The Rich Roll Podcast - On Addiction, Recovery & Achieving Happiness Through Service

Episode Date: November 18, 2013

If you know my story, you know it involves a descent into alcoholism, followed by a hard fought battle to achieve and maintain sobriety. Recovery saved my life, straight up, no exaggeration. To this day it remains — and will always remain — my number one priority. I don't talk it about it often on the podcast, but I think it's an important subject to raise and discuss, particularly as we head into the holidays — an acutely perilous time for the millions who, alone, isolated and ashamed, privately battle these demons. Meet Khalil Rafati, founder of Sunlife Organics– friend, fellow recovery warrior and amazing living example of the profound resiliency of the human body, mind and spirit. Not only has Khalil overcome unimaginable obstacles to survive, he has defied all odds and miraculously repaired his life wholesale. A soul now devoted to the service of others, his primary focus on giving back what was so freely given him. Prepare to have your mind blown. Khalil's tale is nothing short of astounding. From the depths of absolute despair, homeless & hopelessly gripped by heroin addiction, Khalil was hell bent on dying. And yet somehow, by way of a grace outside himself, Khalil came out the other side. Not just intact, but repaired. He didn't just find sobriety. He found his true life purpose. Today I am so proud to share my friend's journey. Behind all the raw intensity and earnest honesty and vulnerability, it is a story I think we can all celebrate. A story of the impossible. And at its heart, the story of true redemptive power of the human condition. Open your mind and heart and let Khalil inspire you. I can guarantee that after listening to this profound and at times extremely intense conversation, you will understand that all the illusory excuses that imprison and prevent you from growth, health and self-actualization will seem trivial. For those that are suffering, this one's for you. Please know that all is not lost. There is a solution. And there is hope. Always hope. NOTE: In addition to the extreme intensity of the subject matter discussed, this episode also contains a few instances of explicit language. So if you're listening with the wee ones or at work, pop in the ear buds. Nothing to crazy, just a head's up for the more sensitive members of the audience. And should you find yourself in Los Angeles, do me a solid. Drop by one of Khalil's Sunlife Organics juice bars (on Pt. Dume in Malibu and in Thousand Oaks at The Lakes), order a green juice (or the Wolverine smoothie — my favorite) and give Khalil a high five. I sincerely hope you enjoy the show. I'm really proud of this one. Rich

Welcome to episode 61 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Khalil Rafati. The Rich Roll Podcast. Plant power. Plant power. nutrition, and just generally living your best life. I have one goal with this show, which is to help you unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. So I've had world-class athletes on. I've had doctors, nutritionists, world-class athletes. Did I already say that? All kinds of people, entrepreneurs, artists, spiritualists. What else? Anyway, I cast a wide net, lots of people. The only requirement is if you are an example of living your best life, and if you have information that I feel is important to share with you guys so that you can take that information in, use what works for you, discard the rest, so that you can make the best decisions about how to live your life, how to be the healthiest you can, the most fit you can, the most present, the most dialed in, actualized version of yourself.

So today on the show, I have an amazing guest, a man that I am very proud to call my friend. His name is Khalil Rafati. Who is Khalil Rafati? I've never heard of this guy. Of course you haven't. He's not a celebrity. He's not anybody famous. But he is a guy with an amazing, remarkable story.

Somebody who has sunk to the depths of despair and has risen like a phoenix from the ashes to be an incredible example of the resiliency of the human body and the human spirit, as well as a remarkable example of living a healthy, actualized, tapped-in life, and somebody who is of extraordinary service to his fellow man. I love this guy. I'm really a better person for having him in my life. And I've been wanting to share his story so badly on this show for quite some time. He's a super busy guy, almost impossible to pin down. And I just literally harassed him over the last week until I just compelled him to sit down for five minutes so I could talk to him. him. He is the proprietor, the founder, the CEO, or the, I don't know, chairman of the board. I don't know what you would call it, of Sun Life Organics. What is Sun Life Organics? It is an organic juice bar in Malibu, in the Point Dume section of Malibu. And you might be asking

yourself, well, some guy owns a juice bar. He's going to be on the podcast. What can this guy possibly have to offer? But please reserve judgment because I guarantee you his story is going to blow your mind. And Sun Life Organics is much more than just a juice bar. In Malibu, it has really become the epicenter of all things healthy in our community. community. It's become a place of congregation where everybody who's kind of interested in living healthy, getting better, tapping into a better version of themselves seems to congregate. And Khalil is sort of the host with the most. He's the ringleader. He has a very dynamic, contagious personality, very infectious. And what he's been able to create, the community that he's been able to create around his organization is nothing short of remarkable. And his story

is extraordinary. On the show, we have talked in the past about addiction and recovery. It hasn't been a big focus of the show, but I think the last time we really kind of dug into it is when I had my friend Mishka Shabali on the show, and that was a really popular episode where we kind of tapped into kind of the demons of addiction and the process of recovery and kind of what it entails. And I thought I'd bring Khalil on to kind of share his version of this story. His story is so astounding, it makes my story seem like peanuts. His journey to the dark side and back will inspire you and amaze you. The fact that he has been able to come back from what he has had to endure in his life to repair, not just repair his life, but to really thrive and be an example of healthy living.

And the extent to which he shares his knowledge and his enthusiasm for his new lease in life is quite infectious. is quite infectious. Again, it speaks to the incredible power of the resiliency of the human mind and the human spirit and the inherent power within all of us to change at any given moment, to improve ourselves, which is another obviously huge theme of this show. One note I wanted to mention is that if anybody is listening to this show and they are currently suffering from a drug and alcohol addiction and feel like there's no hope or don't know how to climb out of the despair that you are experiencing, I want you to know that there is help. You don't have to sink to the depths that Khalil did. You don't have to drink or use anymore. You do have a choice. You have the power inherent within you to change. All it takes is a little bit of willingness and a decision. And I want you to know that if you need help, that you should,

and I hope that you will, reach out to me or reach out to Khalil. You can reach me through my website at richroll.com through the contact section. And at the end of the interview, Khalil shares his contact information too. So Khalil and I are both always ready, willing, and able to help anybody who is in this predicament. It's my number one priority, and I know it is for Khalil as well. So please know that. Thanks. And last week on the show, Julie and I sat down and talked about how to weather the holidays, how to sort of navigate the pitfalls that come with this holiday season that is now upon us, all the anxiety, all the pressure to spend money, all the social obligations and all of the kind of complicated family interpersonal and professional relationships

that we kind of have to deal with at this time of year that can create a lot of stress for us. And I hope you guys found that episode helpful. Julie also posted on richroll.com in the blog section a supplemental blog post with some additional kind of tips for how she deals with these situations. So I hope you guys check that out and find that helpful. Also, we've been posting throughout the week recipes, plant power cooking recipes, one a day to give you guys some healthy alternatives when it comes to preparing your holiday meal. So we all want to stay healthy during the holidays and inevitably so many people end up in January with an extra, you know, 10 pounds around the waist wondering how did it get there and kind of the shame spiral that ensues. Well, let's do it

a different way. So Julie and I thought we would post up a bunch of recipes, sort of alternatives to the traditional holiday meal that are still delicious, easy to prepare, family-friendly. We've put up recipes for vegan stuffing, cauliflower mashed potatoes, vegan mushroom gravy, cauliflower mashed potatoes, vegan mushroom gravy, an outstanding recipe for almost raw pumpkin pie that I just posted today, today's Saturday. I'm going to be putting up another post for a tempeh meatloaf and also a blended green holiday drink for you. So check out those posts. People love recipes, what can I say? So I hope that you guys test those out and let me know what you think in the comments section. If you want to know more about how to cook right, stay healthy, fuel your body, nourish your body so that you can perform as a human being, perform as an athlete, feed your family, whatever, you can check out our Jai Seed e-cookbook. It's a simple download. Downloads right to your iPad, whatever. You can check out our Jai Seed e-cookbook. It's a simple download.

Downloads right to your iPad, your computer. It's just $9.99, 77 pages of awesome recipes. If you want to take it one step further, go the whole nine yards, the whole enchilada, you can check out our online plant-based nutrition course at MindBodyGreen, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, which is something I'm very proud of. It's three and a half hours of online streaming

video content broken up into five to 10 minute little pieces, chunks, delightful little morsels of information broken down into specific subject headings. You know, I get a lot of questions. How do I do this? How do I do that? What about when I travel? How do you get your kids to eat healthy? All of those kind of typical issues that arise around the idea of improving your diet or incorporating more plants into your diet, all of those are addressed topic by topic in the course.

There's also an online community for support. It's really cool. So check that out. Both the cookbook and the course make great holiday gifts as well. So that would be a good thing to make a great gift, right? And also, if it's time for you to start buying those presents for Christmas, for Hanukkah, for the holiday season, you're probably going to be on Amazon, right? Well, if you're going to shop on Amazon, which you probably are, because that's where all the cheap stuff is, more affordable

stuff, do us a solid and click on the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. We also have one for the UK listeners, an Amazon UK banner. Click that first, takes you to Amazon, will not cost you one cent extra on your purchases, like if you're going to purchase Finding Ultra, for example. But Amazon kicks us a referral fee and helps keep the lights on, keeps the bandwidth flowing. We appreciate very, very much everybody who's been using it. It's really been amazing. And so thank you. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Also, you can support the show by donating. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. Also, you can support the show by donating. There's a donate buttonolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers

to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself.

I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. Go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Let's get into the interview.

I'm so proud to call this guy my friend, and he is a true inspiration. And please prepare yourself because this interview is going to blow your mind. There's a little bit of explicit language in here. So if you're driving in the car with your kids listening or you're at work or something like that, you might want to put on the earbuds or just a couple sort of off-color words here and there. Nothing too crazy, but this is a very intense story. And again, there is a little bit of off-color language. So just bear that in mind. But please, please give this a listen with an open mind and an open heart and let Khalil inspire you. Ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Khalil Rafati enjoy the show All right, dude, we're rolling. Nice, nice. So the other day I'm looking at your Instagram feed,

and you show this picture. You're getting ready to do the Tough Mudder. Where was that, down in Orange County? In Temecula, yeah. In Temecula with your crew, your staff, breeding employee loyalty. Yes, building a lot of confidence. You're good to your staff. I am good to my staff. Um, I took, uh, I took four of my top guys to Panama three weeks ago for eight days and it was absolutely

amazing. And then Haley, my girlfriend and my business partner, she took four of our top girls to Kauai, um, about six weeks ago just to reward them and show them how much we love them and care about them. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. You're always doing really fun stuff with the people you work with, which I think that's a big part of your success equation. There's no, but I mean, it's an extension of who you are. Yeah. It's your personality. I wouldn't want to do it any other way. I mean, I wouldn't. And, and they also, there's a flip side of that. I get to be around people that are smiling all the time and happy and sharing their amazing energy with me. So, you know, it's a win-win. I'm sitting with Julie and I show it to her.

I go, check it out. Khalil's doing this Tough Mudder with his employees. And Pam Anderson's giving him a shout out. And right at that exact moment, you called me. Like this weird synchronicity occurring. Yes. And you told me this amazing story about how Gerard Butler, the movie star, had just been in Sun Life. And you had given him a book.

