The Rich Roll Podcast - Mishka Shubaly On Writing: Faith, Guilt, Stubbornness, Abandonment, Revenge, Forgiveness & Why He Swears He’ll Make It Up To You

Episode Date: February 22, 2016

Devoted listeners are well-acquainted with the gravelly voiced, predictably disheveled, typically homeless, chronically self-deprecating, sometimes tortured, but always charming, self-avowed nomadic povertarian commonly known as Mishka Shubaly – back on the podcast for a record-breaking 7th appearance. A writer oozing talent from his already overactive sebaceous glands, Mishka pens true stories about drink, drugs, disasters, desire, deception, and their aftermath. He began drinking at 13 and college at 15. At 22, he received the Dean's Fellowship from the Master's Writing Program at Columbia University. Upon receipt of his expensive MFA, he promptly moved into a Toyota minivan to tour the country nonstop as a singer-songwriter, often sharing the stage with comedians like Doug Stanhope and musical acts like The Strokes and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But mostly he drank. It sounds glamorous. It wasn't. At 32, Mishka hit bottom, got sober and laced up a pair of running shoes. In between ultra marathons, he began publishing a string of #1 bestselling Kindle Singles – short non-fiction novellas — through Amazon. The Long Run*, his mini-memoir detailing his transformation from alcoholic drug abuser to sober ultrarunner, to this day remains one of the best-selling Kindle Singles in Amazon history. Today, Mishka's on the cusp of releasing his very first book book. I Swear I’ll Make It Up To You – A Life On The Low Road* hits bookstores everywhere March 8, 2016. Brutally honest, fiercely emotional and muscular in its prose, it's the booze-fueled, opiated account of a precocious young underachiever trying to be good (and failing and failing) until one day he succeeds. It's about serial abandonment, school shootings, alcoholism, loneliness, artistic frustration, faith, guilt, sobriety, running, relationships, resentment, revenge, music, art, and creativity. It’s about one man’s attempt to reckon with the wreckage of his past and his journey to reconcile his relationship with his family, and most importantly, to forgive the father that jettisoned him. I love Mishka like a brother. I love this book. And I love this conversation. Peace + Plants, Rich

reason and rational thinking will it'll help you climb the mountain you know that it'll take you from one step to the next step to the next step to the next step but it's only faith that will give you the courage and give you the power to jump off the mountain and fly that's mishka shibali and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings fans of the podcast. I'm Rich Roll. I am your host. Can you hear that siren out there? That can mean only one thing. I'm in New York City, and I'm going to tell you all about that in a minute. But first, I just want to thank everybody for tuning in today. I appreciate your support. Thank you so much to everybody who has shared the show across all your social media

platforms, at the water cooler, and actually one-on-one, interpersonally. That's the best way, right? Also, thank you so much to everybody who has made a habit of using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. Doesn't cost you a cent extra. So click through the banner ad on any of the episode pages at richroll.com. Takes you to Amazon. Buy what you're going to buy. Amazon kicks off some loose commission change from its copious coffers. And that allows me to continue doing what I do, which is to bring you each week an amazing conversation with a thought leader, the best and the brightest across all categories of health, wellness, diet, nutrition, art, creativity, the writing process.

In the case of today's guest, entrepreneurship, spirituality, mindfulness, meditation, all the good stuff. And the idea, of course, is to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. And this week, I'm really excited to be back with a writer, a writer in the truest, realest sense, a musician, ultra runner, and my good friend, friend in the little brother sense, Mishka Shubali, for another amazing conversation, an unprecedented seventh appearance on the podcast, which I can't believe. And although I know I always say this, this one just might be our best conversation yet.

I've got a good reason to have him back on the show, and I'm going to get into that in a second, but first. All right, you guys, I'm in New York City. Super excited to be here. It's spring weather. It's actually like 60 degrees out today. Insane, right? I get so much energy from the vitality of this place. It's like a battery.

It just recharges me on every level. I just love being out in the street, interacting with people, and just soaking up the ambiance and the vitality and the energy that this place has to offer. It's amazing. I went on a two and a half hour run this morning. I feel great. I hear all the sirens and the traffic outside. You can probably hear that. If you hear a buzz, that is the refrigerator in my hotel room that I tried to turn off and cannot figure out how to do it. So I apologize for that. In addition, my little digital audio recorder crapped out this morning. And right as I was about to record this introduction, I had to go down to Guitar Center and find a replacement. They didn't have the same one. I had to get a different one. I don't really know how to use it. So I'm unsure about the quality level of this introduction. So if it's a little off kilter, my apologies, I'm doing the best that I can. I was up at Vassar the other day. I gave a great talk to the students there and I got to spend time with the writing department talking about

writing. It was such a privilege. It's a beautiful campus. I really enjoyed it and it gave me a great excuse to come down into the city afterwards, see some friends like Mishka, today's guest, like Robin Arzon, who I'm going to meet for dinner tomorrow, like John Joseph, who I met for dinner the other day, and do a couple podcast interviews. I'm going to be sitting down with Gary Vaynerchuk tomorrow. I'm really excited about that. That will be coming soon. And also my friend Jason Walkup, the founder and CEO of MindBodyGreen. He's got a new book coming out called Wealth. We're going to talk about that. And all of those episodes will be coming at you in the upcoming months. As for today, if you're a longtime listener to the podcast, then you know this guy well. He is my gravelly voiced, always charming,

generally disheveled, periodically homeless, predictably self-deprecating, self-avowed, homeless, predictably self-deprecating, self-avowed, nomadic, povertarian, as well as my sometime co-host and occasional aspiring vegan, now back for a record seventh appearance on the RRP. If you're brand new to the show, Mishka is an incredibly talented writer. He pens true stories about drink, drugs, disasters, desire, deception, and their aftermath. He began drinking at 13 and college at 15. And at 22, he received the Dean's Fellowship from the Master's Writing Program at Columbia University. Upon receiving his expensive MFA, he promptly moved into a Toyota minivan to tour the country nonstop as a singer-songwriter,

often sharing the stage with comedian Doug Stanhope and musical acts like The Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. At 32, Mishka got sober and shortly thereafter began publishing a string of number one best-selling Kindle singles. The long run, his mini-memoir detailing his transformation from alcoholic drug abuser to sober ultra-runner, is to this day one of the best-selling Kindle singles in Amazon history. And I'm super excited to announce that his first book book, it's called I Swear I'll Make It Up to You, Life on the Low Road, hits bookstores everywhere on March 8th. This is, and I say this with absolutely zero hyperbole, this is the master story of Mishka Shabali's nine lives and a shining example of an artist working at his nadir. It's a fiercely honest memoir. It's emotional. It's incredibly engaging. And it's the story of a precocious young underachiever trying to be good and failing and failing until one day he

succeeds. It's about alcoholism. It's about loneliness, sobriety, running, relationships, music, art, creativity. It's about one man's attempt to reckon with the wreckage of his past and his journey to reconcile his relationship with his family, and most importantly, the father that abandoned him. prose, Big Heart, and Dark Wit inflect this grand story of mistakes, their consequences, and eventual redemption. And to quote the blurb I gave him that adorns the back cover of the book, quote, it's a mercilessly honest trip to the very center of alcoholic despondency, followed by a perfectly messy, self-deprecating squirm toward the light, an elegant and eminently human account of what it means to struggle, despair, dream, and ultimately find meaning in an uncomfortable world. This is the memoir I wish I could write, wish I had written, and for that I will always resent this author I call friend. I love Mishka like a brother. I absolutely love this book. I mean that. It is his masterpiece. And I love this conversation.

Had I known that we were going to video this, I probably would have cleaned up a little more. I seriously doubt that. I've never seen you clean up before. so why would you clean up for that purpose? Well, yeah, I always dress perfectly for a podcast. Right. Like a total dirtbag. Like a perfect attire for radio. Yes, I have a face for radio.

But now we're going to play around with broadcasting. For the listener, I've got a camera aimed right at Mishka's head right now. I don't know what we're going to do with this. It's an experiment, but we're going to see if we can pull a few gems perhaps out of this. So no pressure, Mishka, but it's something we can put up on YouTube. No pressure at all. In line with the pressure that I put on myself to do more with video. So good to see you, man.

Fresh off the plane from Mexico. I don't know about fresh, but yeah, definitely off the plane from Mexico. Off the plane recently from Mexico. On the precipice of the launch of your new book, you did the prudent thing, which is right before your book is coming out, you went on vacation to Mexico. You did the prudent thing, which is right before your book is coming out, you went on vacation to Mexico instead of doing what every other author does, which is grind relentlessly trying to shamelessly get people to talk about their book on the internet. Well, I knew that I needed just a breath before I sort of dove into the machine. And, man, it was exhausting writing this book. But what's more exhausting than mining the darkness of your past is writing emails to people you don't know being like,

please like my book. That's the worst. You've got to get into a pretty shameless state of being. I'm starting to get there. The thing is, I was listening to this podcast the other day. James Altucher was interviewing this dude, Ramit Sethi, who's like an guru in terms of like marketing and all that kind of stuff. And they were talking about email lists. And this is a guy, Ramit, who's big on like building your email list, right? And James was like, yeah, but I felt self-conscious. I never had an email list. Like the idea that you would invade somebody's inbox with like your rambling

seems kind of narcissistic that anyone would want to read that. And Ramit was like, yeah, but James, you've got like millions of people that read your blog. Like there are people that want to read this. They're excited about it. Like, why should you feel weird about it? But at the same time, there is kind of a level of narcissism that you would think that whatever is going on in your mind or the product, you know, your creative work product, you know, should be, should, you know, should, should draw the attention of someone else. You know, there's a bizarre thing there, but at the same time, it's like, look, man, you wrote a book. That's a huge thing. You should be very proud of that. And you shouldn't feel sheepish about trying to reach out to people

and spread the word because the truth is it's important, man. You know, it's important to help get, get the word out about your book. So that's what we're doing here. Yes, absolutely. I, I, I mean, I've gotten better about, uh, about promoting my writing, my music, myself, you know, I think by the end of this, uh, you know, two months sort of promotional window, I'll just be like, Hey sailor, want a date? You know, like totally at ease with it. But I still feel like I just don't want to annoy folks. Yeah, I know. It is weird. It is weird to have to do that. You don't have to tell people to like your book, but just to alert them to what's going on and say, hey, you know, if this fits

within whatever you're doing, I'd love the opportunity to be able to talk to you about it. And the truth is, if you're reaching out to bloggers or you know journalists or whatever like they need content like you're doing their job for them because they actually need something to talk about and you're saying here's something to talk about so you're making their job easier yeah it feels good to be a hero right such a hero well the awkward thing about promoting this and promoting you know most of my writing in in general is uh you know it's like um uh here's a story in which i've done a bunch of terrible things which i feel really embarrassed about you should really read it and like me yeah like i'm always proud of my writing. I just, I'm rarely proud of what I do.

You know, I'm rarely proud of the content, you know, of what I'm writing about. Well, I don't even know. This project is a little different. Yeah, I was going to say like this, you know, for the listeners, like what is this, your fourth, fifth time on the podcast? So most people are already familiar with you. They've probably listened to another one of our conversations. But if you are new, let me just sort of set the stage a little bit. Mishka and I became friends probably three years ago at this point.

