sober now. So I've told my story fucking at least 50 times to groups of people,

but it was very difficult for me to share at the start because most people who are in recovery haven't done the things I did, you know? Like, I think the first person I heard speaking who had a similar story to me was a Hells Angel, you know? And I remember when I heard speaking who had a similar story to me was was a hell's angel you know and I remember when I heard his story and it actually gave me a kind of a sense of relief that like because I always feel like I'm the worst person in the room like and you know I am ashamed of some of the

things I've done like you can't be proud of some of this shit but the bottom line is it happened and and uh it was at a time in my life where i was powerless over something you know i i wouldn't have made those kind of decisions today like how i am and i'm not proud of like a lot of the stuff i've done but but it happened like you know it's the truth and um i was most worried about um you know what if i tell these people about this shit that I've done and they think I'm a fucking asshole, like I feel like I am, you know? What if they don't want to know me?

And like expecting judgment from people. And of course, some people are going to judge you. It's not like, the things I have done aren't things to be proud of. Like, I'm lucky I'm not dead or in jail for the things that I have done aren't things to be proud of. Like I'm lucky I'm not dead or in jail for the things that I have done. But when I'm asked to share at a group, I do, because it might help somebody else who like, maybe feels like they're the biggest piece of shit

in the room too. Or maybe they have something that they have done that they're not proud of, you know? How have you stayed plugged in after almost 12 years? Cause you really embrace the program and you're an ambassador in a very service forward way to a lot of people. Yeah, so I had a bit of bad luck

at the end of my first year. And so after I got sober, I turned my back on criminal lifestyle completely out of it no more drug dealing or any of that kind of stuff and and I tried to switch my life around and fucking get everything back on track I tried to fix my marriage try to become a productive member of society. And I wanted to be a contractor, you know, construction business, because I was a carpenter.

I had the skills and experience, even though I was high as a kite a lot of the time I had been doing it. And so I took the test to get my contractor license. And that's what my plan was. I'm going to build houses for the next fucking 30 years. That's where I thought my life was going to go. That's what my plan was.

And then I got into an accident, a construction accident, and I broke my back. A beam fell down and hit me, broke one of my discs, herniated another one. It's permanently damaged. So I had to stop being a carpenter. And it would have been very easy to go back drinking at that time because I was feeling sorry for myself.

And I thought, oh, I got sober now. Everything should be cool, you know. But the thing is, whether you're sober or not, sometimes bad things happen, you know. And what got me through that time, it was around the time when I had just finished my steps in the program and the last step is you got to like help others, work with other people. So I ended up sponsoring some other guys who were trying to get sober and that kept me out of the self-pity. Like

because there's something about working with somebody else that it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you're trying to help somebody else. It's impossible to do both at the same time. So I started working with others and that got me through a hard part in my life. And I ended up doing what I'm doing now. It's something I enjoy far more. I got into acting and moved down here to LA.

But part of it is like if you want to keep what you've got you've got to give it away so I don't say which programs I go to but I go to multiple you know there's a few things wrong with me so that just you know so yeah

I still try and be a service to others where I can So that just, you know, so yeah, I still try and be a service to others where I can and it's not broke, don't fix it. So I keep on doing the same shit that I was taught at the beginning. Yeah, there's a bit of a comparison to Barry in your story. Like here you are this guy, you know, who's living this gangster lifestyle and then you become an actor.

And it's hard to not like, you know, think about Barry when I think about your arc. I suppose it is like Barry except mine's a true story. Yeah, yeah, it's true. And you weren't a hit man, let's be clear. No, I never killed anybody, thank God. But it is, there's sort of a comedic undertone to that as well.

Yeah, I don't, you know. You come down here and then you start playing gangsters and heavies and bad guys and you know, all these procedural shows. Yeah, well, it's kind of like, I didn't choose to do that either. It chose me. I didn't like start acting and go,

I just, I wanna play bad guys. It's like, you look like go, I just, I want to play bad guys. It's like, you look like a bad guy. Right. You'll play bad guys. So that's how it happened. And you've been at it for a while, man. You're doing good. Yeah, I've been on a lot of shows and I enjoy it. Yeah.

The wife and the kids, how's everything going there? Ex-wife now. I'm divorced. I have a good relationship with my kids. They were only toddlers when I got sober and they're teenagers now. Yeah, I just try to be a good dad. And they live in San Francisco.