Yeah. Which I greatly appreciate. You're like my pimp. You're always handing out. You keep my book on hand for people to buy and you're always handing it out to cool people. So thank you for that. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have been doing The Tough Mudder had it not been for you, because I read your book and I was so incredibly inspired by it and decided to take up my friend on his offer to, you know, to do the first Tough Mudder, which was last year. And yeah, and Pam's a dear friend of mine and just an amazing person. And she's also a vegan and an animal lover and animal rights activist and all that stuff. And she had just done a marathon, which is pretty incredible. Right. Um,

and so I had been commenting on her thing, like, you know, congratulations and thank you so much. And, you know, for everything you've done. And, um, and then, so she was commenting on mine and, and then with the Gerard, you know, with, with Gerard, Iard, I just thought that, and not just with him, with probably 50 different people who I've given your book to, I wanted him to feel what I felt when I finished reading that book, which was totally inspired.

Oh, thanks, man. Yeah. Yeah, he's a good dude, really good dude. Good. Well, I look forward to possibly meeting him at some point. You will. But then the funny thing was the paparazzi took a picture of him leaving Sun Life. Yeah.

And he's carrying my book. Yeah. And so that it ends up like all over the internet the next day. I didn't even know. Like I knew you had called me and you told me like, hey, I gave him your book. And I was like, oh, that's cool. And then I opened up my Twitter the next day and it like exploded because whatever website it was on, they had said, oh, Gerard Butler, leave Sun Life carrying a copy of Richard Roll's book. That was pretty cool. So I was like, wow, that's so cool. Don't think I didn't post that all over my pages.

It's a pretty cool – Pretty great guy to be carrying your book around. Right. So yeah, thanks again. You're like my pimp. I'm going to have to find out super awesome Christmas gift for you. Oh, no, no, no. Just keep doing what you're doing and keep inspiring people. And, um, I think it's really, I think, I don't think, I know that, that moving towards a plant-based diet is what's going to, is going to be one of the major shifts that's going to have to take place on this planet. And I want to say first and foremost, I am not a vegan.

I'm not even a vegetarian of any sorts. But I do incorporate a lot of plant-based food into my diet. I feel amazing results. It's really because of people like you and because of people like Brendan Brazier and because of people that show me how to live instead of telling me how to live. What really rubs me the wrong way about 90% of the people who I know that are vegans is they want to tell me how to eat. They want to tell me why I should feel horrible about what I'm eating. Pam never does that, ever. She's so kind and she's so loving and she never, you'd never even know that she's a vegan because I've eaten meat in front of her many times. Now, if I ask her about it, she'll go on and on and on about how cruelty to animals and this and that. And

same thing with you. I was very open and honest with you about not being a vegan, and you never said a word. Instead of telling me how to eat, you showed me how to eat. I never tell anybody what to do. Yeah. Well, but we learn that in recovery. Yes. You know what I mean? That comes from getting sober and maintaining sobriety. And what you learn very early on is you stick to sharing your experience. You know, you live your life, you share your experience, you stand where you stand.

And if people are interested in that, you remain open and available to that. But it never comes from a place of talking, sort of either talking down to people or preaching or basically, you know, for lack of a better word, telling people what to do or what not to do. That doesn't work anyway. And you model what happens to someone when they switch to a plant-based diet. First of all, I can look at you and go, wow, I want to look like that. And then I can read your book and I can go, wow, maybe I don't necessarily want to run an Ultraman, but I do want to do some physical things. I'd like to run a marathon. I'd like to maybe even build up to doing an Ironman. And most people in the sports world

would tell me, well, you've got to eat 150 grams of protein a day if you're going to do that. And you need to eat chicken and you need to eat fish and that and you are an iconoclast in the sense that you are changing that perception and you're you're totally proving them wrong and i have friends you know i have one of one of my best friends who is constantly shaming me over over eating meat and and sending me pictures when i used to be on facebook she would send me pictures of you not on Facebook anymore no what happened uh I don't know all right we don't know it got weird we don't have to talk about it just it just got weird I I'm on Instagram and and I'm and I'm a private Instagram you know people can request me um Sun Life Organics has a Facebook thing and I I will engage on some of that. But I just got to the point where like, how many shirtless pictures of myself can I put up that are in, you know, that are taken in exotic

locations around the world? At what point is this going to satisfy my ego? And how is this serving people? How is this serving humanity? You know, there's a lot of people back in Ohio where I came from that are struggling financially because of, you know, what went on with the whole economic crisis. And I just found myself, I found myself using Facebook as a medium to brag and to build myself up and puff myself up and not really, I didn't, I wasn't really helping anybody by doing that. So it just got weird. And I just, I made a decision to go off of it for six months and I challenged myself to, um, instead of going on Facebook three hours a day to, you know, maybe read a book a month. Um, yeah, yeah. So anyway, but back to what I was saying, you know, I have, I have a friend that used to send me these pictures of, you know, animals, you know, faces being torn off and blah blah blah and that and that was you know supposed to inspire me to be a vegan and in the

meantime they're walking around with the latest calfskin bag you know from Prada and it's like what do you think that means calf skin like that's the skin of a calf yeah there is a weird kind of disconnect between the food part of it and the sort of the rest of your life and the garments that you wear and all that. And where do you think... We're in Malibu.

Every woman's wearing Uggs, you know, but they're coming into Sun Life for their green juice. Yeah, and I'm not faulting them. I think that that's whatever. I wear Uggs and I eat meat, but I'm not going to, not going to flip out on a vegan and tell them that they should eat a steak. I think that the way that we're going to move forward and evolve as a planet, like you said with recovery, I can tell somebody all day why they should be sober and how they should be sober and this and that. But what's much more effective is how about I just model what a healthy relationship looks like, or how about I model what, um, a business owner who's not a hundred percent obsessed with the

bottom line, but a business owner that's willing to use cups that are made from vegetables or hire kids from the local community and pay them a fair wage. I would much rather do that, show people who I am rather than tell people who I am or even worse, tell people how they should be. Well, I think that's the way to go. And you said something a moment ago that I think really kind of defines your ethos, which is how is this of service? How am I being of service? And when I see you and I see the way that you behave and how you interact with people and how you choose to spend your time throughout the day, it always boils down to service. Like, you're constantly in service of other people, whether it's with your employees, or the customers that come through the door, or the work that you do

in recovery. I mean, you really are an example of someone who has devoted their life to service, and, you know, are a shining example of what happens when somebody is doing that for the right reasons and coming from the heart. Like your life becomes enriched. Not only do you become a happier person, a more productive person, but you bring richness into your life. And that sort of infuses everything that you do. And there's no doubt in my mind that the success that you're having with Sun Life is a direct result to the level of service that you do on a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, and thank you. And thank you for saying that. But, you know, let's keep in mind that I spent the first 33 years of my life being

an absolute taker. Yeah, we're going to get into that. Yeah. Okay. Because I'm not, it wasn't like, it wasn't like I was some virtuous person that woke up one day and was like, oh, I'm going to treat everyone nice and open this juice bar and walk people's dogs and pick up trash off the ground. It was falling down face first and being miserable and depressed and having to find another way to live. incredibly happy today, which is a complete contradiction of what my, you know, psychological makeup was for the first three and a half decades almost of my life. Right. I mean, you say to me that, you know, my story inspires you, but, you know, my sort of fall from grace and struggles with addiction really pale in comparison to what you endured. So I want to, I want to go back and hear about how it all started and what happened. Sure. Yeah. Um, and, and mine wasn't so much addiction as I wanted to

die. I mean, that was my goal was to die and I was too scared to, you know, to take my own life. So putting a needle in my arm, you know, every 15 minutes or every 30 minutes just was much easier and it took the pain away. But how did it get to that place? Like, let's go back to the beginning. Oh man. Uh, the beginning, well, uh, I had a, I had a couple of parents who, who probably shouldn't have been parents. Um, they were both immigrants to this country. My father was born in Palestine, right outside of Bethlehem. My father was born in Palestine, right outside of Bethlehem, in 1935. And my mother was born in Poland in, I think it's called Gdansk.

No, near there. But she was abandoned on a doorstep, had one of those horrible childhoods where she was abandoned on a doorstep, taken in by this family, and then eventually put into a work camp at a very young age, and went through all sorts of, you know, horrible stuff. Right. And never really talks about any of that. And then my father was there. My father was 12 years old when the United Nations came in and decided that Palestine was now going to be Israel. So he sort of went through his own, you know, went from living on an olive orchard to sleeping in a tent. Wow. Becoming a refugee in the land that he grew up in. So really, really, you know, they went through really challenging childhoods and they never learned how to be parents.

They're just trying to survive. They were trying to survive. And my dad comes from a really weird culture. I mean, I can say that. Can I say that? You can say whatever you want. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, he comes from the Middle Eastern culture to me is a very, very strange. It was a very strange culture to grow up around. There was a lot of violence, a lot of anger. And I'm not saying that, you know, I don't want to make a blanket statement about a culture of people and offend anybody. But my own personal experience, you know, my uncles and my relatives and my father, they seem pretty angry. And, you know, it's funny. Sometimes I'll hear my dad. We have a great relationship now but

he met another kid here in the juice bar who happens to be Arabic as well and they started talking I thought they were flipping out on each other they were having the most pleasant conversation ever but it just sounds for even their language sounds angry so anyway um so maybe you're misinterpreting this I could have I could have missed the whole boat. Maybe he was a really loving, nurturing dad. He sounded angry because I didn't speak his language. So how did they end up in the United States? She came looking for her mom, her real mom, her birth mother. And like three days before my mom, my grandmother was living in Ohio.

And three days before my mom got to her, she had taken her own life or she parked the car in the garage and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Three days before your mom arrived to find her. Yeah. Oh my goodness. And so my mom stayed and worked for that family as a housekeeper. And my father was on his way from Orange, Texas to New York, got lost in a really horrible storm, wound up in Toledo horrible storm, wound up in

Toledo, Ohio, ended up staying in Toledo. He went to University of Toledo. She went to University of Toledo. He was incredibly handsome. And she was incredibly- Just like you, my friend. Yeah. And she was incredibly beautiful. And they fell in love. I don't want to say they shouldn't have had a kid because I wouldn't be here speaking. So I'm glad they had a kid. They just didn't know how to parent. Your only child? I was an only child from that marriage. She had a much older son.

He was eight years older than me. And he had, let's just say, a handful of kids from other marriages elsewhere. Okay. Yeah. So really, you know, really, really, really tough childhood. I mean, really just not even the whole, like, you know, anger and violence and stuff like that, but just I went through some pretty bad abuse. So, like, psychological and physical abuse sexual abuse sexual abuse yeah there was a good there was a good deal of sexual abuse and and just you know left me scarred left me really

really scarred left me feeling very dirty and and full of shame and so I started to act out and when I acted out I got attention And so I started to act out. And when I acted out, I got attention. And so I learned the way to get attention is to act out. So this is like junior high or elementary school? That's when I started to really act out. I mean, by the time I was 11, I was arrested. I think 14, I was arrested. And then 15, I was arrested. So I was arrested three times before I was 16 years old. The last time was for aggravated menacing. What does that even mean? Aggravated menacing?

Aggravated menacing is you know, I pulled a gun on some people. Oh, you did? Okay. Wow, isn't that assault? Assault with a deadly weapon? I didn't do anything. I just pulled it was an altercation with three guys and you know, they said

they were going to beat me up or something, so I pulled a gun on them, and they didn't beat me up, but a lot of cops showed up. Gotcha. Yeah. And you're 11? No, I was 15. 15 at that time. Yeah.