Our first conversation took place as a result of your success as a writer doing Kindle singles. You kind of dominated that market. You've had how many? Five best writer doing Kindle singles. You kind of dominated that market. You've had, you know, how many? Five best-selling Kindle singles. Six. Yeah, six. Excuse me. And really kind of dominated that corner of the internet

and Amazon being somebody who, you know, was very proficient and well-received writing these little kind of novellas, really. I mean, they're longer than short stories, but shorter than your typical book. And so now you're on the precipice of releasing your first book book, I swear I'll make it up to you, which is inspired by probably your best-selling Kindle single, The Long Run, but also very, very different.

I mean, this truly is a memoir and it operates on many levels. On the one hand, it is an addiction memoir. It's very much about addiction and recovery. It's about running. But I think at its core, it's a journey of one man to kind of reconcile his relationship with his father. Is that a fair and accurate statement? That's much more articulate than I could be about it. Yes. And I read the book. I was lucky enough to get an early galley copy of the book. I tore through it on one airplane flight in one sitting. And I was expecting it to be much more like the long run than it ultimately is. It really became something very different and its own thing.

And you really kind of took, uh, you know, what you put down in the long run and, and, and really kind of, you know, went next level with this.

And I've never read any better writing from you. I think your, you know, your, your talents with the pen, uh, you know, really went to the next level.

And so I'll just read my, I was going to read the blurb that I gave you, but I'm not seeing it on the back of the, you know what? I didn't get it to you in time for the galley. Right. So it's going to be on the back of the real book. Yeah. It's going to be on the back of the book, but I, uh, but I said nice things about it and I meant those things cause I really was moved by this. I think it's an extraordinary, exceptional piece of writing. Um, and the last thing that you should be is sheepish about sharing it with people and encouraging them to read it. And I'm encouraging everyone to read it. I think it's really an extraordinary book and I'm super proud of you.

Thanks, man. Thank you. I mean, I, you know, I mean, I said this to you off, Mike, but I mean, I'll say it again that, you know, that you were sort of sitting on my shoulder while I was writing a lot of this, you know, that the, you know, the conversations that we've had and the, I, if I'm feeling good about stuff, I feel like I've got a friend in you. If I'm feeling bad about stuff, I feel like I've got a friend in you, you know, and, you know, because you and i've been through not not that our um not that our experiences have been totally similar but um uh but there there have been enough sort of big uh you know convergences in you know that we're both uh you know sober alcoholics and um both found a certain kind of salvation through, uh, endurance. Um, and keep talking, dude. I just realized I didn't turn the mic on, on the camera.

This, this wouldn't be preoccupied. So this, uh, this wouldn't be a, uh, a Mishka ritual experience without our typical difficulties. Yeah, exactly. Sorry about that. Not technical difficulties, typical difficulties. Right. But no, I mean, you know, having you as a friend and, you know, our friendship, you know, sort of gave me courage to go a lot of places with this that I wouldn't have otherwise. It sort of gave me courage to go a lot of places with this that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Also, you know the process of selling a book. You need to present your publisher with an outline and sort of a compelling package, like a media deck of what the product is going to be. And I had to do that. And it felt totally false to me. I felt like it was just so much bullshit, you know, the, an elevator pitch for the most painful part of my life. It just, you know, um, I hated it. And, um, and then fortunately I had an incredibly supportive agent, a bird level and an incredibly supportive editor, Ben Adams, who let me, if you're,

if you're carving a piece of plastic, you can sort of just make it do whatever you want because it's a piece of plastic. If you're carving a piece of wood, wood has its own grain and it will sort of push your hand the way that it wants it to go. And either you fight against that or you, you go with it. And when I was telling this story, I, I found that, um, the story that I pitched and the story that wanted to be told were very different things. And so I, I just, I had to follow the story and I found more and more that it was about the subject that I was the most reluctant to write about

and a subject that I've rarely, um, that I've, I've written very little about, which is my relationship with my father. And, um, and I didn't want to write about it at all. And I hated writing about it. And I'm very proud that I did. Maybe set the stage by kind of synopsizing a little bit about your story and the story that unfolds in the book. If somebody is brand new and is listening to this and doesn't know who you are or doesn't know anything about you. I was kind of a misfit kid. I, you know, I had a hard time getting along with other kids in school. Uh, this, this will be hard for you to hard for you to, to believe, but I was, uh, I was sensitive. I easily got sensitive artists. why, look, book publishing, just like the music business, like the movie business,

like any artistic endeavor that involves commerce is the merging of art and commerce, right? So you're good at the sensitive artistic aspect of it, but there's also the kind of business end of it that obviously makes you a little uncomfortable, which is a good thing because the artist should be the artist. But the truth is in this day and age, you can't sort of, you know, it used to be like, oh, if you were the publishing company takes care of that end of it for you

or the music label does that. But now you really have to be that yourself. You have to like be your own little entrepreneur around your creative output. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, I interrupted you with that yourself. You have to like be your own little entrepreneur around your creative output. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I interrupted you with that jag. Go ahead. So, yeah. I mean, I got picked on a lot as a kid and we moved a couple of times when I was really young. My father was a nuclear physicist and he traveled a lot. He was pretty distant.

It was clear to me very early on that my older sister was his favorite and that he could sort of give a shit about me. I started drinking when I was probably 13. And then when I was 15, I'd I'd been, I'd been in trouble at school, been in trouble for fighting. And, uh, and also, you know, I'd done really well, you know, in academics. And I started a program at a school called Simon's Rock, which is an accelerated program. It's a college program for high school kids. So I'd left to go to Simon's Rock. And then when I was at Simon's Rock, there was a shooting. A guy got an assault rifle and shot six people on our campus

and killed two of them. And he had enough ammunition for all of us. And then I found out the next day that my parents were getting a divorce. And- When the school shooting happened, where were you? How close were you to the line of fire and real danger? It's hard to say. My impulse is to say I was never in any danger because I minimize everything. But Wayne Lowe, the shooter, he was on my basketball team. Um, I, you know, I'd had several encounters with him. He asked me if I could get him a gun. Um, and I, I saw him

earlier that night and I always made a point of saying hi to him, not because I wanted to be friends with him, but because I wanted him to know that like his whole, his attempt to intimidate the entire school that like it didn't work on me you know that i wasn't gonna i wasn't gonna um i wasn't gonna be cowed by him i would just what kind of kid was he i mean was it like a trench coat mafia type situation no he was outsider was there any indicia that this kid was capable of something like this uh you know he was uh he was 18 he was kind of a jock uh he was really into the new york hardcore scene he was um you know obsessed with this band sick of it all um who are good dudes who bear zero responsibility for what he did um and you know but he was uh you know the scientific term for what he was is an

asshole uh he was it's weird that a jock would i mean that's not that's not the prototypical right yeah it's it's you know it's always the you know the kid with the black nail polish you know that's how it's always portrayed in the, in the, uh, in the movies. But no, he was, uh, he was outspoken that, um, you know, anyone with HIV should be quarantined on an Island, if not put to death and that, uh, you know, Jews and African-Americans were inferior and, uh, he was a big Rush Limbaugh fan. And, uh, you know, I mean, this was a pretty liberal school in the Northeast, you know, so that, that was, uh, you know, incredibly radical views for him, you know, for him to hold. And he just sort of, uh, you know, did everything and anything that he could to, um, alienate everyone and anyone outside of his specific circle of friends. And, um, he was just a hard ass and he was an unpleasant guy. Um,

you know, and I, I ran into him that night and i said you know uh how's it going and he said good man and he smiled at me and that was the first time he'd ever responded and the first time that he had responded with a smile wow uh an hour an hour and a half later he started shooting yeah and were you in your dorm room where were you uh yeah i was in my dorm room with a friend of mine we were studying for my physics final and I heard the shots, and it sounded like firecrackers. And I said, firecrackers sound like guns. Firecrackers are super loud. Guns sound like firecrackers.

That's a fucking gun. And my first impulse was to run toward it to try and stop it and so i ran out of my room and uh the resident assistant was like get back in your room uh wayne's got a gun and uh and so i was like i know i know you know and then like you know i was like you know let's go let's get him you know and he was like no get back know, he sort of screamed at me like, no, get back in your room, lock your door, turn off your lights, get on the ground. And, uh, you know, he was, he was scared and scary enough that I listened to him. We went back in the room and, uh, you know, I heard the shots. I heard people screaming.

Um, I heard people stop screaming and, uh, I, i you know and i could see people running from the library uh people i knew and uh and then we waited and we waited and my friend wrote out his will and then uh we saw the cops leading wayne away handcuffs. Two people were killed. Yes. A friend of ours, Galen Gibson, and a professor, Naki Nahn Saez. going on with just incomprehensible regularity and the unwillingness of our political system to really marshal resources to arrest it, and then in the wake of President Obama's recent activities? And as somebody who has lived it, experienced it firsthand, what is your perspective?

I lose my fucking mind, Rich. I lose my mind that I'm on the cusp of getting my American citizenship. I love this country. I love the people here. I've been to every state except Hawaii. I've played gigs in most of them. I've been hammered in most of them. You know, I think America is capable of so many great things.

And that we cling to this savagery as our right and our, like, sort of our bloodline. It's just such fucking bullshit and it breaks my heart and every time you know i'm still i'm still in touch with a lot of my classmates from simon's rock and like um you know people who people who didn't hear the shots people who didn't see blood people who didn't know anyone there, they're forever changed. Their lives have been transformed from being that close to death and terror. Because that's what it is. It is terror.

And it is terrorism, you know, in every regard. You know, we've all been changed by it. You know, we were all, we've all been changed by, we've all, you know, we were all transformed from it. And, uh, and in the numbers game, that shooting was nothing. Right. It was, it was, it was small beans. Right. You know, it doesn't even, it doesn't even show up compared to the things that happen once a month or twice a month now.

Um, you know, I have, I have friends, you know, my family, you know, mostly lives in rural Canada. things that happen once a month or twice a month now. You know, I have, I have friends, you know, my family, you know, mostly lives in rural Canada and, you know, most of them are gun owners and they hunt and I, I support that. That's, you know, that's how they feed their families. You don't need a fucking assault weapon to hunt deer. It's absolutely insane the the purpose of an assault rifle is to kill the most amount of human beings in the shortest amount of time possible that's what that gun is designed for there's no reason anyone needs one unless we're at war and the only

war that's going on in America is psychopaths against children. Yeah, it's quite something that for whatever political reasons, we can't get it together to come to some kind of consensus to solve this problem. And look, I don't want to get caught in the weeds and a crazy political argument about this, but to me, it's self-evident so you know it's going to be interesting to see how uh things kind of shake out uh in the wake of you know obama's insistence that we kind of get serious about this so we'll see if if anything really happens or not but it's starting to you know it's it's reached it's beyond a crisis point you know it's insane what's going on. My, you know, my critique of Obama's executive action is that it's not enough and that it's too late. Yeah, I don't think it's enough either. I know. And also, you know, I mean, after Sandy Hook, you know, like, shit, if that didn't convince people, then no, I mean, you know, like, you know, almost 30 dead children, you know, if that doesn't convince people,

nothing ever. Right. And what happens is these, these events transpire and there's the public outcry and then the sort of, you know, knee jerk, uh, you know, sort of response where we all kind of lament what had happened and, and, and say this, yeah, there's thoughts and yeah, exactly. So there's been a lot of political think pieces written about you know this sort of empty sentiment that goes with that as if that has somehow addressed the problem yeah right yeah anyway all right so you're you're this sensitive kid you you undergo this tragedy your parents get

divorced your dad basically splits and and there's a lot of emotional trauma, not just sure you were, you became conscious enough, conscious of fully until the process of, you know, putting pen to paper on this book. Well, I think, I think that was a desire I had as a child and then a desire that I had much later, uh, when I was 15 and the shooting happened and then I found out my parents were getting a divorce. I just wanted to kick his ass, man. And I thought so low of him. I was like, you know, you're a coward. In no way are you a man. You're a weakling.