Yeah, they live with the ex-wife. And it was kind of a weird one because I had to tell them a bit about my story because they had no idea about how I used to behave because they were only babies when I got sober so they you're I mean it's it sounds like life for your wife was an absolute living hell oh yeah like I'm sure I'm sure I was not fucking husband of the year for any of those years or father of the year, you know? Yeah, so obviously she won't have that good of an opinion of me,

especially since we got divorced. But there's nothing I can do about that, you know? I just try and be a good dad to my kids. But it's kind of weird, like, having to tell the kids about some of the stuff I used to do because they didn't know about any of this shit. And I was like, well, I wrote this book and I'm gonna have to tell you some of these stories. So-

How does your ex-wife feel about the book? You'd have to ask her about that. Yeah, now we're not close or anything like that, but we co-parent. And so you go up and visit the kids or how does that work? Yeah, yeah, I get them every month, yeah. So how does the book come about in this relationship

with John and Dave? Oh, so. I mean, the book opens with them talking about how they met you and kind of it being its own little miracle because ordinarily they would have, you would just sort of cold emailed them. Yeah, I do. Ordinarily they would have never even opened that email.

They didn't know me from Adam. So basically- And explain who these guys are. Okay, so John Alt Shuler and Dave Krenski, they're the co-creators of Silicon Valley and they were showrunners on King of the Hill. They wrote Blades of Glory, starring Will Ferrell. Yeah, they're successful writers and showrunners. Yeah, they're big time Hollywood showrunners and writers.

Yeah, and the way it came about, it was a funny thing. So one of my buddies, a guy called Sean, Sean Mann, he's another actor. We moved to LA around the same time. He's a really good guy. And he was working on this comedy project. And I was helping him do a little bit of producing on it. And if you guys want to see it, I think it's on YouTube.

It's pretty funny. He did like a proof of concept. It's called Roommates. So he says, see if you can get me someone big attached to this see if you can get me some some someone big attached to this and and uh if you can help me out so i was just helping sean out so i was like this is this is a good comedy it's it's kind of a an out there comedy that that he was he he had created and so i looked at who were the best comedy people and at the time, Silicon Valley was one of the top ones. So I reached out to like a couple of people. The first one was Danny McBride. I got Danny McBride's email. I emailed

him and then his assistant got back and said, we don't accept unsolicited materials. And then I sent it to John and John responded and he said, this is cool, let's meet. And we met up with John and- Right, which is highly, highly unusual. Yeah, that kid is- That's not how things work. That kid is shit, doesn't happen really. Yeah, usually if you send on solicitor materials to-

For legal reasons alone, they won't do it. Other than like, who is this guy? Like, you're not gonna get the time of day from yeah exactly but uh it just turns out that there were really nice guys and uh and we ended up meeting up with them and and that particular project wasn't a fit for john but he said i like you guys keep sending me stuff so i sent him another couple of things and he passed on those and then i had i had written my original draft of the book and I sent that to him and he liked it. And then he read like 50 pages of it and he says, I like this, but I don't really know where it's going.

So then I told him about my past and he was like, let's meet again. Because the first time that we met, he had no idea I used to be a gangster or anything like that. I'm not scary in person. I'm friendly. And then we met up again and I told him a couple of yarns and he's like, wow, this is crazy. Do you want to partner on it?

And I said, okay. And then, so first of all, he has another show coming out. I'm not allowed to say what it is, but basically it's about somebody who's an author. And then he put us in touch with our book agents and the book agents read the book and they were like wow this is this is a this is pretty crazy but i don't know how to sell it and then john had the idea of rewriting the book

in the format of the 12 steps because so it will be shorter and more accessible to to what my story really is and then we rewrwrote the book together and the book is coming out on May 24th and it's gonna be a TV show as well. So what's the deal with the TV show? Like, is that a pilot deal or a series deal? What's the status of development there? Because it's one thing like, oh, there's gonna be a show. There's a long know a lot of things

have to happen before something ends up on the air right well we took it into John's manager before we the book was done and he said he said you should get a book deal first because it's easier to green light and then we

got the book deal and we have a bunch of people who are interested in it right now. We don't know where it's going to land yet, but I can't really say who's looking at it, but some cool people. It's exciting, man. Yeah. It's quite an arc.