And did you grow up in the city or in the suburbs? Toledo's a small town. There's about 300,000 people. It's a great little town. It wasn't great if both your parents were immigrants because everyone's family. It's pretty white bread, you know, Midwest, we're talking like early seventies. Early seventies, most families looked like the Brady Bunch and I didn't, I was dark and I had a weird name and.

Yeah. And you're not, it's not like you're living in Brooklyn. I mean, you're, you're in the middle of America. I was in the middle of America. It had to be, it had to be very isolating. I would imagine. It was dark and I had a weird name. Yeah, and you're not – it's not like you're living in Brooklyn. I mean you're in the middle of America. I was in the middle of America. It had to be very isolating I would imagine. It was tough. And also because it's a small town, once you become a bad kid, then you're the bad kid. And once you develop kind of that reputation, I mean it got even worse and worse in high school where, oh, there's that guy.

I became sort of infamous in a sense. Right. And then it becomes a self-perpetuating thing. It did. You, you drink and you black out and, um, you start fights. And I mean, I mean, that's just what I did. I would, I would drink and black out and wake up in Bowling Green, or I would drink and black out and wake up in Perrysburg, or I would, you know, I just. Do you remember, are you one of those guys who can distinctly remember the first time that you got drunk or got high? Absolutely, yeah.

Oh, yeah, I was 11 years old. It's a transformative experience where you think all your problems are suddenly solved. I was 11 years old. I was with my best friend, Teddy Pappenhagen. We walked to a liquor store. I convinced the guy behind the counter that I was buying Mad Dog 2020 for my

mother. We bought three bottles. We made it through. He let you buy. Yeah. It's so funny because you just could never do that now. Maybe in certain places, but back then. Back then it's Ohio. My mom wants me to buy cigarettes, so they would give you cigarettes. My dad told me to get a six pack of beer. They would give you a six pack of beer i mean i remember even 13 14 years old driving around with the older kids and they would have a six pack on their dashboard while they drove i mean that's how we lived in ohio no seat belts no in the cutlass. In the Oldsmobile. Yeah, right. In the Oldsmobile, yeah. So, yeah, we got blind drunk. Teddy became violently ill, probably got alcohol poisoning, I'm guessing.

I kept drinking. I kept drinking, and I just thought, this is remarkable. And that moment, that crystallization of thought happened many, many more times throughout my life as well. So it wasn't like I got drunk and I got that warm feeling all over my body. Yes, I did. And yes, I thought this is wonderful. But I got to tell you, the first time I took MDMA in my mid-20s was another one of those moments where I thought, I'm going to feel like this for the rest of my life. First time I did heroin at 27, I thought, my God, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. First time I did heroin, you know, at 27, I thought, my God, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. So first time I shot up, I mean, there were

many, there were many moments where I was, I had the epiphany that the way to experience life, because I was always so suicidal, I just wanted to kill myself. But the way to cope with life was to, you know, drink, yeah, drink or do drugs the way to cope with life was to, you know, drink. Check out. Yeah, drink or do drugs. So there was never any moment where, you know, you thought maybe I should go talk to a therapist or a counselor at the school or that was never kind of an option or a possibility? You know, I went to a Catholic Jesuit school, so there was a lot of shaming. And I was, you know, at four.

You're already feeling shame and then you just get pounded with more shame and telling you that you should feel worse than you feel. Yeah. When I was in fourth grade, they made me eat lunch in the janitor's room at St. Patrick's of Heatherdowns. They stuck me in the janitor's room. Because you were a rabble rouser? I would have kids surround me,

and then I would break a glass bottle on the playground, and we would all laugh and fall on the ground laughing and i thought it was really cool um and the lunch mothers didn't think it was cool so they right they stuck and there's no i mean it's such a different time i mean now if a kid starts doing that they go hey you know this kid's in trouble there's something going on at home let's like let's find out what's happening see if we can be of help but you know know, 1973 to, you know, whatever, whatever it was, I mean, yeah, that was going on. That was 1981 and it was nuns and priests for the most part and some other, you know, some other teachers. Most of my teachers made me feel absolute shame and made me feel even more ostracized than I already felt. So keep in mind,

11 was the last time I was sexually abused. So I'm 11 years old. And you never told anyone, you're just holding a secret down. You didn't, you didn't tell people back then, especially, yeah. I mean, I guess it would be different now, or maybe it's not different now. I think, I think maybe a lot more people were molested than actually talk about it. But, um, and the last time was the worst because it was my swim coach who I loved. I mean, I really, really loved him. I mean, I looked up to him. He was in his late thirties. Um, he had a beautiful girlfriend and a couple of kids together. They weren't married, but it just seemed like the ideal relationship. And I wanted to be just like this guy. His name was Brian and, um, took me camping, you know, and, um, yeah, it was horrible. It was horrible. I'm so sorry. I can't,

I can't even fathom it. I mean, I have a little bit of indirect, um, experience with that. Uh, and you know, I don't know what it is with swim coaches, but you know, it's, it's literally epidemic in the swimming world with swim coaches. I watched that documentary on that woman last night. Which one's that? The Cuba, the woman that swam from Cuba. Oh, Diane Anaya. Yes, I watched that last night.

I was crying. I was by myself and I was crying. I'm like, how did she? She went through the exact same thing that I went through. And it was her swim coach. And I just, and Haley came home and she's like, okay, I went through and it was her swim coach. And I just, and Haley came home and she's like, okay, I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. I was really, really shaken up last night. Um, kind of brought that trauma back. But, um, so let me just,

I'll just interject with one quick story. That's, that's sort of related. My swim coach, uh, Rick Curl, who was a big time swim coach in the the Washington, D.C. area, he was like the guy. And I talk about him in my book. He really was the guy who helped develop me from just an average swimmer into like a swimmer who was getting recruited at all these colleges. And so in many ways, this guy was like a father figure to me. You know, I wrote about him in my college essays, you know, about how he had mentored me. And my first girlfriend in high school was Kelly Davies. And she was the star. She was ranked, I think, I think by the time she was a senior in

high school, she was ranked number one in the world in the 200 fly. She'd won the Goodwill games. I believe she won, won at the Goodwill games. And she was going into the 1988 Olympic trials as basically one of the top contenders to make the Olympic team, the 200 meter butterfly. Anyway, she was like the favorite of Rick, right? And we all would joke, you know, Oh, she gets special treatment. And like, I'm dating her. I was a senior in high school and she was two years younger than me. And she was my first like real girlfriend. Yeah. And there was no Dr. Drew on the radio to like listen to love line and kind of clue into you know this kind of to be attuned to the signs when there's some abuse going on

and in retrospect now it's so clear but essentially rick had been sexually abusing her since she was 13 oh my god but it wasn't just a one-time thing it was like they were in like a quote-unquote relationship or he would psychologically abuse her by saying, you know, someday you're going to have my children and all this sort of stuff. So in her mind, she's having a love affair with her coach. And by the time I went off to Stanford, then the rumors came out that her parents had, essentially Kelly started suffering from anorexia and bulimia and all these problems. She had to go into a rehab facility. She went to the Olympic trials and did horribly, performed horribly. And her parents were like, what is going on? Her dad found her diary, read it.

And it kind of told the tale of what was going on and he freaked out. Then they basically went after him and sued him and settled out of court for like a pittance. And it was kind of, Kelly wanted to move on with her life and she was living in Texas at the time and wanted to put it behind her. And all of my friends that were on the team at the time, we all kind of knew something had happened, but we didn't really know. And I'd never seen anything up close and personal. Like I had no direct evidence of anything, but none of us were, I guess, all that surprised. And essentially what happened was this past Olympics,

she saw Rick Curl on the deck at Olympic trials in the television broadcast, and she just brought it all back. And she's like, I can't, I need to, she's still living with all of this because it never really had been fully processed. Yeah. And so it all finally came out in the open. It was a front page news story in the Washington Post. He got prosecuted and he's in jail now, but it took, I mean, this was going on in 1984, 83, and only this past year did he kind of have to deal with it. And it creates a lot of weird emotions, even though I was not the subject of the abuse. Here's a guy who in many ways was

like a father figure to me. And under my nose while I'm dating my first girlfriend, he's doing this horrific thing to her. It's just a just a bizarre thing but anyway nothing like what you suffered through no but but related and it's sad it's sad when an adult would do something like that to a child i mean i don't for the life of me i i it doesn't register it wasn't and for me the thing that i struggled with in early recovery was like it's not like I was some hot 17-year-old girl and he was this 35-year-old guy. I was a little boy. And not that it would be okay if I was some hot 17-year-old girl, but at least I could somehow understand like, wow, he had a weak moment or whatever. But no, this guy was really, really sick.

What happened to him? Who knows knows he's out there somewhere. He's probably, he was 38, I believe at that time, that was 1981. I can't do math, but I'm guessing he's probably in his seventies or eighties or something. And how sad, how sad that he had to carry that with him. And by the way, when when we got older when we were in high school i think we were seniors in high school there's a few of us that used to be on the swim team at at uh at our country club back in toledo um randomly it just came up this one guy andy um and my buddy teddy you know they said like you know that guy ever like you know grab your dick or whatever and i was like yeah that's an interesting way of putting it because i don't know maybe maybe to them it wasn't as traumatizing or whatever but um i wasn't the only one so this is something

this i'm i i'm you know this is somebody that was a sexual predator that you know sexually molested young boys maybe young girls as well and, and had to live with that for the rest of his life. So when it came time for me to let that resentment go, I literally just had to picture him as an old man sitting by himself, living with all of that guilt and all of that shame. And I cried, and I just had to say like, Hey man, I forgive you. You know, whoever you are, if he's still alive, yeah, I forgive him. And, and it's, it's horrible and go make some sort of amends to society, you know? Right. Cause otherwise it'll eat you alive. But the journey to get to that place where you can truly from your heart, forgive somebody for doing that is gotta be quite the mountain to climb. Yeah. And seemed insurmountable in early recovery. I mean,

when they said, uh, you know, they showed me the steps on the wall or whatever in rehab, I was just like, yeah, right. I'm not doing any of this shit. I want to put some weight on and go get high properly. You know, in the end, the wheels fell, fell off. I want to put some weight on and go get high properly. In the end, the wheels fell off. I mean, in the end, the last 18 months of my using, I was homeless. And I don't mean homeless like I was sleeping on some girl's sofa or sleeping in a car. Like I was homeless, homeless. Yeah, you were down on Skid Row.

I was down on Skid Row. But let's back it up a little bit. So you're still in high school. You have this experience. But how does it build from there? Oh, God. I ended up getting kicked out of St. Pat's, that school. I think I was in eighth grade. I got kicked out of there. Went to this public junior high.

Almost got kicked out of there my third day. Ended up going to a school called St. John's, which is another Jesuit school. Ended up getting kicked out of there. Your academic career just skyrocketing. I didn't end up at U of M. I kind of got enrolled in another school called Mommy Valley Country Day School, but I ended up getting into an altercation somewhere, and they ended up sending a letter saying, sorry, you're not welcome. Last ditch effort, I went to public school. I went to a place called Bowser High School and ended up dropping out of there. And meanwhile, what are your parents thinking?