You're the worst. You know, you're so pathetic. Because he just split, basically. Well, that's the thing is, you know, most of my parents or most of my friends, their parents had already split up. And, you know, most of my parents or most of my friends, their parents had already split up. And, you know, so I understood that. But he didn't try and divorce my mother. He tried to divorce all of us.

It was like he tried to unright us, tried to pretend that that had never happened. And for somebody to try and erase you from the record, it's incredibly hurtful. And it both makes you incredibly defiant. Like, no, I will be capital letters. I will be bold-faced. I will force you to pay attention to me. Yes, I will be bold-faced. I will force you to pay attention to me. Yes, I will be. You're going to have to reckon with me because as much as you're trying to unwrite me from your life, like, I'm still here and I'm knocking. Yes, I will be the loudest paragraph you've ever seen.

Yeah. And also, it makes you want to capitulate and be unwritten, you know. And so those were the two sort of warring sentiments that i had as a as a teenager and a young man to just be like you know fuck you i will not be denied i'm i'm here and like and nobody's gonna make me go away and then when i was feeling bad i was like you know where's the delete key i'm ready to go yeah it's a weird uh psychological disposition to be able to be in both of those places simultaneously, you know, like a weird quantum physics thing. It's that thing that we always talk about as alcoholics where you can – I was going to say it connects perfectly with alcoholism. you have all the answers and you're better than everyone this superiority complex mashed up against this profound sense of unworthiness you know that that you should

be unwritten not only from your father's life but from the planet yeah yeah and to be able to feel both of those at the same time is a very unique thing, but it's something that is talked about a lot. With alcoholism, alcoholics tend to have that kind of complex. And it was just compounded by the shooting too because to have endured that with my friends and my peers and my community, that was a massive thing. And by comparison, my parents getting divorced was fucking nothing, you know? And, you know, it's sort of like, um, you know, I think my friends perceived it as, you know, like, man, look at this wicked hangnail that I have. It really hurts. And so nobody gave a shit about what I was going through or how it felt to me. Everybody was just like, shut up, man.

And also, my friends had been through, one of my closest friends then and now, my buddy Zach, his father came out in high school and his parents separated. And he was like, my parents' divorce was more painful than anything you can ever imagine. So shut up, you crybaby. And that sucked. But also, I think he was 17 at the time. I got to forgive him for feeling that for saying that right being scarred in this way at this age then kind of sets the stage for this path that you begin

to blaze into you know profound unhealthy behavior patterns like how does this you know, profound unhealthy behavior patterns. Like how does this, you know, begin to manifest in your, in your life path? I, uh, when I was 16, I discovered, uh, Johnny Cash and I discovered Charles Bukowski and, uh, and that, and in the, you know, with the absence of my father, I was just like, oh, this is what it means to be a man. This is how you be a man. It's fucking just drinking and being a hard ass. Self-reliance. Yeah. Never let them see that you're in

pain never uh never capitulate you know um you just you know got those middle fingers standing tall at all times and meanwhile life without compromise yeah meanwhile in the wake of the divorce like things start to really unravel you know even more because there's a lot of economic disruption, to say the you in was the cost that kind of ultimately was the reason why you lost that house that you hated anyway, but kind of left you without a home. Yeah. The spring after the shooting, we lost our house to the bank. And I still remember in vivid detail this yard sale that we had that just sort of stretched on interminably where, um, our neighbors and people in the town, people that we, we really hadn't liked and people who had liked, who hadn't liked us came and sort of picked through all our belongings, you know, and, uh, you know, this, this family relic, that's incredibly meaningful to you, you know, uh, 40 cents, that's much too much. I'll give you 10 cents. And I was just enraged, just like 16 years old and shit-faced.

I fuck you all. I'm just so angry. And having people look at us and condescend to us that like, oh, you're poor. Oh, your parents are falling apart. Your parents are getting a divorce. You're losing the house. Just all this shame and feeling that we weren't worthy.

And then I was utterly convinced, and I remain convinced for probably up until writing this book, that it was my fault, you, oh, actually, it wasn't the fact that my parents were irresponsible. It was that they decided to pay for this thing that they couldn't afford. And it was really like my fault. Well, yeah, yeah. It came much, much later that I realized that it wasn't just on me. But yeah, it was during that yard sale, I really had that epiphany that I was like, oh, it's all my fault. That's a hard thing for a kid to bear. And when you describe this yard sale in the book, I mean, it's heartbreaking.

Because not only is it tragic in all the ways that you just described, at the same time, it starts raining. And then everything gets ruined, right? And that's just the straw that breaks the camel's back. a bear you know protecting us and defending us and always my best friend and like and she always you know she just she has this attitude that like um any bad thing that you know that comes into your life is is a good thing you know that like oh you know we we plan to go to the beach today with the kids and out of the blue you know it's a huge thunderstorm and she's like wow well look at look at that lightning i haven't seen lightning like that since i was a kid let's make some cookies and then we'll do jigsaw puzzles right and that terminally optimistic yeah and it fucking drives me nuts man because like nothing gets her down and nothing gets me up you know like i i don't

know i can't believe i'm her child because you know we just have such opposite um but she's been amazing in your life i mean she really has been the rock and the strength and and yeah has been your biggest champion and cheerleader from day one to this day but that day of the last yard sale she crumbled right and you had to you had to be the support for her yeah and i had to and that it kind of i got the impression that that was really the first time that you had to step up it's almost it was almost like your initiation into manhood like you had to really get outside your own anger and take care of someone else yeah yeah and that was, and also, um, man, to see your parents cry or to see your parents, you know, to catch your parents in a moment of weakness, you know, because, you know, as you're, I

mean, I was 16 at that time, but you know, there's still, you still see your parents as sort of basically like immortal or, you know, superheroes or something, something more than you are, you know, and to see her cry and to see her break down and to see, and I mean, she collapsed, you know, I mean, she couldn't walk, you know, and I had to carry her into the house and, uh, and I was like, fuck it's, it's up to me. It's, it's all on me. Like my dad's gone. My sister was away at school, you and you know my younger sister you know so i i had to take care of her and uh and i had to i was 16 i had to be a man and i had no fucking idea how to do it right meanwhile the drinking starting to escalate and we didn't even get into you know the the sort

of adopted brother that comes into your life yeah chung the vietnamese guy yeah chung was awesome god i mean it's such a weird thing like you're living in it's new hampshire right yeah you're in new hampshire you have this adopted younger brother from a completely different culture who's equally you know alienated from his peers and and lonely and his own anger issues and all of that, and becomes your ally and your best friend until ultimately he disappears on you as well, sort of exacerbating this pattern of abandonment and the trauma and wreckage that that, you know, then causes you, which creates this vicious cycle of perpetuating and throwing kerosene on all of these unhealthy behavior patterns that catapult you into New York city. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I, a quick correction. Chung was older than me.

Okay. Right. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, it was just, it, there was that serial abandonment, you know, that, um, everything in any, any pillar of support that you'd experienced as a child, like, okay, that's gone. Now that's gone. Now that's gone. And it was just that, uh, everyone you love will leave you. Everyone will betray you, you know, and, uh,

which, you know, which perfectly suits someone who is, you know, idolizing the man in black and that kind of life ethos of, you know, a guitar slung around your back and, and,

you know, heading out on your own to seek your destiny without any help from anybody. Yeah, to be a teenager with a drinking problem, to have that shit. You know, when you're convinced that everyone's out to get you and then people are actually out to get you. Yeah, things go to shit pretty quickly. Right. Well, let's fast forward it to new york city and uh the pursuit of the rock and roll dream i uh i moved to new york when i was 21

with 300 which which in a life of stupid things may have been just the stupidest decision I ever made. Yeah, but you always hear stories like that from other people who become mad successful. So temper that against reality that actually that works out for certain people. And you can make the argument as much as you might resist it that still that decision to move to New York with $300 in your pocket ultimately did create this successful human that sits before me.

Yes, but we don't necessarily hear the stories of the people who moved there with $300 who didn't make it. Far more. who didn't make it far more you know i i remember walking to a walking to a party at my like my friend's loft or something when i was 21 or 22 and i saw a girl uh blonde girl um you know wearing a long coat and she looked like she was my age or a little bit younger like and i remember her face you know blonde with you know blue eyes and she looked you know incredibly sweet and incredibly she looked like a nice girl you know and um as i was walking past her she opened her coat and she was wearing lingerie and she said you're looking for a date and it fucking broke my heart man and it still breaks my heart, man. And it still breaks my heart. You know, I, what happened to her, you know, and then the party that we were going to that night, um, it was a spot that my friends like wealthier older brother had just taken over. Uh, and it had been a fucking brothel and there were signs printed on the walls.

Uh, remember the old printer paper that had the holes on the sides to spool? Yeah. It was printed like that. And it was this sort of like ghetto, sort of like 94 era graphics. And it said, as per management, tipping is, you know, as per management, tipping is now mandatory. And that was basically saying you had to give your girl a little something extra,

you know? And to me, I mean that they were printed, you know, printed in the sort of mid nineties font with the paper strips still on there. So depressing. Right. Still thinking about that just makes my heart plunge it's easy to romanticize being 20 something in new york city around that time because there was also a lot of excitement and there's this palpable like undeniable sense of

possibility as hard as it might be and as depressing and as often as you're confronted with situations like that, there's also this idea that this is where you come when you have a dream, right? And looking back, I'm 49, you're well past that era to reflect back on that and think, oh, so amazing. You know, but then to really get into the details of it and realize, like, there's a lot of darkness, too. Yeah, yeah. I think of that movie, I think it's The 300. It's that sort of corny, I think it was like Greek or Roman sort of action movie. Gerard Butler.

And, you know, I think when the male children are sort of eight or nine years old, they sort of throw them, you know, basically to the wolves. And it's this, you know, sort of savage underground. Who survives. Whoever survives, you know, they come out and they become warriors. And that's sort of what New York was like at that time, you know, when I was 21. You know, it just chewed you up, you know. It just chewed you up, you know. And also, it was, you know, so tantalizing because, you know, it was sort of like, you know, having rockets launch out of the ghetto or something like that,

you know, think about, um, you know, in Eritrea or Sudan or something like that, you know, rocket launches from there, you know, because there'd be, you know, people, we were, you know, sort of like, well, I have enough, you know, quarters here to buy a Jameson at motor city and you go and, you know know drink with somebody and then oh that that's you know ends up that those guys were queens of the stone age or you know right you know karen o from yayas right the juxtaposition of living on top of people and the very the very real possibility that yeah there are people that actually do you know lots of them make it yeah and there was a time where it seemed like everyone had made it except for me so you're here and you're working these terrible jobs with terrible human beings

i mean you describe like was it bergdorf's the guy that you worked for there when you were working in some basement like basically you know pushing numbers around a spreadsheet or whatever it was that you were doing so horribly depressing and yet holding on to this idea of becoming a musician and looking back on it now, do you feel like that dream, that pursuit of trying to make it as a musician in New York, how much of that was really about the music and the art and how much of that was being driven by this anger and this desire to be recognized and heard and accepted i think you know i really enjoy music now i like learning a new chord inversion that i can play on a different spot on the neck of the guitar and stuff like that. Um,

when I was 21, 22, I think I really wanted to hurt my father and get laid. And that's what I wanted out of, I wanted, you know, music being a vehicle. Yeah.