When you look back on the whole thing, it's pretty miraculous. Yeah, it's kind of unbelievable. Like, number one, that I'm alive, it's kind of unbelievable. Like number one that I'm alive after all this kind of stuff and yeah, it's pretty crazy. Do you find that that makes it easier to connect with gratitude and all of that? Absolutely, like, you know, they told me when I got sober,

if you stay grateful, you won't ever drink again. So I have a lot of things to be grateful for. And yeah, I have a crazy life today. But it's pretty balanced now. Yeah, the only drama I have is on the stage now, thank God, and try and keep it down. And meanwhile, you're still auditioning and doing that whole deal.

You did some movie with Halle Berry, right? Yeah, I did that a few years ago. That was called Kings. And last year, that was about the Rodney King riots. And last year, I did Days of Our Lives and NCIS. And I've done Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds. All the procedur MacGyver. Yeah, all that kind of stuff.

I've been bad guy of the week a lot of times. Yeah. That's cool, man. Well, let's round this out with some words of wisdom for the person out there who's still suffering, whether or not they're an alcoholic or a drug addict or just battling with some kind of substance or addiction related issue, how do you communicate to that person,

throw them a lifeline and kind of help them figure out a better path forward? Well, I would just say like, no matter how bad you think things are, it can still be fixed. Like I kind of thought that I was just going to be messed up forever and that I didn't think that it would work for me. And I've seen it working for a lot of people. So all you have to do is ask for help and the help is there if you want to take it. Easier said than done sometimes.

Yeah, you have to be fully cooked. The best advice I ever got when I was out and about, one of those sober guys, I was working with him and I came in really hungover and he says, why do you do this to yourself?

And I looked at him and I was like, do you think I'm an alcoholic? He says, of course you're a fucking alcoholic. I was like, why? He said, you're doing coke with hookers in motels. Fucking non-alcoholics don't do that shit. And then I was like, well, do you think I should go to the meetings? He goes, no, not yet.

He says, keep on doing it until you can't do it anymore. If you're not ready, it won't work. He said, you have to... Research. Yeah. He says, keep going until you're cooked. And then you'll know when you can't do it anymore. Then you go. Yeah. If you're ready, you're cooked and then you'll know when you can't do it anymore. Then you go.

Yeah. If you're ready, you're ready. It's all about willingness. Yeah. If you can summon that willingness and do the thing like yourself. I've seen so many lives changed and transformed. So it is possible.

And I think the real inspirational piece in your story relates to that arc. Like, honestly, your story is so insane. So if you could figure this out and get sober, like I think it provides a lot of hope to a lot of people. I didn't figure it out on my own either. Like really, I owe my life to that guy, Bernard, who brought me to my meetings.

The book is dedicated to him. Yeah, he saved my life. Like I wouldn't be alive when I was that man. How's he doing now? He's good, he's over in Canada and he's married and he has a little baby. Is he still your sponsor? No, no, I have a new one now, but yeah,

cause when he moved home, I got a local guy, but no, we still keep in touch and yeah, I owe him a lot. Yeah, good man. Well, I'm super proud of you. I've had the privilege of bearing witness to part of this arc. I remember when you were telling stories about San Francisco, like way back in the day,

and you've come a long way, my friend. So I'm excited for this book to come out and for everybody to get a taste of what your life was all about. And I'm excited for the possibility of this new TV show. And I feel like this is a inflection point in your life. And I would just encourage you to continue to tell your story and to do it with that level of humility and vulnerability that you, that you did today. Cause I think it's, it's, it's really powerful. And I think it has the potential to help a lot of people.

Thanks a million for having me, Rich. If any of you guys haven't heard Rich before, I would subscribe and like this podcast. Thanks very much for having me on. Yeah, man. And yeah, if you guys want to learn some more about me, you can see my shit on IMDb. It's Richie Stevens.

I'm on Instagram, Richie Actor. And the book is coming out on May 24th, 2022. It's on Amazon, Simon & Schuster, Barnes & Noble, and Audible. All the places, man. So Audible, I wanted to ask, final thing. Obviously you read the book, right? Of course.

And you're this master of accents. We got to hear a bunch today. I didn't realize there were so many versions of an Irish accent, but there are. Can you understand them all? Do you do all the voices? Like the different voices for the different characters in the book?

They do, yeah. That's a reason to get in on Audible right there. Yeah, yeah, I hope you guys understand them. Yeah, no, it's good, man. Cool, the book is The Gangster's Guide to Sobriety, My Life in 12 Steps. Always a pleasure to see you. And I look forward to trudging this road

alongside you, my friend. Thanks, Rich. All right, peace out. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources

related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

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Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.