Like what's the home front? Or are they just checked out? Yeah, my dad pretty much left when I was seven and was gone for eight years was living all over the world came back when i was 15 tried to be a parent but by that time i was so combative that i was impossible to deal with and not that he was like mr you know like great dad or anything but he came back in like okay son now you're gonna get good grades and i'm like after he's been a rambling man for the last, you know, and I was like, you know, fuck this. I'm not having any of it. So, um, job to job, school to school, you know, just failing my way through life, everything failed, ruined every relationship I was ever in, ruined every job I was ever in,

got fired, um, got kicked out or dropped out of every school I ever went to, and really was just kind of a fucking loser. I mean... Meanwhile, the drinking and the drug use is escalating, I assume. It's escalating. I would try to control it, but I got to tell you, when I would finally fold and give in, it was the greatest. There was nothing better. I mean, when I would finally just fold and go for the bottle or go for some pills or some weed or whatever, the relief was, oh, man, it was so good. It was so good. But it really didn't take over. I didn't cross the invisible line. I left Ohio.

I came out to California and did okay for a while. What brought you out here? I had to get out of there. I knew I was going to die if I stayed there. I was getting in more and more and more trouble. I started doing some really just stupid shit, and I knew I was going to die if I stayed there. So I got really drunk one night up in Detroit in Greektown.

I got into a big argument with my buddies that I was with, and I was just like, are you allowed to swear on this thing? You can weird. I literally jumped up on a car and I was like, you know, fuck you guys. You're going to die here. You're never going to get out of this shitty little town and, and you're going to die here. And I wasn't counting on the response back, which was, well, what are you going to do? And I was just stunned. I was like, what do you mean? I'm going to California. And they're like, you've been talking that shit for five years. And I said, I'm leaving tomorrow. And they said, bullshit. And I was so drunk and I had so much false pride that I flipped out and I was like, fuck you. I'm leaving. I'm leaving tomorrow.

And you know, none of you guys have the balls to come with me. And like four of them said, I'll come with you. Woke up the next morning, so hungover. I don't even know how we got home. I drove, but I didn't remember that. And you know, that feeling where you want to like shave your tongue cause it's so like dirty and swollen from the cigarettes and the booze. Yeah. So I had that feeling, face was swollen, had about $800 to my name and I packed my car and I had this brilliant idea. I'm going to drive to my dad's restaurant and he'll stop me. Cause my dad was like still trying to be a disciplinarian and a stern Muslim father. So that was my out.

I knew that I'd go to his restaurant and he'd flip out and then I could tell everybody like, yeah, my fucking dad went crazy and so I have to stay for a little while longer. I packed the car up. I like literally put a pillow in the back window just to show how serious I was. And I drove to his restaurant.

My dad's very punctual. And I got there like five minutes till five because I knew at five o'clock on the dot, he would be walking up. What kind of restaurant was it? It was called Mac and Tongs. It was kind of like just everything, steaks and salads. My stepmom made some Korean food. My stepmother is from Korea. So mother from Poland, father from Palestine, stepmother from Korea. That's confusing.

Confusing. Yeah. Anyway, all right. So you're hoping for the intervention from big, big lovable. Yeah. Yeah. Good old Mac's going to come up and flip out and tell me I got to stay. So I'm sitting in my car, car's running. He walks up and he walks right past the car. So I roll down the window and I go, dad. And he turns around and he goes, yeah. And I said, I'm moving to California. And he looks at the car and he looks inside the car and he looks at me and he goes, good luck. And walks away. And I sobbed. I sobbed.

I cried. I got on the turnpike and I drove and I cry. I probably cried through three states. I just drove and I drove and I drove and I cried and I cried and I cried. Oh my God. And I knew, I knew it was done. I knew it was over. I didn't know what was coming and I was terribly afraid of the unknown, but I just kept driving until I could no longer drive. I probably drove like 16 hours and eventually went to a Motel 6 and woke up the next day and I was in. You know, I got jumped in. You're like, I'm committed. Yeah.

I'm going to show those guys. Yeah. So you had enough pocket money to get you through? I had $800 and there was a guy named Dean Carr who was living on 4th and Molino in downtown LA, right by the 4th street bridge. It's a hip area now, 23 years ago. It's a shooting gallery. Oh my God. It was beyond, I mean, it just, you know, crazy. But anyway, this guy, Dean Carr, who didn't really know me, let me stay at his place. He was the one guy that you knew that lived out here. I didn't know him.

I knew his roommate. And his roommate said, yeah, man, come out anytime, which I thought in Ohio, if you say, you know, come out, that means, you know, come out and stay and we'll help you get a job and this and that. Well, in L.A., come out means come out for a couple of days and then hit the road. Right. And so, no, I met Dean through this other guy, Kenny. And I was pleading with Kenny. I was like, dude, I have nowhere to go. i don't have any money and dean came downstairs he's like you can crash up in my place let me stay with him until i got a job and made a little bit of money how old were you at

the time i was 21 turning 22 i turned 22 while living upstairs at dean's like four days later wow and dean was an art student at, um, Pasadena school of art and design. He was broke too. Right. But we just kinda, we hung out. Dean is a great success today as a huge director. He's done, you know, uh, videos and movies and all that. We've remained friends all throughout the years. But, um, yeah, it was a crazy, crazy beginning. And, um, but I, as I said before, I did OK. I mean, because I'm Polish and Arab, I'm a worker. Did you have that thing where, you know, in recovery, they call it pulling a geographic where you thought, you know, if I can just get out of Ohio.

Sure. They call it pulling a geographic where you thought, you know, if I can just get out of Ohio or get out of Michigan, then, you know, I can put all this crazy lifestyle habits he's using and all of that behind me and I'll start fresh. For sure. Yeah, for sure. And it worked. It did. It worked. It worked temporarily. It worked for a little while.

It worked temporarily. I mean, within – Until you realized you brought yourself with you. Work temporarily. I mean, within... Until you realize you brought yourself with you. That, yeah, once I got over the ocean, once the novelty of the warm weather wore off, I will tell you something interesting that did happen. The panic and anxiety attacks that I had suffered through for my whole life,

like debilitating panic attacks, they started to really go away once I got out into the sunlight and started exercising. Interesting. Yeah. So that was good. Got a job working for Elizabeth Taylor, which was amazing. How does that happen? That's like one of those crazy Hollywood stories. Like I arrived in the next day. I'm like, you know, hanging out with a movie. It wasn't, it wasn't the next day. It was, it was six months later. And I was so naive that I took like a bucket and a chamois and a rag and some cards. And I like went around to car dealerships and said like, I'm a car detailer, you know, and please hire me.

And they all just – they pretty much all laughed me away. Except BMW of Santa Monica called me a few months later. And by the way, most people like when I would go to their house in the Santa Monica Canyon, they would either like threaten to call the police or they'd invite me in and make me lunch. Right. So you're literally knocking on doors saying you want your car detailed. Yeah. Yeah. You are a worker.

I'm a worker, man. Polish and Arab. So, all right. So Elizabeth Taylor, like how does that happen? So BMW of Santa Monica called and they said, we have a customer that just bought a car from us and they want you to go to their house. Can you do that? And I was like, of course I can. And they said, okay, here's the address, 700 Neems, you know, go to the house and went to

the house, detail the car. Um, got some, you know, check, uh, I don't know what the name on it was, but like some Jewish accountant's name on a check and 125 bucks. And I left and they call me the next week. Can you come back up and detail the car? And I'm like, Oh, well, you're not supposed to detail cars every week. You're supposed to do them like every three months. And they're like, okay, so can you come up and detail the car? And I'm like, well, I mean, I can, but you know, you're really not supposed to detail them. They're like, do you, do you want to do this or not? And I'm like, so I went back up again.

I detailed the car. And then while I was up there, they were like, can you, you know, do the motorcycles? Can you do this? Can you do that? You're up at some mansion. I'm up at some mansion. I'm in the garage and I'm detailing, if I remember correctly, a 1978 Aston Martin Lagonda and a couple of motorcycles. And this will show you how I'd like to call it naive, but it's probably more like stupid.

One of the motorcycles literally said Purple Passion on it. That was her perfume back then. Right, right, right. You probably don't remember. No, I remember that. That was her perfume back then. Right, right, right. You probably don't remember. No, I remember that.

So I'm detailing the motorcycles. I'm detailing the Lagonda. And this dude came out with a V-neck dirty white T-shirt on and like yellow stains under his armpits. And he's smoking a cigarette. And he's kind of eyeballing me. And I'm from Ohio. I'm still young, full of piss and vinegar. So I start eyeballing him. And he comes in from ohio i'm still young full of piss and vinegar so i start eyeballing

him then he comes in and he goes to open the refrigerator and i was like hey man you can't do that and he's like i can't do what i'm like you can't do that i'm working in here this is my space you just you just back off okay because i'm responsible for everything in here and he is like looked at me step back lit another, just staring at me the whole time. And he said, do you want a cigarette? And I said, I do. And so I smoked a cigarette. He smoked a cigarette.

And he just walked away. So three days later, I get a phone call from the guy. Come back in detail. No, no, Larry. I was going to say, was it Larry? Larry. What was that guy's last name? Larry Fortensky.

Fortensky, that's right. So he's the guy that she met in rehab. In Betty Ford, yeah. Right. So Larry and Elizabeth would like to know if you would be their houseboy. And I'm like, who's Larry and Elizabeth? Yeah, I had no idea. So yeah, it was like one of those movies because I went up there and signed all these things. Non-disclosures.

Yeah. So that means you can't talk about it here. You can't tell me any good stories. I don't know. I don't know. I think because she died or whatever, maybe I can. I don't know. Is someone going to get mad because I said I petted her dog or pet her dog?

Of course not. Yeah. It was what it Yeah. It was what it was. It was an incredible job, but, you know, drinking and drugs and back then it was like, I think the Garden of Eden was the big nightclub and, you know, hanging out with Love and Rockets and all these cool fancy people that I had grown up listening to that took precedence over, you know, having a good job and making money. I very quickly found trouble. And this trouble was different. These people... It's not Toledo.

It's not Toledo. These people like didn't go to the blind pig, you know, the local bar called the blind pig and drink too many beers and throw up on themselves and go home. These people drank and did drugs like professionals. These people were armed to the teeth with cash and fame and, and drugs. And I started, you know, dating some C-list actresses and a couple of models and hanging out with some of the right people slash wrong people. And it really turned into something. I mean, it really, really turned into something and, you know, and there's a million stories in there and I don't want to, I don't want to bore you with them, but, um, I, I became a professional partier very quickly. How long did that take from, you know, kind of, you know, when you're working at,

uh, Elizabeth's house to the real like descent into the real darkness? I went from hero to zero pretty quick. I mean, I was like calling my folks back home and like, oh, yeah, I'm working Elizabeth Taylor's or I'm detailing, you know, Axl Rose's car, whatever. And to like, hey, can you send me a couple hundred dollars? I mean, it happened pretty quickly. And I went through periods of prosperity. I would find a way to buy a thousand hits of ecstasy and, you know, go to a rave and sell them and have people selling with me. And I was pretty industrious and I was a worker like, you know, like we joked about. But that combination with

a strong drug habit habit though, can take you down pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. That industriousness, you know, that's, that's what allows you to be able to continue to find the drugs that you need without any money and hustle and, you know, right. And, and I, once I opened Pandora's box, I mean, once I unleashed the seed of self-destruction, there was no turning back. Because I could go for five days and then I'd wake up two days later and I would be like, wow, you're a piece of shit. You should just kill yourself. Right. And then I'd get high and I would wake up three days later like, wow, you're really a piece of shit.