Yeah. That it was a, um, you know, a vehicle for transformation, you know, and that if we arrange these chords in the right order, you know, sort of like they'll, they'll beg for you back, you know, and, uh, you know, my father, you know, he would see that, you know, not just that I was, that I was worthwhile or deserve, you know, deserving of love, but I would, I would somehow have power over him. And he would be like, you know, uh, Hey, I was, you know, calling I was calling to see if I could get tickets for the show on Saturday night.

I'd be like, sorry, dad, sold out. Just juvenile fantasies like that. It's kind of amazing when you think of the extent to which an unhealthy relationship with a parent can just completely forge character and drive decision-making on that level, right? And as a parent myself with young children, that's so terrifying because I'm not a perfect parent. I'm probably going to screw them up and they're going to be complaining when they're your you know, your age about like what I did wrong. And to think that something that I'm not doing or doing wrong is going to impact them and make them make unhealthy decisions in their own life is the most frightening thing I can

imagine. It's, you know, that's one of the reasons why I'm not a parent. It terrifies me. You're blocked by fear though. Yes, absolutely. You know, you can't let fear, I mean, you can because i it terrifies me you're blocked by fear though yes absolutely you know you can't let fear i mean you can't you do the best you can you know then you don't want to be that parents like where the kids like well he did the best he could you know i think i say those exact words in this book yeah i know i know i know all right i had a moment the other day you know i'm living with my sister now and she has four little kids.

And the oldest is a boy and then there's the two girls and then the youngest is a boy. And Kai, the youngest, he's a little bully. And, you know, he'll hit the girls. And, you know, the girls are nice, so, like, they won't hit him back. You know, but Micah, if he ever hit Micah, you know, Micah would knock him down. So, he doesn't hit him back um you know but micka if he ever hit micka you know micka would knock him down so he doesn't hit micka so i'm i'm seeing this and i'm seeing that that he's getting um he's getting the information that it's not okay for him to hit boys but it's okay for him to hit girls that's not a solid message and so i saw him hit one of the girls the other day

and i fucking let him have it i yelled at him and i scared him and then i was like oh christ now i've given him the message that it's okay to hit women as long as you don't get caught well i mean how do you know you gave him that message if you're saying don't do this yeah yeah you know but i mean that's the thing is that you know you gave him that message? If you're saying, don't do this. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that's the thing is that you can second guess yourself again and again and again when it comes to the decisions you make and it comes to raising children and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, Kai is going to be okay. He's not going to be an abuser. I didn't scar him the other day. He still loves me.

That's what you think. That's the thing as a parent, you don't realize the effect that things that you don't even give a second thought may have. You know what I mean? Cause I'm sure you've had this experience of, of communicating with your father or your mother and saying, you remember that time when you, like something you've been harboring forever, right. And just grinding on as a resentment.

And they're like, I have no recollection of that whatsoever. Like I, it was probably something that they said or did without even giving it a second thought here's lodges in the, the young mind. And one of the things I grappled with in this book is that it's, it's all, I'm recalling it from memory, you know? So it's so hard. Incredibly unreliable device. It's, we imagine memory to be something that, you know, records or preserves the truth.

And that's not what it does at all. It transforms what happened. And one good example is I used to be plagued by nightmares when I was a kid. I mean, I still am, but I sort of know how to manage it better now in adulthood. And I was having a nightmare one night and my mom, you know, probably, you know, five or six. And my mom said, you're sleeping curled up in a ball and that's why you're having nightmares. If you just sleep straight, just straighten straighten out then you won't have nightmares and i was like really and i tried it you know because if my mom said it was true then it had to be true so i tried and it worked it

absolutely worked i slept if i slept straight i didn't have nightmares. And then, you know, so probably, you know, 20 years later, I said, mom, you know, thank you so much. Like that gift you gave me when I was a kid of explaining that to me, that if I slept curled up in a ball, I would have nightmares. And that if, you know, if I, if I straight if I straightened out, that I wouldn't have nightmares. And she looked at me and she was like, Mishka, I never told you that. Yeah, it's such a bizarre thing. There's no way that's true. And I said, what?

And she said, no, I fucking had it with you. And I said, straighten out. Like, stop. Like right stop this behavior which is it's a british ism of basically saying you know stop being a pain in my ass straighten out start acting right and in my mind i was like oh if i straighten out then yeah exactly that's super funny all right so you're this cyclone barreling your way through brooklyn uh booze pills a lot of relationship wreckage you have a stalker there's all kinds of chaos happening like all around you right and the wheels are falling off the wagon so just just

give us like a paint it paint a quick picture of of quick picture of the perverse alcoholic that you were. Perverse, should I have used a different word? No, that might be the perfect word. Perhaps too perfect. I remember being 18 or 19 in a writing class and my professor telling a story about how he bottomed out on coke and he found himself, his bottom was sort of searching the cracks in the floorboards to see if any coke had fallen through there. And that's when he had his epiphany that he was out of control. And I remember doing that a lot. Like floor scores, which we did every night.

You know, I'd be working in the bar and you go around the floor to see if anybody dropped anything on the floor. And then you do those drugs. And sometimes it was Coke. And one time it was methamphetamine. And I was up for three days. Right. You know? Of course you're going to do it.

Yeah. It's like that test that they give you. Like, are you an alcoholic? You know? I mean, you know, I remember doing that test as a joke. And I'm like, of course. Of course. Of course.

Of course. Like, well, of course you would do that. You mean people don't do that? You know? You pussy. I had a perfect score you know and i felt like this test isn't fair because almost everybody does this don't they yeah yeah what a one little a friend said to me once they said mishka your what's remarkable about you

is that you have life-changing experience after life-changing experience, and you never fucking change. You just have time after time, something massive happens to you, and you just go right back to it. Well, this is – hold on a second. Well, this is – hold on a second. Put a pin in it because this gets into kind of the spiritual discussion where we can have a wrestling match a little bit because I know your distaste in the right way and your head's banging against the wall and the wheels are falling off the wagon and time and time again you're provided with evidence of why you might want to change your ways or take a look in the mirror and see how you're behaving. look in the mirror and see how you're behaving. The refusal to do that ultimately ends up in amplifying it until the result is inevitable. Like either you're going to die, you're going to go to jail, you're going to kill somebody else, or you're going to wake up and finally pay attention to what the universe has been trying to tell you all along, which is,

look, man, you need to stop doing this. And if you do, I can give you a new life. I knew we were going to get into this. We don't have to talk about it. No, we listen. One of the reasons that I'd love having, one of the reasons we're not friends because we agree on so much. We're friends because we disagree civilly on so much. And I always welcome conversations with you and discussions with you where we talk about the shit that we don't agree on.

Uh-huh. you where we talk about the shit that we don't agree on you know um you know i mean i think for you know some of this you know some i was talking about this with uh you know with um with robin one day you know we were on a run robin arzon and uh and you know i was like uh you know i was like all right you know i fucking i love rich to death but like you know there but some of the stuff – Enough with the new age bullshit. Yeah, yeah. And I said to her, I was like, I think some of it is just the lexicon because if he says, oh, you need to surround yourself with people who vibrate at a higher level, then my eyes start to roll and I start to shut down. But if I was to say, you're the sum average of the five people you hang out with, right? So if you're hanging out with people that are living the life that you aspire to live,

that's essentially the same thing, but it's dispensing. It's a different vernacular. Exactly. So it's the vernacular that- Exactly. And that's what I said to her is that i i said you know if rich said to me um you should spend you know more time around people who are driven who have goals who pursue those goals you know who actually chase their dreams and not just you know fucking binge on netflix or whatever then i would be like oh yeah yeah, yeah, obviously, you know? So I, you know, I mean, I, I, I do some of this trend, you know, some of the sort of translation in my head because,

um, cause I think, you know, I think incredibly highly of you and, and I know that I was thinking about this the other day cause, uh, Julie and I are talking about having me do her podcast. Right. And, um, she hasn't asked me yet though by the way oh really i think because i have no musical talent i think we're i think we're going to collaborate on a song um which which would be awesome but you know one of the things that i was thinking about, you know, to, you know, because, um, you know, she believes in a lot of stuff that I don't believe in. Um, do I think she's full of shit? No. Um, you know, but I need to find a way to sort of reconcile, you know, that she believes in a lot of stuff that I don't believe in. Um, and one of the things that I was thinking about is, um, close magic.

One of the things that I was thinking about is close magic. If you're watching somebody do sleight of hand, you know that the coin doesn't literally disappear. You can't see what's happening, but you know that there's something happening that you can't detect. But you know that there's something happening that you can't detect. And so there's a lot of things that I hear from you or that I hear from Julie that I don't immediately get, but I sort of file them away. And I know that there is something happening there. I know that I'm not seeing it all. But that's what faith is it's proceeding uh even when there's no evidence to support something in the rational tangible world you would uh you would laugh because i um when i was uh when i was teaching writing last summer

you know one of the things that i said to um at yale by the way for people that are listening why do you have to out me for that i want people to think it's had a community guy the dirty shirt and the shark shirt that what do you call long like you're wearing cut off jean shorts like who does that, man? I do. You're the only guy that I know who wears cut-off jean shorts, and they're like below the knee, right? What do you call those? No, they're called chants, right? Jean chants. That's a slur, man.

Is the same guy who's teaching writing at Yale. I was teaching writing at Yale. But, you know, one of the things that I said to them is that, you know, logical thinking will, you know, reason and rational thinking will, it'll help you climb the mountain. You know, it'll take you from one step to the next step to the next step to the next step but it's only faith that will um give you the courage and give you the power uh to jump off the mountain and fly you know and in in writing and in all creative pursuits there has to be that moment where you know where where either you know where you move to new york with 300 when you know when you're 21 you say i know the chances are against me surviving you know or you know not just surviving me making it as a musician or a writer i understand that the deck is stacked against me but i have faith that i can do it you know or um i think in your case it's a it's a function of faith butting up against stubbornness

because i think a big sort of understated theme in your life and in your book and in your writing is is this is is is grappling with your own stubbornness like when the universe whatever i don't you know i don't have to use like that vernacular. It's okay. I just, I translate it in my mind. When the environment in which you're inhabiting is providing you evidence that something you're doing is not working, like whether it's you're drinking and using, or it's your music career that's just not taking off, whatever it is, and your refusal to pay attention to that, like there's a heroism in that in some respects because you're going to plow forward and make it happen no matter what. It's that self-reliance, you know. But at the

same time, that refusal to kind of pay attention to what the world is trying to tell you. And you see it also in, you know, your burgeoning writing career when the universe is starting to reward you for this writing and your refusal to acknowledge or pay attention to that and kind of pivot and move in that direction, like where everyone's kind of going, actually, you're getting a little success over here. Like, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a musician, right? This is what I'm doing. I don't care about that writing stuff. And you're saying, no, no, no. And the universe, your world, your environment keeps

knocking on your door and saying hey i'm the writing guy over here like uh come over here and uh things might work out a little bit better for you you're going no no no until finally you know it becomes so undeniable that you're you're you're you're forced to acknowledge it well there's so much of it is uh is perception if um but when you're under the influence of drugs and alcohol you're and when you're a functioning alcohol functioning or non-functioning alcoholic like your your ability to accurately objectively perceive your world is broken oh perception and and to this day being a sober alcoholic you know my biggest problem is perception yeah i i really don't see with the world the way that it is because it's so clouded by my own you know my own you know

negative thought patterns etc that tell me otherwise i i absolutely agree but you know the um you know the thing you know whether um if somebody doesn't succeed then we see them as stubborn and if they succeed we see them as determined you know if you look at jonas salk or you know i mean any sort of you know any people were saying, you're crazy, you're crazy, you're broken when you're under the influence. One time, I did seven different drugs in one night. What were the drugs? Let's see. Percocet, Oxycontin, Xanax, and Adderall.

Adderall. What was the one pill that was really kind of like your preferred drug of choice? I forget the name of it. Oh, Opana. Opana, right. I'd never even heard of that. I thought I knew all of it. We'll get to that. Yeah, let me get

into that but yeah so i did seven different drugs and then i woke up the next morning and i thought i was just gonna be you know a bug what is he what is that like to be on all those drugs at the same time it's like and was that over the course of an entire day or in one evening? That was an evening. Uh-huh. And. Like, it just has to be confusing. It was definitely confusing. Yes, that may be the perfect word. It was confusing. I woke up the next morning and I felt less bad than I would have felt if I had just gone out drinking.

And so I had that epiphany where I was like, I've been drinking too much. The solution to my problem is doing more of these other drugs. Exactly. Exactly. And that was right. I almost made it. I almost got the like i gotta stop drinking and instead i was like i i need to do more drugs the solution to my drinking problem is to do more

drugs of course that's the great obsession of every alcoholic right to be able to figure out a way to continue to do it and it's always playing around with the different kinds of things that you're doing in the amounts and if i can just get this mix just right, then I'll be sweet. I, um, a lot of times people, you know, and it's, it's generally Stan Hope fans who, uh, who write to me who, you know, are like, you know, you, you quit drinking, you know, how do I do it? And yeah, I would imagine there's a lot of practicing alcoholics and Stan Hope fan crowd practicing hard. Yeah. Um, God love them. Yes. Yeah, I would imagine there's a lot of practicing alcoholics in the Stan Hope fan crowd.

Practicing hard. Yeah. God love them. Yes. And so I'll read their message a couple of times or ask them a couple of different questions. And then often what I say is, you're full of shit. You don't want to quit drinking. That's what it is.

You want to quit getting hangovers or you want to quit getting shit from your girlfriend or your wife when you get drunk or you want to quit getting DUIs because you know how to quit. You put the fucking drink down and you never pick it up again. That's how you quit.

And then they're like, you're an asshole. maybe i am but um use caution when writing to the guy who didn't ask for help right yeah i'm quitting drinking i think i think that that that that that direct approach is refreshing you know because i get i get i get similar emails and i don't respond to them in that way. I know. I'm a little more gentle. I should forward mine to you and vice versa.

Yeah, I'm a little more gentle in it. But ultimately, you have to get them to get to that place, right? Because they have to make that decision for themselves. You can't compel somebody to have that realization. But you're trying to accelerate that process. And I appreciate that. And I think you can extrapolate from that into whatever problem it is that you're grappling with. Because I get emails from all kinds of people about all kinds of different stuff. But the general theme is there's something in my life that's not working that I want to change. Like, how did you change or how do I stop doing this so that I can start doing this?

And I think in truth, most of these people, they already know what to do. There's no secret magic, you know, bullet or like life hack that is going to accomplish what they're seeking. It's truly a matter of, you know, brass tacks, stop doing what you're doing and start doing the thing that you want to do and that's tough to hear you know because people want to be told that there's an easier way the easier softer way right and if you're an alcoholic trying to stop drinking drinking or using their the answer they're looking for is how can i keep doing what i'm doing but not suffer the the negative repercussions of doing it yeah right the the easy way is to work incredibly hard that's that's the shortcut yeah the shortcut is to to work just the shortcut is to make it your absolute number one priority and be willing to do anything

to get sober and by anything i mean anything yeah That's the life hack. Yeah. Right? Yep. Yeah. And it takes a lot of bullshit to get there, man. Right. It takes a lot of pain, a lot of sadness, a lot of humiliation, a lot of wetting the bed, a lot of friends screaming at you to get there. It doesn't have to. It just does.

It just usually does. It did for me. It did for you. It's that thing that I say all the time on the podcast. But if your elevator is going down, it doesn't have to hit the ground floor. You can get off at any time. That choice is available to you. It's just that when you're desperate and you're broken and you've lost everything and you're in so much pain that there's nowhere else to turn,

that choice then becomes easier. And the grace in that is that you're given the gift of willingness that you can step into that place of saying, okay, I'm ready to do anything. And by anything, I mean anything to get sober. When you still have stuff and you haven't really suffered enough, it's harder to prioritize it on the level that it needs to be prioritized in order to resolve it. And also, the things that you learn in the process of getting sober, you need to apply to other things in your life. And that was a big part of putting things back together with my father.

All right. Well, before we get to that, before we get to it, we're still on what it was like and what happened. Oh, okay. Before we get to what it's like now. But. You want to talk about Opana? Well, yeah. I want to hear about Opana.

And then I want to get into like the bottom. This is why I love, like, I love talking to recovered alcoholics and i love addiction memoirs because i can just be like oh yeah oh tell me more about how bad it was you know like i just love it it's like it's like a well-written addiction memoir is is literally it's like taking drugs for me like i can transport myself because i can relate so profoundly and i feel like it's like a it's like oh i get it like you don't even understand how much i understand you yeah it's like uh disaster porn i know it's not exactly all right opana um what is this well i i it took me a long time to figure out what it was i uh i was working a desk job for a construction company uh falsifying documents for them right

is something like mafia guy or something yeah yeah and uh and you know i i love this because you know people are always are always like, oh, you know, the running you do, it's damaging your body. It's, you know, it's tearing you apart. You know, like, you know, it's so bad for you. Sitting at a fucking desk and doing Excel spreadsheets and sending faxes did far more damage to my back than anything, any athletic thing I've ever done. But, yeah, so I was in constant pain from my back than anything, any athletic thing I've ever done. Um, but yeah, so I was in constant pain from my back from sitting at this job. And so a, um, my drug dealer slash girlfriend, uh, turned me on to, uh, Vicodin and then Percocet and then another drug dealer slash girlfriend, uh, turned me on to Opana, which was, you know, this, this other thing,

another pill. And so I remember I met up with her at Motor City and I was like, oh, it's going to sort of, you know, give me a buzz, you know, like the other ones. And, and she handed me the, the bottle of pills and I, you know, I chewed one up and she chewed one up and, uh, we had another drink and then we went to like go and get food. And by the time the food showed up, I was biting my tongue as hard as I could to not go fucking face down in my, my cheeseburger because it was so strong and it was so good. I just felt like my body was filled with love and I felt, I felt amazing. I felt incredible. I felt, um, you know, like I could, like I could heal the sick,

like I could put my hands on you and heal you, you know, and also my eyes were crossing, you know, I mean, it was just so, so I, you know, scraped this, you know, and you know, my, the girl I was with was just falling apart. So I like paid for the food. We didn't eat anything. Of course, you know, it stuck her in a cab and gave the cab driver the address. And then I like walked back across Williamsburg bridge and I just felt like I was witnessing a miracle, you know, like this was just, this was the fucking greatest thing ever. And then it became my greatest project. It was like that new thing, you know, like, you know, oh, I just discovered yoga.

I'm really into yoga or like, you know, this was my yoga, you know, this is my. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. I'm practicing opana i'm working on my opana practice in my ashram it almost sounds like some kind of what it so is it an opiate what is it um well i only found out when uh when i was starting you shit started to go badly um where i would i would like nod off in the middle of a conversation just go face down on the bar i would wake up on the street or uh i would wake up like half in my apartment half out where i like was able to get the door open and get the key in the

lock. And then I was just like, okay, fall right down in the hallway, sleep right here or like, you know, in bed with like my fucking cowboy boots on, you know?

And, uh, and I had a, a series of just sort of hideous dreams of, you know, um, uh, and, and very old woman was, uh was sitting on my chest and she had these enormous

yellow eyes. And as she looked at me, her mouth started to stretch towards mine until her head didn't move at all, but her lips stretched all the way down to mine. And then she started to suck the breath out of my lungs. And I knew that she was stealing my breath and that I was going to die. And I started having dream after dream about dead things and dead people. And then when I woke up – How much of this were you taking?

As much as I could. Yeah. I mean, how do you even get something so obscure? Maybe it's not that obscure. As much as I could. Yeah. I mean, how do you even get something so obscure? I, uh. Maybe it's not that obscure. I'm just, I just. Well. I'm unfamiliar with it.

When, when I started to quit, like when I was like, I've, I've got to quit this thing. Like my house, I became convinced that my house was haunted. Not that the drugs I was doing were making me insane, but that my house was haunted not that the drugs i was doing were making me insane but that my house was haunted it's the opana version of closing the shades and thinking there's helicopters outside that you do when you're doing meth and well and i couldn't tell the difference between when i was awake and when i was asleep so my dreams would be like just you know i i couldn't i was having nightmares and i couldn't tell that it was a nightmare i was like you know this people are really like peeling their faces off or you know were you having hallucinations during the day um no not so much i just um my

days were fucking miserable um and then you know the the instant um you know i wouldn't i wouldn't allow myself to do drugs at work but like you know the minute i got off the subway i'd go to a bar crush a line on the back of the toilet there and fucking rail a couple of big pink lines or and then it got to be so just crushing up these pills and and inhaling them yeah and then um and then it got to the point where i'd clock out go to the bathroom in the building and then fucking do a line right there just to get me home on the train you know um when i went to quit i was like like what the fuck have i been doing and i looked it up and uh they uh they're actually stronger than pharmaceutical heroin and they were in the 70s they were known as blues and they were taken off the market because there were so many pharmacy

robberies because um in drugstore cowboy that that was that was the drug that was the drug that they were stealing that was the drug that they were stealing that was the drug that they wanted um and then they you know had just sort of recently reintroduced it or you know brought it back and um as some kind of pain management medication or i mean what is the legitimate you know it fucking managed the shit out of my pain man i'll tell you what i didn't feel anything so just a super powerful opiate yeah yeah and actually what um what clued me into the fact that i was in over my head is that um somebody gave me some morphine and i did morphine and i was like this is fucking boring

like i i you know i don't feel anything compared to what I feel when I'm doing Opana. And then I was like, wait, I don't know what this shit is. Right. You know? And yeah, then like getting off of that was. I would imagine the withdrawal was horrendous. It was pretty brutal. Yeah. It was really just.