And slowly but surely, I destroyed my credit. I destroyed my relationships. I destroyed my, you know, my job. Eventually, I was fired from that job. Yeah. And I mean, in, you know, in Toledo, you go out and, you know, you might find yourself in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, but in LA, there's a big, you know, dark side that you can tap into and you can find yourself in some pretty gnarly, dark circumstances. pretty gnarly, dark circumstances. I was like literally at a gym working out, met a guy who was the roommates with, I think his, his roommate's name was Roger. Roger happened to be the manager

of Porno for Pyros. We went over to meet Perry at Perry's house. And then, yeah. And then a week later I'm like, wow, I'm smoking crack. I didn't even know. Yeah. And you're young and you get, you have stars in your eyes and suddenly you're hanging out with a rock star and you want to look cool and you're doing something you never thought you would ever do. Yeah. Going to score crack at three o'clock in the morning in a really bad neighborhood that I shouldn't have been in. And just thinking, oh, it's so cool. Cause I'm hanging out with Perry Farrell. Yes. Yes. So, um, so you're on this slide and then, you know, how does it occur that suddenly you're, you're down on skid row?

Um, because going downtown and scoring for people became how I was supporting myself. And so for people that are listening that don't know in Los Angeles, um, you know, if you, if you want to score hard drugs, I drugs, basically you go down to MacArthur Park or somewhere in the vicinity of that, which is downtown LA. Most people in Los Angeles don't live in downtown LA. That's a trek across town to do that. That takes a little effort. Well, it's also incredibly dangerous. I mean, you don't want to... You can get your drugs during the day, but for people like me and the people I was hanging with, there is no day, you know, like the book permanent midnight. That's what, that's what he meant. I would imagine. I don't know the guy, but my life became permanent midnight. It was always midnight, you know?

And the one thing that this guy said to me as he was teaching me how to shoot up, he was literally like needle in my arm. He looks at me and he goes, there's no Christmas for junk junkies and i'm like okay can you just can you finish here he's like i just want you to know that there's no christmas for junkies is that the first time that you he said first time i shot up yeah had you been smoking heroin before that so there was a lead up yeah you started shooting i was smoking massive amounts of black tar heroin and it just stopped working i I mean, it was buying three or four grams a day. That becomes a full-time job, just feeding the habit.

Yes. And that, what he said to me, I remember the day that I understood what he meant. I remember Christmas Day, downtown LA. No one's out and I'm dope sick. And I'm like violently ill ill like shitting my pants throwing up trying to find someone to sell me dope and uh and that far away laughter like pink floyd talked about starts to starts to creep in and uh and you know i just it was horrible. It was really, really bad, really dark.

There's an element of spiritual warfare, I think, to drugs and alcohol that most people don't ever consider. Explain that a little bit. There's forces. There's forces. There's dark. First of all, there's light. Light is everything. God is light.

Light is everything. But there is the absence of light as well. I think that there's a sort of this sense, maybe it's like a new age thing where if you're like spiritual, then it's all like bliss and love and happiness. And it's like, I agree with you. I think that, you know, there are very dark forces at play. There is the light and there is the bliss and there is the love, but there's also the dark forces and the sort of things that are pulling you in a direction that doesn't serve you. I mean there is that polarity in spirituality that I think doesn't get talked about enough. And remember what my intentions were. My intentions were to die. So I was indulging in that darkness.

If you call to that darkness, it's going to answer. If you begin to romance that darkness, it's going to answer. If you begin to romance that darkness, it's going to romance you right back. There's going to be some incredible honeymoon, period. I mean, I had quite a dance with the devil, and I don't mean that literally. I'm not some religious person, but I had quite a dance. And there were some very, very glamorous moments. There was some big, you know, like Oprah says, aha moments. I had some of those moments and then it gets dark and then it gets darker and then it gets darker and they talk about hitting a bottom and there's certain people, some are sicker

than others, they say in 12-step programs I was one of those people that I hit the bottom and, and, you know, I just kept digging. And, uh, he said, I could say anything. So I'm going to just say it because it's been on my mind for the last few days. I was listening to a woman share about how, you know, Oh my God, it got so bad in the end. I was with all these professional hockey players and they all wanted to sleep with me. And, you know, that was my last drink of wine. And I'm sitting in the back of the room and I'm like, holy shit, that, that was it. That was her bottom. That was her, that was like her darkness and not that. Right. It's all relative. It sounds like that sounds like a quality problem for somebody else but for her

everybody has their moment yeah it was devastating and thank god it drove her to sobriety you know yeah i'm in the back of the room going like i had a homeless crack dealer playing with my feet while he was jacking off and i'm thinking this isn't that bad right i'm not having sex with the guy you know i mean that i mean you are you're you're definitely a low-bottom drunk for sure i mean you know and i never i never i don't think i ever consciously thought like i want to kill myself i never really entertained suicidal thoughts for more than like you know glimpsing moments but i can remember very distinctly when I watched Leaving

Las Vegas, that movie, and watching it and just thinking, that looks good. You know, like I'm, I'm right with him. I'm like, this, this looks like a guy who's having a good time. You know, like I, I'm like, yeah, I could do that. I can see myself doing that. Yeah. Whereas, you know, I went with a buddy of mine and, uh, and this is when I was still drinking, obviously, when that movie came out and he was horrified, you know, he's like, I can't, you know mine and this is when I was still drinking obviously when that movie came out. And he was horrified. He's like, I can't – he was like – he was ill from seeing that movie. Like he couldn't relate at all and I'm like, I'm right with him.

I'm right with Nicolas Cage. And for me it was less than zero. At the end when Robert Downey Jr. dies or his character dies, I was like, oh my god, that's amazing. I thought that was great. I loved watching his friends cry for him. Like that warmed my heart. Right. This is the final chapter that I want. That was my objective is like, I'm going to maybe write some songs because I was doing some music, which I didn't mention. I don't even know if it's worth mentioning, but I was in a band and I had

some amazing moments with that as well and wrote some really cool stuff. But my plan was to finish up the record and die. And then I could have some sort of legacy to leave behind. It's like martyrdom. Yeah. In fact, when Kurt Cobain died or was murdered or whatever happened with that, I was horrified. I was pissed. I was like, oh, my God.

But wait, that's my plan. He stole your plan. He stole my plan. But the one thing he had that I didn't was talent and fame. Yes, but don't underestimate the aptitude for the addict or alcoholic to have that megalomania about – Grandiose. Yeah, that grandiose idea of where you fit into that world. How dare he?

I was pissed. And I was a fan, but I was pissed. He took my idea. I got news for you. It's not the most novel idea. No. No. All right, so you're down on Skid Row.

So where is the bottom then? I mean, eventually you have to reach this moment where you make this decision that you can't go on. There was, you know, again, the bottom. I mean, that that's that's a whole book in itself. I mean, that's some sad, dark, you know, bizarre, almost unbelievable moments that I am still haunted by, you know, to this day. I mean, and just an example, County jail, you know, LA County jail is worse than most prisons in this country. Um, and I spent many days kicking and, and, and, you know, soiling myself. You're in gen pop. No, I was on the fourth floor, which was the pill pod, which was for crazy people. Um, yeah. Gone in and done panels down there. Yeah, I was with the crazies.

I think we had the bright yellow outfits on. Everyone else had orange. It's a frightening place to be. Frightening, and you never quite get over the smell, and you don't shower because of what would happen to you if you did at the hands of others. So county jail, there was many overdoses, um, went to just about every hospital, you know, around, um, had, had some things happen to me on the streets, which happened to people that live on the streets. Um, and, uh, started

having seizures when I would shoot Coke, I would shoot too much Coke and I would have seizures. And you're doing like speed balls. I was doing mostly speed balls, but I would shoot Coke or smoke crack. I would do anything, but mostly, mostly speed balls. Um, what happens to someone like me when you're dealing drugs on a street corner and you're not affiliated with a gang, things happen to you that, you know, are not, are not good. And, uh, yeah, it was really, really dark. And I, I had a series of events that just led me to

just saying, I can't do this anymore. I just really can't do this anymore. And I had, so it wasn't one like moment or really dramatic event. It was just the accumulation of this slide that finally one day it was yeah it's not like unlike many other days yeah you had that you woke up with a sense of willingness i had a bad seizure um was in a gully um i had made my way back out to malibu because there was this these people that let me stay on their property sometimes and shower up and you know get a fresh change of clothes and i was on my way to that property and I shot too much Coke and wound up having a seizure, lost my vision for a while, lost the use of my legs, laid in a gully, had bugs

crawling all over me, um, and spent hours and hours praying for my sight to return and for my legs to start working again. And I just, I made a pact with whatever it is that created me that, um, that that was it, that I just, I just wanted out. I didn't want to, I didn't want to do it anymore. And then I would do anything. And, um, a guy named Bob Forrest. I know Bob. Okay. A guy named Bob Forrest. He just dropped me off. Oh, he did. Yeah. He's amazing. And for the listener out there, you might know him because he's Dr. Drew's main man in all those, what are those shows called? Celebrity Rehab. Celebrity Rehab shows.

Yeah. But Bob's a real deal. Yeah. Bob lied to a guy named Buddy Arnold, who was in charge of an organization called Musician's Assistance Program. Right. Lied to Buddy and told him that I was an accomplished musician, which I wasn't, and that I was a published musician, which I wasn't, and that I desperately needed treatment.

And he convinced Buddy to send me to Pasadena Recovery Center. So you were able to get into that program under the musician's assistant program. Yes. Gotcha. Had you met Bob before? You knew him? No, I was shooting up with some woman named Penny who claimed to be Penny Lane, that that song was written about her. Only in Hollywood. And she knew Bob Forrest and, uh, and everyone knows Bob, right? I mean, everyone cool knows Bob. And so

Penny called Bob and, um, yeah, they got me in and I didn't, I didn't sleep for about three and a half weeks. And I don't mean I had broken sleep. I mean, I didn't sleep. Um, I turned all kinds of different colors and, um, yeah, it was horrible. Wow. And how was that your first, you'd been in detoxes before. I just never took detox in County jail. I detox at home. Um, I, I try going through a couple of outpatients when I still had money. Um, my, my ex-girlfriend's dad stuck me and her in a treatment center maybe a few years earlier. And I ended up jumping out of the third story window to the next building and running away. So that industriousness. Yeah. I had never, I had never gone through treatment. That was my first time through treatment. I haven't gone through treatment since that was my first time through treatment. I haven't gone through treatment since.

That was June 18, 2003. It was about 10 years ago. They paid for me to go to sober living after that, and they gave me $40 a week to live on. And that was my life. Where was the sober living house? Oh, God. Roscoe and White Oak.

Hell. Yeah. Oh, God. Roscoe and White Oak. Hell. And, you know, end of summer, 117 degrees outside. I mean, just really, really tough. $40 a week to live on. But when you end up in the recovery house, I mean, are you ready to sort of do something different? You have a willingness to kind of move have a willingness to kind of move in a different direction or did that take, were you stubborn and still fighting this or you had made this pact, right? So I presume that you had had some, there was something inside of you that was like ready to turn the page. Well, you know what? Uh, my third day when I was in treatment, I, I fell on my knees and I was crying. I was in so much pain, emotional pain, and everything was coming out and I was just crying and crying and crying and crying. And I was on my knees and I went to Catholic school. So I just like folded my hands like this. Um, cause I guess that's what I was taught when I was a kid. If you're going to talk to God,

you have to fold your hands. So I folded my hands, and I closed my eyes, and I said, whoever you are, whatever you are, if you're there, please take this hell away from me. Those were my exact words. It doesn't even make sense when I say it now, but as I was sobbing, those are the words that came out. Whoever you are, whatever you are, please take this hell away from me. Why doesn't that make sense?