The bed sweats and the whole thing for days. Yeah. um just the bed sweats and the whole thing for days yeah i mean i just remember like chewing up like handfuls of advil and like a leave and just like just lying there in fucking agony and unable to sleep and unable to be awake and like um you know i tried to drink my way through it you know, I, I tried to drink my way through it, you know, which helped a little bit, but, um, but yeah, I mean,

it was really, it's torture, dude. It was really, it really, really sucked, you know? All right.

So where's the bottom? Well, as you know, like the bottom has trapped doors, man. And like, um, I feel like I was just sort of like nosing around the bottom for a long time. But what, uh, one of the bottoms for me was, uh, I've been fooling around with this girl who I'm, you know, who I met at a, uh, who I met at a show and, uh, you know, she said she was on birth control and, uh, and then she got pregnant. And then I was like,

since I was 15, I tried to live my life in opposition to my father. I tried to do the opposite of what he did. And I tried to do the, you know, I tried to, I tried to be strong where he was weak. And then having failed that, I was like, I'll just be a hellion where, you know, where he's been boring and lived his life, you know, sort of within the lines. to his life, you know, sort of within the lines. And then, um, I was like, now I hurt every single person who comes into contact with me. I have old friends who, you know, have told me, I just, I can't bear to be around you anymore. Not because I don't love you, but because I do love you. And I, I, I can't, you know, I can't stick around for the ending of this movie. And, uh, and also, you know, with this woman, I was going to create another unwanted kid, which is what I was. Another unwanted kid, which is what I was. And that would just be the fucking worst thing. It's almost like, here we go back to, you know, I want to say the universe, but I'm going to say your environment. Concocting the worst case scenario for you.

concocting the worst case scenario for you. Like if your mission and all of your behavior is truly in opposition to your father and driven by this anger and this pain as a result of that abandonment, to then be faced with the very real prospect of becoming the guy who perpetrates the very act that caused you this pain, that's the ultimate wake-up call. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course, you can go to jail or you could have hurt somebody.

There are other things, but I'm saying it was specifically concocted to get your attention. It appears that way, doesn't it that way it does doesn't it all right keep going and um you know i mean it was it was sort of an epiphany that flowered open in several different ways i mean there were um you know so there was that that I was going to create another me. And I thought about like how much I had, uh, for a child to feel unwanted. That's just the lowest thing, you know,

possible. And that's the last thing I would ever inflict on any child ever. You know, my sister's kids, I tell them every day that I love them to the point where they're like, okay, like we know, you know?

Um, and then also're like, okay, we know. And then also, the life that I've led, people have accused me of being a psychopath or a sociopath or not having any conscience. And the opposite is true. I know how much I've hurt people. And it became abundantly clear that even for me to isolate myself so that I wasn't hurting anyone directly, for me to isolate myself, I'd hurt my family so much and that if I were to die like this, my final act on this earth would be to hurt them some more. Well, that's a level of, you know, fully understand or realize is that when you're accused of being that kind of guy and you actually are perpetrating acts that make

people feel that way about you, on some level, however conscious you are of that, you are aware of it. And that causes its own pain to understand that you're that kind of person. And the only way to navigate through the world with that self-knowledge is to use more to repress all of that pain. So it becomes this cycle that you just can't break out of. Like you're hurting people and then it's so painful to yourself to know that that's what you're doing because of your selfish indulgency in your own addiction. The only way to kind of get through it is to use more so that you don't have to feel that pain, which of course perpetrates more damage

and pain to others. And, you know, I also, you know, I realized that I'd done every single thing I could to prevent people from caring about me. You know, I said, don't care about me. You know, I said it point blank and also behaved in a manner that was off-putting, you know, to like just try and alienate as many people as possible. And I realized sort of that I was outnumbered and I was outgunned that the people were always going to care about me and that people were always going to love me. And that I could never talk like never going to be able to fucking talk my

mother out of loving me, you know, like that's, uh, you know, that's her, that's her number one, you know,

priority on this earth is to love her children, you know? And, um, I realized that I was, you know, that I was on the wrong side of the battle, you know? And, um, I also realized that, you know, I think for a lot of alcoholics and addicts, there great epiphany comes that I realized if I continued using that I was going to die. And my epiphany was different. My epiphany was that I realized that I was never going to die, that that's what I'd been gunning for. They say, whiskey's going to kill you. And I would say, when? And it was taking too long. And I realized that I would keep living in this half-life, that my life would just be getting smaller and smaller and unhappier and

unhappier and more and more debased yes it's different rungs in purgatory yeah and uh until i would fear you know fear life more than i feared death. And that's scarier than, than dying, you know, to live a life that's just torture like that. Did you, do you really, did you really have that level of understanding?

Yeah. Yeah. I had a vision of myself as like a stooped, you know, older man, you know, one of those guys who's like 58, but he looks like he's 89, you know, just used up, but somehow continuing to live. Just, you know, that. Just like a cockroach. Yeah, yeah.

Like, you know, powerless to live and powerless to die and just sort of trapped in their life and just, you know, just going on and just going on and just going on. And, uh, and the thought of living like that scared me more than dying. And, uh, it fucking scared the shit out of me,

man. I mean, it still does. And, uh, I was just like, this is it. This is the end.

This is the absolute end. Uh-huh. You know? And it's funny because, you know, getting shipwrecked, that didn't, you know, that didn't stop me from drinking. You know, I had all sorts of like terrible things happen. Yeah. And as terrible as that was, it's still like an awesome story. You know what I mean?

Like that's just an awesome story to like go to the bar and tell people. You know what I mean? Yeah. And as terrible as that was, it's still like an awesome story. You know what I mean? Like that's just an awesome story to like go to the bar and tell people, you know what I mean? Like you can kind of celebrate and romanticize that. me of, you know, waking up in your own urine, waking up on the street, like, you know, missing, you know, important shit. Um, and I just blew through all of that. But then the, the thing that made me stop drinking, it was sort of like, I just, I had a thought, you know, and the thought came into my head and wouldn't leave me alone.

And, and I was just like, I had a, I had a telescope into the future and I was like, this had a telescope into the future. And I was like, this is the life you're headed for. And I just said, fuck that. And that was it. I fucking pulled the emergency brake. That's it. We're done.

We're done. Haven't had a drink since. We can kind of skip ahead to something that's been going on recently with you, which is interesting, which is how many you've been sober. How long now? End of May. It'll be seven years. Seven years. Right. So quite a bit of time.

And we got together. It wasn't that long ago. I don't know, maybe a month ago. And you confided in me like I've been thinking about drinking. You know, I'm scared. I'm concerned. I've been thinking about drinking. I didn't say I've been thinking about drinking.

I said I made up my mind to start drinking. Oh, I don't even remember it being that much. Yeah. You made up your mind to start drinking again. And I was like, all right, have a seat. It's time to have a chat buckle up yeah and we had a long talk about it and it was a great talk and then you ended up writing uh writing about it and and breaking public about it which i thought was very courageous and ballsy um because i think there's this perception amongst sober alcoholics that

once you're sober or you've put together some time that cravings or that desire to drink is no longer a part of your life. And should you entertain a desire to drink, that that's a shameful act that you should certainly never tell anyone about, but it couldn't be further from the truth because as an alcoholic, our natural disposition is to drink. Every day that we don't drink, that is the errata on the balance sheet. And so, of course, you're going to have moments where you're going to have a craving or you're going to have a desire to drink or you're going to wake up one day and say, you know, all that stuff I've've been doing was so like, I don't think I'm an alcoholic. You know, like that's that's what happens.

That is the pernicious nature of alcoholism. And so the way through that is to communicate about it and to not hide it because alcoholism loves secrets. to not hide it because alcoholism loves secrets. And when you hold that as a secret, that's where it kind of gains its power until ultimately it manifests itself in taking that drink. And, uh, and then,

you know, you're off to the races. Yeah. Yeah. The race to the bottom. Right. Yeah. I,

um, I, um, I, I almost called you from Mexico because the, I was driving up to LA one night, uh, to the comedy show with, uh, with Brett Erickson. And that's when I was having this internal monologue about drinking. And my thought was, I can't remember the last time I had fun. I don't have fun anymore. And if I drank, at least I would have fun. Which is like, just hold on a second, because that's insane, right? If you look at your life, since you've gotten sober, it's been a remarkable trajectory upwards. Yes, absolutely. And so it's hard to look at that and go, oh, well, like the other side looks better. But again, that's alcoholism, right?

Yeah. And that involves a tremendous amount of romanticization of your past. Like you forget what it felt like to be coming off Opana. You're just romanticizing what it was like to be at your favorite bar with your friends. Yeah, exactly. And in that moment, all my accomplishments, all the writing that I've generated, all the strides that I've made forward as, you know, not just in sobriety, that I've made forward as, you know, not just in sobriety, but in humanity, restoring relationships with my family. None of that mattered because I just, I could remember clearly sitting at the bar with my buddies laughing so hard about nothing. Just like, you know, laughing to the point that

it hurt and like, it was so fucking fun. And we just, you know, we the point that it hurt and like it's so fucking fun and we just you know we just had a great time and i just i was like i just you know you miss that yeah i miss that and so i i made up my mind that night driving in okay i'm gonna um i'm gonna start drinking again i'll give myself like another six months and then I'll start drinking again. And I'm glad that I did that. I'm glad that I made up my mind to do that because I woke up the next morning and I went, holy fucking shit. Are you kidding me? No way. No way am I going to do that. That's ridiculous. That's totally out of the question. That's ridiculous. That's totally out of the question.

And I think that had I not allowed myself to think about my life with alcohol back in it, then I would still feel tempted. But then I thought about, oh, well, if I drink, what will I drink? Where will I drink? What will I do? And then I started thinking, oh, yeah. And then when I woke up the next morning, I was like, man, if I drink, what will I drink? Where will I drink? What will I do? And then I started thinking, oh, yeah. And then when I woke up the next morning, I was like, man, fuck that. Well, the technique that's been helpful to me is when you start to think like that, then you go, oh, and then what happens?

And then what do I do then? Oh, and then the bar closes. And then where are we going to go? And then I got to call the drug dealer. Do I still have the phone number? Okay, where are we going to go do the drugs? And you just keep playing it out until you're passed out you know on the street and you can't find your keys or your wallet you know or whatever it is like take it to its ultimate conclusion and then live there for a little bit and that helps shatter that romantic idea of just i'm

having a good time with my buddies yeah one of the things that, that one of the exercises that they had me do when I was in rehab, like shortly after I arrived was intended to kind of, you know, break that, you know, break that illusion is take 10 episodes in your life where, where things didn't go so well in your drinking and using, but take it from the beginning. Like what was your intention? Well, I was going to meet my buddies at my favorite bar and we were going to laugh until our stomachs hurt. You know, that was the intention. What happened? Oh, I woke up, you know, in Las Vegas and I don't know how I got there and couldn't find my wallet and didn't know how I was going to get home, you know? And then who did it, how did it make you feel, like really live in like what it felt like when you woke up?