I mean, that's pretty clear. Well, it was clear, but I don't know. I suppose I could have worded it better if I were in better condition, but that's what came out. And, and the moment I said that, when I said, please take this hell away from me, there was a, there was a lifting. It was just a lifting. I can't really describe it other than a heavy heaviness, a darkness. My cravings didn't go away. And I always forget to say that. My cravings definitely did not go away for a year. But there was a lifting. There was a darkness that left me in that moment, and there was a light that came into my heart. And there was no burning bush, or there was no clear message at that time, but there was just this lifting.

That's definitely, you know, you hear it a lot, like that spiritual experience that you have. It was a spiritual experience. Where suddenly things look a little bit different. Yeah. I knew in that moment that God existed. I knew in that moment that God existed. It wasn't about faith.

It was a knowing in my heart that God existed. I decided in that moment that I was going to give this whole thing a shot. What? Oh, I said I have to pee. Oh, you have to pee? Yeah. Go pee now. We'll pause it.

Oh, great. Yeah. Okay, cool. Hold on. We'll be back in a second. I didn't know if that was legal. Too much veggie juice. No, it's good. okay all right we're back you feel better i feel so much better i didn't know what to do

i'm like how do i have to i've done that before with my own podcast. I'm the one interviewing and I go, I gotta pee, man. We gotta pause it. Oh, good. So now I know. No problem. Okay. So we were talking about having this spiritual experience and kind of having this knowingness that God exists in your life. And this uh, and, and this is the beginning of kind of turning the, you know, turning this, uh, this train around. So what does that, I mean, you're in the sober, you, you go through the rehab, you're in the sober living, and I assume you're starting to go to meetings and kind of, uh, you know, get situated in the recovery community in LA. Like what does that, you know, what does that look like? Like what's going on in your life? Well, they made us

go to meetings. And I went to meetings. You weren't happy about it, though. Well, I didn't go inside. Oh, you stood outside and smoked cigarettes? Yeah. And hit on newcomers. Or like outside the Log Cabin or something? Yes, Log Cabin and Melrose and Mansfield and the Tar Pits meetings.

So all the cool Hollywood meetings. Yes. Sundowners, tar pits, anything. Rodeo. And then eventually started to, I started to go inside. Um,

but still I just, I looked so bad. I mean, I didn't, you know, I didn't mention I was a hundred, 109 pounds. Wow.

Treatment. Um, I never showed you that picture. No, no. I'd like to see that. Yeah. I have a picture of myself at 109 pounds with big abscesses on my face and neck.

I mean, did you, you know, when they did kind of blood work on you, like where were things? They didn't do blood work on me. Oh, they didn't? I wouldn't, no. I was 100%. I didn't think I had AIDS. I thought for, you know, like knew. You were certain that you had it.

Yeah, I was certain I had AIDS because I had shared needles with a guy that that he wasn't even hiv he was like had full-blown aids wow and so i was like that's like the depths of the where the addiction will take you that that in complete insanity that like you know that you would that you would engage in that kind of behavior and while you're doing it probably know like well this is what this means. You know what? I just, I just wanted to die. I just wanted to die. I didn't care. I wanted to die. Um, and, um, no, it wasn't until God, it wasn't until four or five months after I went to treatment and went to sober living while I was in sober living. One of the kids kind of tricked me to go to um tarzana treatment center had a mobile like a bus or mobile home that once a month would go there and offer free testing

so he didn't tell me we were going you know we were just driving around he was like you know have you ever been tested before i'm like yeah and he's like are you clean i'm like yeah and he's looking at me i mean i look like i was dying of aids and he's like you know when's the last time you've been tested and i'm like i had never been tested i was just lying on my ass because i was scared of saying like hey i'm scared i'm dying and um he pulled in i'm like what are you doing he goes oh they do it here for free we can we can do it right now oh man you know terrifying yeah he he called my bluff. He knew, he knew. Right. So we went in.

It's that thing when you're in your disease and you're doing all that lying and you convince yourself that you're getting over on people. And it's not until you have some recovery under your belt that you realize how ridiculous that is. Everybody can see through all of that nonsense. So they did the test.

You had to wait a week. You were supposed to come back, I think, come back the following Wednesday or Friday. And that Tuesday night, I couldn't sleep all night. Just couldn't sleep. And so that afternoon... That sort of presupposes that you're starting to appreciate your life a little bit. Yeah. So that afternoon when I was supposed to

go, I fell asleep. And when I woke up, it was like six o'clock in the evening. It was too late. So then I had to wait another two days. Yeah. I had to wait till Friday and went on Friday, walked in. It all kind of happened very quickly. Come in, give them the name, get their paperwork, look at the thing. And then it doesn't say, like, no, you don't have AIDS. It says something like zero antibodies or some – I don't know what it said. But basically I'm looking at this thing and I'm shaking and shaking. And the guy looks at me and he goes, man, you got to clean up, man. And I'm like, what? And he goes, you got to stop using man and i'm like i'm like i'm i'm like what

and he goes you gotta stop using and i'm like i'm not fucking using and he's like why are you shaking and i'm like because i i can't read this thing i want to know what it says he's like oh man he's like you're good you ain't got it and i just fell out of the chair fell on the ground sobbing sobbing sobbing sobbing because i thought for sure i really was convinced that i had it um went back again i think eight months later um to to do another one this time i didn't have money to do a test and i was dating this girl and she wouldn't have sex with me unless I got tested. And my sponsor, the ultimate incentive. Yes.

My sponsor, um, sponsored a guy who was in the porn industry and he was like, Oh, tell him to go to blah, blah, blah and Ventura Boulevard and just say his name is make up a porn name and just say that you just got cast into one of his movies.

And they did another one of those like only in la and check it out they did dna testing so they could there was no incubation period or anything like i can tell you right away right away you go in and within 24 hours they test for everything and that's when i found out i didn't have hep c or h yeah yeah and, I just, I remember getting back on the one looking out for you, dude. I remember getting back on the one-on-one and thinking, Oh God, I can't wait to sleep with this girl. But also, no, but also I got the green light. Yeah. But also like, I gotta do something now. I gotta do something like with my life, like, I got to do something now. I got to do something. With my life.

Yeah. Like, in a bigger way. Yeah, like, I don't deserve this. I don't, there's thousands of people that are dying in a hospital bed right now that love their life and cared about their life. And I threw my life away, willingly threw my life away, willingly shared needles with somebody. And so I knew that I had to do something big and do something cool. And you know, what that was going to be, I had no idea

because I wasn't working and I was broke. How long have you been sober at that point? Um, God, it's hard to say. Maybe a year. How old was I when I was dating? A little over a year. Yeah, a little over a year. And that was at that point where you start going to the gym and you start to get tan and you start to look good. Well, because the first, depending upon where you're at in your life, I mean, the first year of sobriety is just trying to understand what's going on around you. And there's so much wreckage and damage in your life that you have to address and walk through. And it's so uncomfortable. And you're like this live wire, like this, this raw nerve ending. You're super sensitive to everything and you don't have any tools or, you know, coping mechanisms for handling all these emotions that

you're so used to just numbing and checking out from. And then you have to like confront them. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. Anyway, I, you know, I, I felt I needed to do something big and do something profound. to be profound. But again, what is a 34, I think I was about 34 at that time, what's a 34-year-old high school dropout, convicted felon, loser, what's he going to do? There's nothing. You can't do anything. You're a bum. You can't, no one's going to hire me. And even when they did hire me, even when I did get jobs in, in treatment centers, cause you know, treatment centers will hire anybody. So when I did get

job in those treatment centers, I just, I got a mouth on me. I got no filter. I have to speak my truth. I'm really, my heart's virtue is, is expressing myself authentically. And, uh, that's not good for work, you know, especially in an environment being a worker among workers. Yes. And there's a pecking order and there's, you know, and so I, I was getting in all kinds of trouble with my mouth. And, um, uh, again, God has a sense of humor because here's the guy that's a loser. That's homeless. It's kind of existing in this very affluent community, like Malibu. I'm like sleeping on the floor in this guy's big ass mansion and his wife doesn't even know the house was so big his wife didn't know I was living there for eight months eight

months how is that even possible because it was a 7,000 square foot house and I was way off in the left wing that's yet another like only in LA kind of thing. Yeah. Right on Zoomerize. And then when she did find out I was living there, she was thrilled and she wanted to move. He didn't, she wanted to sell, he didn't. And it was just one of those moments where I was like, Oh, can I rent this place from you? And can you give me two months free rent? And, um, I'm going to turn it into a sober living and I'm going to help a bunch of people and I'm going to make a bunch of money. But, you know, and she's like, sure. Wow. So yeah, you could never have planned that. There's no way and talk about divine, you know, grace. I mean, now I've got this 7,000 square foot house and, you know,

I have no idea what I'm doing, but it just worked. But at the same time, you could have had, when you're driving down the freeway with this tremendous relief that you're not sick and realizing I have to do something big with my life, you know, how come the rock and roll dream doesn't crop up? You know, like, hey, I was a musician. I was making a record. Like, I could see you going back into that. But you had some instinct that drove you towards something that was in service and giving back to this gift that you had been given this gift of sobriety.

Yeah, and not that that didn't ever creep up, because, you know, some of the guys I was making music with were pretty famous in their own right, and some of them were living off of big second-generation fame. So there was still sort of that opportunity there, but they were all still getting high. And rock and roll was just a very self-indulgent, dark place for me to act out this fantasy of I want to become famous so I can punish everyone because I'm short or because I'm, wasn't born into a wealthy family or because my parents were immigrants or because

what, you know, for me, it was about, it was about fame. It wasn't about, um, making beautiful music and not that it, some part of me wanted to make beautiful music because we did, but most of you wanted i was like one of those short guys that comes to la that wants to become famous to punish people right and so you get sober and you're starting to sort your shit out a little bit and that becomes not a that's not important it it was it was a cool dream in the in the in the back of my head and i'll be honest with you i don't you know i don't think it would be unheard of to go and in in two years from now get back together some of my old bandmates who, by the way, are all sober now.

They either have to get sober or it's going the other direction. Yeah. But yes, helping people was paramount to being able to live a life with meaning and to have any type of lasting recovery or sobriety. Do you know how many times, I mean, countless times, hundreds of times, where I wanted to get high in the beginning, those first like four or five years, I couldn't. Because I had clients that depended on me. I had staff that depended on me. I had people who, you know, I had to make payroll and they had kids.