Like just write down the most specific adjectives you can come up with. Like really just paint the picture of what that felt like. And then how did it impact other people in your life? Like, oh, well, my girlfriend was terrified. She didn't know where I was because I wasn't returning her call. Like all the impact. Because you have that idea like, I not hurting anyone man i'm just trying to have a good time like leave me alone and that was really powerful to me to see oh yeah it never

starts out with like i'm gonna i'm gonna pass out in the street like that's never your that's not your intention you know but to play it all the way through and then gives you an ability to kind of, you know, look through the microscope more objectively. One of the things that, you know, having thought about this a lot in the last couple of weeks, last couple of months is that, you know, I suffer from depression. I get depressed periodically. And I thought that coming out here to California for the winter would help, but I didn't realize how short the days are here in the wintertime. Holy crap. I mean, you know.

It's the same. You get like four hours of sun and it's nice and you can put on your jean shorts for a minute. But then at 4.30, it's fucking dark, you know. But then at 4.30, it's fucking dark, you know? And I have systems in place to deal with the part of the depression, which is feeling sadness. But I didn't have anything put in place to deal with the other side of depression, which is never feeling pleasure. And that's what got me on the drive was the never feeling pleasure. When I was down in Mexico, I went walking on the beach with my uncle. He's probably 6'4", maybe 260, maybe 280, great big man.

He's got these two tiny little dogs. And we were walking down the beach together and the dogs are freaking out and just running around in the waves and stuff. And he's running with them and playing with them and shouting at them in half Spanish and half English. And I realized I was smiling so hard that my face hurt just looking at my uncle playing with his dogs on the beach. I was having fun dude i had

so much fun on this trip i really like i had a blast that's great you know and uh you know there was uh you know i took this walk up a river where it was just like the whole mountainside was just covered in this thick blanket of vines and foliage and, you know, the fucking babbling brook and the dogs. And like, I love Mexico. I should go every year as part of my program. You know, it was so restorative for me. And I had so much fun. I really had a blast. It's great.

And I think that the curative aspect of that really also just goes back to your willingness to be openly communicative about these impulses. And for people that are listening that kind of struggle with this, maybe they want to quit drinking or using drugs and whatever your protocol is for doing that. If you've put together a little bit of time and then you start to feel that itch and you think it might sound like a good idea to go back out there and do something, the worst thing you can do is keep that idea to yourself. Like you've got to communicate that to another human being that you trust, who can help you, you know, and the fear of judgment, um, that's gotta get put aside. Well, and, um, putting it out there, going public with it, that came frightening. That came from you because that podcast you did about relapsing, um, was so powerful and so proud of you for that. And it also put, um, uh, but my relationship with you in a new perspective, you know, in a new perspective

where I was like, Oh yeah. When Rich says that he's struggling, he's really struggling, you know? And that, and I realized that I, you know, I mean, I tried to sort of phrase it carefully when I posted, um, you know, to say that I wasn't in crisis and that I, and that I, you know, I didn't need people to stop what they were doing and call me, but I just wanted to tell people that I'd had that thought that it was in my head and I wasn't going to do anything about it, but, um, it's valuable for me to call myself out and to be honest about it. And I think it's valuable for, I mean, I know it was incredibly valuable for me, um, to hear your experience. And I know that there are people who, who know my writing and know my music

and know me from the podcast and stuff but don't know me personally and think like oh yeah this guy quit drinking and then his life got perfect and like and i feel like i gotta tear that down you know and let people know that um my life is uh it's exponentially. It's so much fucking better. But it's the bad days, man. And I still have frustrations like everybody else, like anybody else. Of course, man. Of course. Do you still – I mean, is that impulse now completely dissipated or are you still living in it a little bit? I mean, I think if I said if it was completely dissipated, I would be being dishonest.

It's gone down from a seven to a two. I think it'll always be there. And it's, you know, the Sicilian thing, you know, you keep your friends close and your enemies closer. You know, I don't ever want to be, you know, dishonest with you or with myself and say, I mean, you always bust me on this. Oh, you got a beat now, right? You know, no, it's never beat. Yeah. you got a beat now,

right? You know, no, it's, it's never beat, you know, um, I've got it. Um,

uh, you know, I'm, I have the advantage right now, you know, um, I'm, I,

I have so much good stuff coming up right now. Um, I know that I'm going to be so worn out by the end of it, you know, between the, you know, music tour, book tour, book events, uh, my United States citizenship, which is just, you know, which is coming right up teaching at Yale, you know, crisscrossing back and forth across the country. There's, you know, and also I got to figure out what's next. I got to figure out what the next, you know, what the next project is. So I've, you know, I have a lot of stuff to do. Alcohol will help none of those. It certainly won't, man. And you're a stronger man than I, because so much of what you do, you know, playing

music and being on these comedy tours, you're around a lot of people that are drinking. You're in bars, you're around a party atmosphere. I couldn't do that, man. I mean, I could, but it would wear on my soul. It just wouldn't be good for me. I'm not Teflon with that kind of thing because for me, I see it as putting myself in harm's way. And I know you love it. I mean, you love playing out and you love being around those people and all that kind of stuff. But that's tricky. And I think if you think that you're immune from that kind of energy or environment seeping into your psyche, then you're fooling yourself, right? you're fooling yourself, right? So you have to take extra care and precautions to not let,

you know, that kind of thing, that sort of, uh, I don't know what you would call it, like that kind of, um, you know, that ethos from seeping into your pores and impacting, you know, how you see yourself. What, uh, what it does to me being in bars is, know as much as i am it it doesn't tempt me it makes me cranky you know i didn't have a lot of patience for drunks when i was a drunk and now that i'm not i'm sort of like all right you dug the show you know like wrap it up you know if you have something to say say it but if you're just gonna blather, you know, like wrap it up. You know, if you have something to say, say it. But if you're just going to blather on, you know, repeating yourself, then, you know, come on. And that sounds really uncharitable to say because I do appreciate everyone who likes my music and who likes my writing. But spending time in bars and around drinking people, you, you see firsthand what alcohol does to people. Um,

you know how it changes their behavior immediately and also how it changes their lives. Um, and, uh, I have no desire to go back there and, and spending time with people who live in bars, uh,

is powerful reinforcement that I made the right decision. But also spending that much time in bars really makes me feel out of place and makes me feel like a stranger among my own fans, you know, and that's not good either. One of the things I'm looking forward to the most and one of the things that i find the most challenging is teaching at yale again um because that that takes when does that start uh that starts uh first week of june there's two different sessions that i'm teaching this year there's a longer 10-day session then there's a an intensive four-day one. That takes every ounce of focus,

every ounce of intellect, every ounce of sensitivity. I have to be 100% on the entire time. And I love it because, you know, to have a challenge like that that takes everything that you have, it's great. You're totally engaged.

And then afterwards, you're fucking exhausted. Right. You know? What is your aspiration for this book? I mean, that's the wrong question. I mean, not like what you're going to get out of it. What I mean is, what is it that you want people to have experienced as a result of reading this book? Like, what is it that you hope to communicate and convey? You know, that I don't have a huge investment in the concept of forgiveness.

You know, that if somebody screws you over, you better remember it so they don't get a chance to screw you over again. And this book was, it's about forgiving my father against my will. You know, by learning about him and learning about his life and learning about his childhood and his young adulthood, learning who he was as a person and not just as capital D dad, you know, gave me more sympathy for him than I than I'd ever had before. And I saw, oh, I understand now how you could make that mistake, you know, and, um, and I saw how alike we are, you know, both of us woke up halfway through our lives and said, man, because due to my, due to making some bad decisions and some cowardice and, you know, um, inability to stand up and be strong. I find myself in a nightmare of my own creation. I find myself deeply unhappy in a life I could not have imagined for myself. And I don't know how to get out and I, and I need to do everything and anything to escape

this, you know? to escape this, you know? Um, and, uh, you know, so I hope that, I hope that people read the book and realize that forgiveness is some powerful shit. And even if you feel like another person isn't deserving of your forgiveness, um, that's probably who you need to forgive the most. Whether they deserve it or not, you deserve it. You deserve to be freed from holding that grudge because I spent most of my life trying to get my revenge on my father and I got a little bit of revenge on him. but for the amount that I hurt him, I hurt myself a thousand times more. I poisoned myself with that anger. Right, and so the kind of overt journey to forgiving your father I think really is secondary to the journey of forgiving yourself?

No. That part of it, I think I'm still working on. If I'm honest, with my dad, it wasn't like we had some passionate argument, and then there was a pivotal point in the conversation, and then we both burst into tears. I said, I forgive you, and he said, I forgive you, and we did a big embrace, and the violins come up and then fade to black. It wasn't like that. It was just one day I went looking in that dark little cabinet in my heart where I keep my resentment for him and my anger towards him and my bitterness towards him. And I opened the cabinet and it was empty. I just couldn't find it. It was empty. I just couldn't find it, you know? But part of that is fueled by developing a greater understanding of him as a human being. I'm not going to spoil the book, but there's some information that you come into that colors your perception of his life and some of the decisions that he made and allowed you to arrive in a place where

you could understand him a little bit better and perhaps find a way to be a little bit more compassionate for his own path and his own struggles. And then you make this choice to communicate with him about it. And those decisions and those acts really provide the foundation for you to get to this place where you guys can get together. And if you're not going to break down in tears and hug it out, you can get to a place of understanding that I think is genuine and authentic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's sort of specifically what I was talking about when I have a horrible secret, you know, I'm an alcoholic and I'll always be an alcoholic. How dare you?

And, you know, and I've been like- Shameful Mishka Chivali. I've been living this lie, you know, and with- To which the response you receive is, really? I had no idea. It was a secret to no one but me. To whom was this a secret? And with my father, neither one of us treasures the opportunity to talk about our feelings. neither one of us treasures the opportunity to talk about our feelings.

And I had to sit down with him and I had to sit down and say, I've hated you. And I had to sit down and tell him, I betrayed you. I stole information from you. And it's the information that I stole from you that's allowed me to to forgive you you know that was a fucking shitty conversation

to you know to sit down with him and and I could see him my dad has a pretty good poker face you know but to sit down with him. And I could see him, my dad has a pretty good poker face, you know, but I could see the sort of emotions ripple through him. I could see him, you know, feeling a lot of anger and resentment and sort of betrayal and also, you know, like where the, you know, where the fuck do we go now? Like what? We're on uncharted territory. Turns out uncharted territory is pretty nice.

uncharted territory it's pretty nice you know we uh you know he you know i've done a couple of like online fitness challenges lately and he's sort of he's done them you know i said well you know dad i bet you couldn't do you know 30 minutes of exercise every day for the month of november and he's like well i fucking bet i could you know and he has so he you know he'll text me his workouts and stuff like that we go back and forth about getting old and what we can't do these days and what we used to be able to do. And he came down to visit for Thanksgiving. And that was great. How does he feel about the way that he's portrayed in the book? There's a lot of stuff in there that I would imagine was difficult for him to read.

I can't believe how generous he's been and how understanding he's been in the end the um um you know the the perception that he's had about it and how sensitive he's been he um you know he said um he said that you know that's not how i remember it but that you know this isn't my story this is your story about how you remember it and so you need to tell it the way that you remember it i remember it differently you know um and you know but he said you know he said to me i interviewed him several times, you know, during the process of writing this book. And he said, Mishka, this is the first time anyone's ever asked me my side of the story.