And I mean, it really, I know they say if you work in recovery, you're 30% more likely to relapse. That's statistics that I think Hazleton or somebody did. I didn't even know that. Oh, yeah. Is that right? Yeah. Because it just wears you out. Well, you stop going to meetings because you're taking the clients to meetings and you think that counts. Right. And,

uh, and you are around toxic people so much that you yourself just start to become toxic. That may be true for many people. For me, I was so invested in people's outcomes in such an unhealthy way. I want to clarify that again, this isn't about being a virtuous, good guy. I was obsessed with people making it so I could feel good. You know, I needed them to stay sober so I could have, that's an Al-Anon thing. Of course it is. Oh my God. I'm, I'm one of the most codependent, unhealthy people you can meet when it comes to that stuff. My first sponsee, I stalked him. I used to drive by his house at 11 o'clock at night, like, you know, hey, where are you? You know, I mean. And you're just bringing heartbreak and

frustration into your life because most people, you know, don't get it or don't stay sober. It's true. But the ones that did we we developed such amazing relationships and friendships um which because i'm not a doctor because if you're a doctor you're not allowed to be friends with somebody that that you're working with but i didn't have any initials in front of my name or initials behind my name so i was allowed to have any type of uh you know friendship that i wanted to and the people that made it, um, they made it and they never went back. I mean, I could rattle off, you know, 20 different names of people that I worked with nine years ago, eight years ago, five years ago, four years ago, you know, up until

I sold the place. Um, I just did the Tough Mudder with a kid, one of my last clients over at Riviera Recovery. And by the way, Riviera Recovery is now owned and operated and running out of the same house as it was before. And just a strange, you know, series of events. So wait a minute. So the house that you rented and turned into this recovery, it was called Riviera. Is that what you called it? Riviera Recovery, yeah. Okay, so yeah, and you've since sold that, right?

But it still continues on? I sold it, but the kids I sold it to, one of my other best friends bought the house and let them rent it from him. Oh, I see. Oh, so it's a similar kind of thing. Well, it's the same thing. It's the same thing, except it's run much better,

and they're much more professional than I ever was. They have appropriate boundaries, and they have, you know, they go home at professional than I ever was. They have appropriate boundaries and they have, you know, they go to, they, they go home at night. Whereas I was living there. Right. So like, if you came in and you wanted to get better, there was nothing I wouldn't do. I would, in fact, that's how Sun Life Organics came about because I would make them vegetable juice and I would make them wheatgrass juice and I would do the, um, arise and shine cleanses with them quarterly. We would do arise and shine cleanses every three months. Um, I would make them smoothies. I would, I would make them juices. I would do all of that. And people would spontaneously quit smoking.

People would spontaneously go off all of their medication. Some of them pretty heavy medication. I mean, there was a girl named Sarah who was on all of it, the Welbutrin and the Lexapro and all that stuff and smoked cigarettes. And she started juicing and she started drinking smoothies and she did a couple of cleanses. And one day she just said, I'm not taking any of this shit anymore. And January 11th, she'll have five years. Wow. And she, she takes nothing. And that was it. Yeah. So it started, well, I mean, there's sobriety,

but then there's the other, so you start to get interested in this other part of it, this other part of wellness and getting healthy. Yeah. Well, what, what happened, what happened was I accidentally stumbled into a yoga class. I was supposed to take a client to yoga class and she never showed up. And I ended up, the girl teaching it, this woman named Lydia from Canada, who was an ex ballerina, was one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen in my life. And so I stayed and tried to take her level three class. And five minutes in, I was shaking and I was a puddle. And she came over and she put her hand on the small of my back.

Then she pushed me down on the ground. And she said, just stay. Stop. You got to stop. Because I was shaking and, you know, puddle of sweat around me. I was smoking cigarettes at the time. I smoked for 20 years. I haven't smoked a cigarette in over seven

years now. Um, and, um, I went back because I wanted to be in this woman's presence. I mean, she was so incredibly beautiful. Um, and so I got into yoga. I started getting into juicing pretty early on in, into my own recovery. Um, I had a buddy named Sean who was a yoga teacher and he would make me these drinks out of like, he would literally juice burdock root and he would, he would juice, um, nettles, stinging nettles. He would juice them. And he kept giving me all these concoctions that he would make in these jars. He would bring them over and he would give them to me. Most of them taste like the worst thing I'd ever tasted in my life. But something really weird happened. I would drink them. I'd go to the bathroom a lot, um, and pee a lot.

And then the next morning I'd wake up and I would be like, wow, a, I slept last night, which I was a total insomniac. But B, I would look at my face in the mirror and I would be like, oh my God, I remember you. I started to actually look younger. And the more that I did the far infrared sauna the ozone therapy all the other crazy things I got into things started to speed up very quickly right and I started to resemble what I look like in my mid-20s as yeah it's amazing I mean with the you know 10 miles of bad road that you've put on your machine you know and all the things that you've done and all the self-abuse I mean you look incredible you know you look put on your machine, you know, and all the things that you've done and all the self-abuse. I mean, you look incredible. You know, you look super healthy and fit, you know.

And I think, you know, one of the things I always talk about and talk about on the podcast a lot is just the incredible resiliency of the human body. And when you start to tap into these things, whether it's juicing or what have you, and you can see these really dramatic turnarounds in incredibly short periods of time. And you realize, wow, you know, like, how could I be this junkie living on, you know, on Skid Row, hoping to die, and, you know, lesions all over my body. Yeah, scabies ringworm. Yeah, to where you're sitting right now. It's like, it's a miracle. It is a miracle. It is definitely the grace of God. You know, I never

want to get to the point where I think like, well, I did the footwork and I did this and it doesn't matter. There's a lot of people who do the footwork that die. You know, it's the grace of God. And I don't know what that means. I wish I could tell you or your listeners what that means. I don't know. To this day, I pray before every meal. I pray every morning. I pray every night. I don't know. To this day, I pray before every meal. I pray every morning. I pray every night. I don't know who I'm praying to. I don't know if it's a thing or it's a... I don't know. I just know that it's there. And I know that if I reach out to God, and I just use that word God because I don't have a better word, but if I reach out to God, if I knock on the door, I think it says that in some religion, if you knock on the door,

then the door gets answered. And it does for me, not always in the way that I want it to. And a lot of times I don't want to listen to the truth, but yeah, my, where I'm at now at 44 years old, I just ran an 11 mile obstacle course where I was tasered, where I was cut by barbed wire, where I swam through ice water, literally ice water. It was like 80% ice and they added some water to it. I ran that with guys who work for me that are half my age and I ran it side by side with them. And it was just, it was incredible to think that here I am at 162 pounds, you know, very low body fat. And to think that 10 years ago, I was 109 pounds and I was dying. I was literally falling apart. So, um, it's, it's, it's amazing what the body can do,

how the body can recover. But what's even more amazing is I was prescribed Trazodone, Lexapro, Seroquel, Wellbutrin, Xanax, all these different things that the doctors, the psychiatrists gave me, many of whom said you're going to have to be on this Wellbutrin for the rest of your life. You're going to have to be on this Lexapro for the rest of your life. You're going to have to be on this whatever, Amb this Wellbutrin for the rest of your life. You're going to have to be on this Lexapro for the rest of your life. You're going to have to be on this, you know, whatever Ambien or sleeping pill for the rest of your life. I don't take any of that stuff, nothing. And I haven't taken any of that stuff. Did you, you took it for a while though? Oh, I took it for years. I took it for years. But when I went into Pasadena recovery center,

I said to Dr. Bloom, who was such an amazing guy, he's no longer with us. But, um, I said to Dr. Bloom, who was such an amazing guy, he's no longer with us, but I said to Dr. Bloom, I don't want to take any of this stuff. I know you guys want me to, and it's probably smart that I do because the way that I'm wired, I probably need it. But I know myself, and I know if I take your pills, eventually I'm going to take my pills. And that's just my truth. And I'm not telling anybody to not take their psych meds but for me it was a matter of life and death and so I would I at that time I would rather live with depression than to risk going back to shooting speedballs because it was for sure going to end my life and um that was I think my fifth day in there that was after my sort of you know my white light experience with

God where I kind of you know as I unleash a seed of self-destruction in my mid-20s I am I watered the seed of self-preservation that third day when I was in treatment something inside of me there was a spark there was a tiny little spark that has since turned into a forest fire. Right. And those sparks, I think that we all have them. It's just a question of how tuned in we are to ourselves to recognize them when they happen and whether or not we can respond and like – excuse me – like respect the gravity. Sorry, I have something in my throat. Respect the gravity of that situation and the power that it can hold for transformation. And not take it for granted. Yeah. Because, you know, I see a lot of people take it for granted. And it's easy to, yeah, or just to not understand what's happening and let it pass.

Because they're very precise, short moments of time, like these little spurts where a door opens. Yeah. And you have this limited opportunity to make a shift. And you're either going to do it in that time frame or it's going to pass. Yeah, and let's also point out the fact that most people don't want to change. Right. Most people want their toys back. Right.

Well, I don't want to change. You know, like, I mean, I change when I'm in pain. You know what I mean? That's the way that I'm wired. And I try to make, you know, I try to be always improving myself. Yeah. But it's not my nature. Yeah.

You know? myself, but it's not my nature. Yeah. You know? Well, I don't think you're, I don't think I'm much different from you in the fact that you changed habits because I really think it's about habits and you, you, you engage in your habits the same way I engage in my habits and our habits are similar in some areas and they're not so similar in other areas. And there's a lot of other people out there that are just like us and they engage in their similar in other areas. And there's a lot of other people out there that are just like us and they engage in their habits. The difference is the result that they're getting from their habits. You know, you can engage in a habit and it's going to bring you really shitty results and you can engage in a habit and it's going to bring you really, I work like crazy.

I work seven days a week and people tell me a lot like – I know, Matt. I've been chasing you down to do this podcast for like eight months. Well – You can't give me a day. I was like relentless. I was like I'm going to get that guy in the studio if it kills me. One of my favorite things in the world is to hear my own voice. I love to speak, but I feel, I feel now a responsibility to my employees,

to my community, to my girlfriend. And I work like crazy and, you know, sometimes to the point of failure, but look at the difference. I used to do, I used to do drugs to the point of failure. And I wound up in hospitals and sharing needles with people with AIDS and county jail. And now I work like crazy. And sometimes I'll get the flu and sometimes I'll whatever. But the byproduct of what I've done working like crazy in this engaging in this habit is I got to go back to Ohio and buy my mom a house. Wow. You know, I get to help support my mom financially. I don't make a lot of money, but the money that I do make, I take care of my girl and I take care of my mom.

And those two things give me meaning. They make me feel like I'm a human being. And I spent most of my life, you know, three and a half decades of my life feeling subhuman, not feeling a part of the human race, being morbidly depressed and suicidally depressed and absolutely miserable and not having any meaning in my life. And today I can get up and watch the sunrise and cry like a child. You know, I watched that documentary on whatever her name was, The Swimmer. Diane Anaya. Diane. Yeah. And I and i i wept i wept three or four times throughout that

documentary i feel life today i i i feel a part of life today and um you know i opened this little juice bar with my girl and i thought that we were gonna our goal was our absolute goal was if we could serve a hundred people a day which seemed a pretty lofty goal. And I remember my landlord, because there were six vacancies here, I remember my landlord said, how do you plan on pulling that off? And I said, I'll do it, man. I'll do it. I will get to the point where I'm serving 100 people a day. I can take you downstairs. Actually, I can turn on my phone right now and show you. Today, we've served almost 600 people. Wow.

Yeah, we haven't even gotten to, you know, the sort of part in the story where you decide running a recovery house is not for you. And you embark on this entrepreneurial journey to open up Sun Life, Sun Life Organics here in Malibu. And this has really become, I mean, you, you're, you're sort of selling yourself short when you say, oh, this little juice bar, because yeah, in some respects, yeah, it's a juice bar in Malibu, but it really has become like this hub of social activity for the Malibu, Malibu community. I mean, everybody comes in here in the morning or in the afternoon, you know, to get their morning green juice or their smoothie or whatever and go about their day.