You know, so I think he was happy and relieved to, you know, to be given a little bit of a voice. to, you know, to be given a little bit of a voice. You know, I mean, I absolutely demonize him through, you know, the first half or the first two thirds of the book, because that's what, that's who he was at that time. That's, you know, that's what he was. But, you know, but, you know, there's some redemption for all of us. And in kind of honoring his version of the facts, his story, how does that impact your mom? Like, how does she feel about that airtime that he gets?

You know, it was difficult for her. You know, I mean, I made everybody in my family cry so much reading this book. You know, my uncle read it when I was down there in Mexico and, you know, and I'd, I'd come in from a run or from, you know, hanging out and I was like, you know, how are you doing? He's like, oh, you know, just crying, just crying, you know? Um, and, uh, you know, my mother knows that without her, there would be no book. Um, not just because I would never have gotten sober, but because I would have no relationship with my father because she was the one time and time again, where I said, fuck him. He's irrelevant. He's, he's a sperm donor and nothing else. She said, no,

you need to have a relationship with your father. Uh, he's, he's a sperm donor and nothing else. She said, no, you need to have a relationship with your father. He's, he's not a perfect man, but he's your father and you need to have a relationship with him. And she kept pushing me back to him and kept pushing me back to him. And, um, you know, and I, you know, I think her, you know, her presence is, you know, runs throughout the book. Um, even when I'm not, you know, writing about her directly, I mean, because, uh, she's why I

didn't kill myself. She was a lot of times she was it, man. She was the only thing tethering me to this earth and uh you know and also she doesn't uh you know she doesn't begrudge him the the spotlight you know she's uh you know this is this book is a big triumph for me and it's so it's a big triumph for her too right well you honor her consistently throughout the book so she shouldn't have that big of a problem, I think. I don't talk as much trash about her as I do about my dad, too. Well, I'm super proud of you, and I feel like you're somebody who's just hitting your creative stride.

And you're somebody that I respect tremendously as an artist because you never hit a false note. Like it's everything that you put out there is who you are through and through. And I think that that is really what you aspire to do as an artist. Right. And here we are, you know, just days after the passing of David Bowie and, you know, Julie and I were talking about it yesterday. We did an Ask Me Anything episode of the podcast, and we were kind of reflecting on the life of David Bowie as an artist. And I think I don't remember this kind of outpouring in the wake of the passing of a cultural icon

on the level that we saw with David Bowie, which is just amazing, right? And well-deserved because, you know, I can't think of another artist who was so completely him in every regard and somebody who never, you know, himself hit a false note, who never compromised, who was never anything but who he is and could never possibly be anything other than who he is, which I think is the, you know, the nadir. It's like the high watermark for any artist to emulate, I think, right? Yeah. And, uh, and I think it's a, it's a good reminder for anybody who's trying to achieve anything or try to trying to kind of evolve personally or, you know, tap into something, uh, creative in their own life or be more fully expressed, you know, whether it's

writing a book or being a musician or, or, you know, being a mom or an accountant, it doesn't matter. Um, I think there's a lot to be learned from the example of the kind of life that that guy lived. And also, he was always David Bowie and he was a million different David Bowies. Right. And that's, you know, and that's- But they were always indelibly him. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

But they were always indelibly him. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He was always a different David Bowie, and he was always totally himself. He was, yeah. I mean, I read a lot of sort of tearful, very sad posts from friends of mine about how sad they were at his passing. And then I read a post saying, man, how fucking lucky were we to be alive at the same time as an artist like David Bowie? It's a weird thing. I don't actually feel sad because I don't feel like he's gone.

Because his presence is with us in such a profound way and will always be and you know julie said this in the podcast yesterday she's just like i stand up and applaud like well done you know what i mean to like exit in the way that he did in this creative flourish with his last note having orchestrated you know how he's gonna exit the planet like absolutely beautiful absolutely right yeah we we all gotta die man we all gotta die and uh and you know nobody knows what when their expiration date is you know not everybody you know he was fortunate to have gotten that you know the sad news that you have that you have a limited amount of time left. And had a choice as to what to do with that time and made the choice to be as expressed as he possibly could.

Yeah. For the people that loved him. By creating this flourish, this creative flourish in this album that literally came out, it was the day before he died, right? It's phenomenal. It's unbelievable. Yeah. The, the,

the foresight and the, you know, and also, I mean, he, he didn't want to waste any of his remaining time on earth. Uh, people lamenting his passing.

He was like, I got work to do, man. Right. Or look, yeah. Looking backwards. Yeah, exactly. It his passing. He was like, I got work to do, man. Right. Or look, yeah. Looking backwards. Yeah,

exactly. It's funny. You know, when I was, uh, um, I was walking down the street in Mexico right after I got the news that he died and there were some,

you know, or actually it was that night and there were some, some girls like, you know, dancing on a balcony, listening to the likeest Hits collection. And my first thought was, fuck you. You're Greatest Hits type fans.

You don't know a single song that's not on that Changes Bowie collection. And you don't know him like I knew him. And then I was like, shut up, man. He touched all of us. He touched all of us in a different way. And if it was just in a little cursory way like that, that they know a couple songs off the Greatest Hits collection, that's enough. It's their privilege to feel sad or feel happy or feel part of the moment. And I need to stop being such a judgy prick about the whole thing. know it's their privilege to feel sad or feel happy or feel part of the moment you know and i

need to stop being such such a judgy prick about the whole thing a laudable goal we'll see if i ever get there yeah a good note to take us out on all right how do you feel i'm good good, man. You are good? Yeah. I'm excited for the book coming out. What is the day that it releases? It comes out March 8th, 2016. Please use the banner ads on richroll.com. You're goddamn right.

No, listen, man. I'm super proud of you. I was moved to tears reading this book. Like I said, I read it on an airplane, and I think I texted you or emailed you when I landed. It's funny because I was on a very long flight, so I finished reading it. I think I've read it on the way back from Lebanon. I think so. Yeah, yeah. And then immediately after that, I watched the end of the tour, that movie about David Foster Wallace.

So it was like this back-to-back writer thing. And you know, there's something weird when you're on an airplane and you're at higher altitude that it's easier to cry. So I was like weepy for like hours. I was weepy reading your book and that just carried into watching that movie. You know, another beautiful artist fully expressed, certainly a flawed human being. But in any event, you know,

I really, I applaud you, man, because this is next level writing. And I think I said to you, and this is in the blurb that I, that, that it's going to be on the back of the cover is like,

this is in many ways, this is the memoir that I wish I could write, but I'm not capable of like your facility for tapping into the emotional depths of what it's like to suffer from alcoholism and be in that dark place of hopelessness. Um, you really were able to capture it and convey it in a way that is very emotionally impactful and, and beautifully poetic at the same time. And your kind of rise from the ashes and the way that you put your life together is no less eloquent and beautiful. And so I'm profoundly honored that I had a chance to read it before it came out and even

more so to be your friend and to be here to support this book. So thanks, Matt. Thank you, man. Thank you, man. Thanks. It's good. So check the book out. Mishka is easy to find on the internet.

He's just at Mishka Shubali. Right. Everywhere. If you send him a message, he'll probably respond to it. I will absolutely respond. I just might be cranky. I can't guarantee what his response will be, but you'll likely get a response, right?

Absolutely. Cool, man. So where are you off to after this? I mean, in the next couple of weeks or whatever. I mean, this is going to go up right when the book comes out. So we're recording this. It's only January 14th today. I go home.

I pack for a race on the 16th, 50-miler. How's your foot? Not great. Oh, come on, man. You're going to go and run a 50-miler on like a broken foot? No, I'm going to run until it starts to hurt, and then I'm going to stop. You sure about that? Yes.

All right. I did 27 miles on New Year's Day day and it didn't hurt. Good. Um, it hurt afterwards, but it didn't hurt while I was running. So I'm, we didn't even talk about running today, but you'll have to read the book to see the, the, the impact that running has had on Mishka and the relationship between your running and sobriety. But we tapped into that. We've talked about that a lot. In spades and past episodes. Yeah. yeah. So yeah, I'm going to try and get 38 miles out of the 50. That's my goal.

And then I'm flying back to New York for a week for a couple of shows and to do my interview for my citizenship. Then in February, I have a little tour of the Southwest. Then the book's out March 8th, and then I'm gone with the wind. I'll be everywhere. And yeah, all sorts of tour dates, like 40 tour dates in a row.

All right. So if people want to check you out, whether it's for a book signing or to hear you play music, are all your dates and appearances on your website? MishkaShabali.com Check that out, man. Awesome. Did we do it? That was it. I think we did it, dude. Wonder Twin Powers activate. Thanks, Rich.

I love you, man. Love you too. Peace. Plants. No last words. What can I say beyond peace, Clance? Thank you. All right, everybody. Hope you guys enjoyed that.

Seventh time is a charm, I think. Make sure to stick around to the very, very end, and you'll get to hear Mishka take us out with his new song, Ohio. And please be sure to pick around at the very very end and you'll get to hear mishka take us out with his new song ohio and please be sure to pick up his new book i swear i'll make it up to you by using the amazon banner ad on the episode page which also contains a slew of fantastic show notes and links to take your infotainment to the next level if you're brand new to the podcast and you enjoyed this introduction to Mishka, then you might want to check out episodes 27, 31, 65, 95, 104, and 171. That's about 11 hours of Mishka to keep you entertained or perhaps appalled. For all your plant-powered and RRP swag and merch needs, goag, and merch needs.

Go to richroll.com. We got nutrition products. We got cool t-shirts. We got stickers. We got, what else do we have? We have fine art prints. Lots of cool, fun stuff to elevate your wellness experience.

Keep sending in your questions for future Q&A podcasts to info at richroll.com. We have a AMA episode that's gonna go up midweek this week. It's been a while for Julie and I, so look forward to that. I think it's going to go up Wednesday night. Shout out to Sean Patterson for help on the graphics and Chris Swan for production assistance on this show and to Tyler Pyatt and Anna Lemma for the music cues. As you know,

Tyler is no longer editing the show. I'm doing it myself. So if it's a little rough around the edges or not what you're used to, you can blame me, not him. Thanks so much for supporting the show by telling your friends, sharing it on social media

and for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. And I will see you guys in a couple days. That's it. Until then, I'm gonna enjoy New York City and I hope that you find a way to enjoy your life wherever it finds you. Catch you soon. Peace. Plants. Well, she burst into flames around the junior high family dinner table.

But she found a safe place in pink hair, combat boots, and black metal. A teenage witch, yes, she's a high school high priestess, failing English, but man, can she spell. Ohio, you feel like you're getting sicker, but you're just starting to get well. So she cut glass and smoked grass And fell in love with the Nelsonville jail Got her kicks on, getting sick on Brown liquor, white pills, and black despair The cancer rate's rising So let's do some drunk driving We'll black out at every red light in town

Ohio, if your head is spinning It's cause your love's turned around. Thank you. guitar solo My baby, my darling Come closer, there's nothing to fear. I know the terror, the pain, the blood, the hate, the tears. Baby's sleeping in laundry baskets Kittens in your panty drawer Ohio, you may feel like you're dying But you are being reborn Ohio, you may feel like you're dying

But you are being reborn Ohio, you may feel like you're dying But you have been reborn. That was pretty good.