And it's funny, people come to LA, they wanna see a celebrity. So what do they do? They go to Rodeo Drive or something like that, thinking they're gonna see somebody. It's like, you wanna see a celebrity, come to Sun Life Organics. This is where they're all coming to get their green juice,

the Hoi Poloi of Malibu. But what you've built here is so much more than a restaurant or a juice bar. Because what it is is it's catalyzed community around healthy living. And there's a lot of people in this community that are interested in that. And it's given people a place to kind of congregate. And that's created kind of like a foothold for discussion around these topics, whether it's GMO labeling or, you know, juicing and detoxing or just healthy living or fitness or whatever. And you're living it on a daily basis. You're a living example of it. And

so is your staff, you know, and you walk in the door, it's immediately apparent. So I'm not surprised that you're serving, you know, 600 odd people a day. Yeah. It's great. You know, and I think that, you know, you should continue. I know you just opened your second one in Thousand Oaks. And so, and so I, you know, I could see these things all over the place. Yeah. And I mean, and, you know, I mean, that's the, that's the dream. That's a vision is to to have 100 of these. I mean, we opened up in Thousand Oaks. Everyone told me not to open there. I mean, everyone said that. What was the reason for not opening there?

Because they said that that center was a graveyard, that it was cursed, that nobody would ever go there. That mall where it is. Yeah, and I was like, who cares? So let's change it. Why take no for an answer? Why not? Let's go there and let's prove them wrong.

We're serving 150 to 250 people a day there. That is huge. I mean, it's absolutely huge. And we're changing people's lives. We're having people walk in there telling us now, man, I've lost 35 pounds since I started coming in here. And like, wow, that's incredible. And we don't tell people you should

be a vegetarian or you should be a vegan or you should be this. We say to people that moving towards a plant-based diet has incredibly and radically altered our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual beings. And that's the truth. You can talk to any one of my employees down there, And that's the truth. You can talk to any one of my employees down there, most who were not into juicing or superfoods or anything, how their lives have changed as a result of, you know, just being around juice all day, you start drinking juice, being around smoothies all day, you start making smoothies. We have these incredible salads, these incredible soups. So they stopped going to Subway and, you know, grabbing pizza or whatever. And they started having vegan soup or having a vegan salad. And, um, it's amazing. It's really, really amazing. And Thousand Oaks is doing great. Uh, I think we're going to be

opening up in downtown LA soon. We're also going to open up down in Cross Creek cause there's a big demand for it down in Cross Creek. Yeah, and I just love it. And not that I don't, you know, the reason that I was late coming here is because I was doing an intervention in the United States. Yeah, so we were going to try to hook up today to do this, and you texted me and said, you know, I think I can make it, but I got to go down and do an intervention first. And it's like, wow. Yeah. Like, in recovery, they always say, you know, sobriety comes first, sobriety intervention first. And it's like, wow. Like in recovery, they always say, you know, sobriety comes first, sobriety comes first.

And what happens, and I've experienced this, is, you know, you come in and you're suffering and your life is broken. And you'll do anything to get it back. And you work hard and you do make sobriety first. And if you do, you get sober and you start to get those things back into your life you're really you repair your relationships you're able to become a responsible member of society you're able to look people in the eye and tell the truth and show up when you say you're

going to show up and then you start to forget yeah you start to forget what it was that you did that got you to that place and you start to take sobriety for granted or you just take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit and you're like yeah i know sobriety supposed to be place and you start to take sobriety for granted, or you just take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit and you're like, yeah, I know sobriety is supposed to be first, but you know, like I got to call this guy and I got to go to this meeting. And you're a guy, when I look at you, you're a guy who lives it every day. Like you understand and get that sobriety always comes first. I appreciate you saying that. And, and again, I have to point out for my own self-preservation, it ain't because I'm a good guy. It's because I want to live. When Bob called me up and said, hey, man, I got this 19-year-old kid who's pacing around his house who thinks his parents are

trying to kill him because he's in a psychotic state. I don't want to go deal with that. he's in a psychotic state you know i don't i don't want to go deal with that right i want to go to the beach i want to you know i want to feel good i want to like get on a podcast and talk about myself because i'm my favorite topic but if you want to keep what you have you've got to give it back yes if i want to stay alive and if i want to keep the little ounce of humility that i managed to to collect over the last 10 years in sobriety I gotta go help that kid and guess what we got there and he was like fuck you I'm like all right well so you know I'm just here to help you and he's like I don't give a fuck get out of my yard I'm like all right and I walked away and then I turn around I said hey I'm not being paid to be here.

And he looked at me and he's like, did my dad send you? And I said, no, your dad sent him. And he dragged me into this. So he might be employed by your father, but I'm not employed by your father. I'm here for fun and for free. And I'm here to help you out if you want some help. And I wish in that moment it went really, really well. He ended up running away and then we had to leave and then we got called back. And, but let me tell you

something. The third time we came back and he had disappeared and it's two hours in now. And I'm just like, this sucks. I got, I got businesses to run. I'm sitting there and the mom's almost in tears and the dad's almost in tears. And all of a sudden the kid walks in and he comes over and he sits on the arm of the sofa and he like eyeballs me like he's like sizing me up you know and he looks at bob who's quite obviously there he recognized him from tv to do this intervention he's looking at bob he's looking at me and um but i said hey and he goes what's up i'm like nothing i'm still here to help you if you want help. And he goes, well, I don't want to make any decisions right now.

And I said, and nor do I. I do not want you to make a decision right now. But what I do want you to know is that if you want help, I can help you. I'll help you for fun and for free. And he was like, I appreciate that. And I said, I appreciate you listening. And I looked at the dad and I looked at the mom. I said, I think our time here is up. And they're like, well, what do you mean And I said, I appreciate you listening. And I looked at the dad, and I looked at the mom. I said, I think our time here is up.

And they're like, well, what do you mean? I said, just let it be. You got my number. You got his number. And we got up, and we all hugged. Even the kid hugged me. Wow. Yeah.

And this is a kid who's two hours earlier saying, fuck, you get out of my yard. Right. And he knew, because the truth is the truth is the truth. He knew I was being honest. I'm not getting paid for that shit i got dragged into it bob forrest who saved my life calls him and says hey i got a kid you know blah blah blah that's how this thing works it's not about being a great guy it's not about being a virtuous guy it's not about being a humble guy it's about being a sensible guy i know that I have to give back because so much was given to me freely. Now, in the juice bar, it's a different story. I give a lot in the juice bar. If you come in,

I don't know you and you're my customer and you got to run and your dog's there and whatever, I'll walk your dog. I'll follow you to the car dealership and drive your car. I'm, I'm all about that. And I'll tell you why, because it makes me feel high. I get up in the morning and I'm so excited to go be near my coworkers and to be near my customers. And yes, I would be an idiot and a liar to not mention. Of course, it's exciting when it's guys like Gerard Butler walking in the door and high-fiving you. Of course it's exciting to get sweet, you know, Instagram messages from Pamela Anderson. I'm from Ohio. I grew up in Ohio. That's a big deal to me.

I'm not going to lie. I love it. I'm short of breath every time I have one of those interactions with those people. But those people want to get loved up too. Those people want to feel like they're a part of something too. And so, um, whether it is an A-list actor or a rock star, um, you know, texting from the thousand oaks, like, Hey, I'm at your other store now. This is really cool. I'm, I'm, I'm dying on the inside. You know, I'm like, you know, this this is pretty cool but what's just as cool is

when the day laborer comes in or the housekeeper comes in they can't speak english and we get to work it out between the two of us speaking spanglish you know as to what smoothie or what juice that they should get or when i when a little six-year-old kid comes running in yelling my name and runs up to me and gives me a hug and says, I want to get my juice, you know, or when, when parents are holding their kid that can't even talk, can't even formulate sentences yet says, you know, when we drive by here, my kid points and says juice. I'm like, are you kidding me? This is the greatest thing. This is the greatest high. This is the greatest experience I've ever had. And I want to bring this to everybody's neighborhood if I can. I mean,

I know a lot of neighborhoods can't afford it yet, but I want to bring this to as many neighborhoods as I can. That's a beautiful thing. You know, you were talking, we were talking earlier about change and, you know, most people don't want to change and, and, you know, how do you change? And certainly every day I get emails from people like, I want to change and and you know how do you change and certainly every day i get emails from people like i want to change but i'm just stuck and i can't and and it's very easy to like tweet a platitude like hey you can change at any given moment and it's like that doesn't mean anything like it sounds good you'll get a lot of like clicks on it or something like that but like is that really helping anybody?

And so I'm always thinking about like, what is it that I can do to help people to change when they're stuck? And one of the things I always say is, just think of one small thing that you could change, that you could repeat on a daily basis that seems like doable. It's sort of like that example of if a rocket is taking off from Cape Canaveral to the moon and it's off by one

micrometer or something, it's going to miss the moon by a thousand miles. But if you can just make that one little tiny micrometer shift, you'll end up in a completely different place, right? So if all you did, forget about vegan, paleo, whatever. Like if all you did is had a green juice for breakfast every morning, as opposed to having like, you know, bacon or something like that, or just whatever it is you're used to eating. Um, and then you just repeat that on a daily basis. Like, where's that going to take you, you know, six weeks from now, six months from now, dude, because it'll, it'll set you on your own journey and you'll start to connect with yourself in a different way. You have to respect people and give them enough credit that they'll be taken care of and on the right journey. Like just give them a little tool and send them on their

way and then they'll have their own experience. It's going to take them wherever it's going to take them. Yeah. We have people in Thousand Oaks. People in Malibu are pretty forward-thinking and very advanced and obviously have the means to get a lot of what's great that's out there and have access to a lot of what's great. But we have people in Thousand Oaks that are landscapers or plumbers or whatever that come in, and they don't even know what it is. You know, they just, they just, they see the sign or they see the Lotus flower or they see the

people walking in and walking out as they're at Umami burger. They look over and they see this thing and they walk in and there's this kid, Alex, that works there who looks like Tarzan. I mean, he's the greatest looking kid you'll ever see just gorgeous tall fit beautiful and he says just that just get a juice that's it and they're like what about this and what about paleo and what about vegan and what do you do

over complicate it just make it simple he says get a juice so these dudes they get a juice there's some guy that goes to Disney which we always talk about or works at, which we always talk about, or works at Disney that we always talk about. He's an executive. He randomly stopped in there for his wife, right?

So Alex, they get a juice. They got a juice. Came back the next day. I felt pretty good, man. What else can I get? Alex said, why don't you try a turmeric shot? So he did turmeric, however you say it. So he did a turmeric shot.

Then he comes in a few days later and, and you know is there anything i could take with me and he says yeah why don't you grab a couple of the pressed juices over there we have pressed juices you can take them we'll give you a little bag of ice or whatever so the dude comes in now five days out of seven every single week he's lost all of this weight. He looks incredible and he can't stop asking questions. He just comes in and he's just lit up and he's excited and he's telling his neighbors about it. And that I believe is how we're going to change the world. That's how you change it. Yeah. I agree with you completely. Yeah. Sending me pictures of cows getting their face ripped off on Facebook and telling me that I'm a bad person for eating meat is not going to make me change. But, but becoming a vegetarian, then becoming a vegan, then going on a little run,

then going on a little bike, then getting back into swimming and then eventually, you know, doing an Ultraman a couple of years later and writing a book about it, inspiring me, that's what's going to make me change, you know? And, and I don't know, it couldn't get any cooler. And by the way, I was much more excited to see you peddling down PCH as I chased you in my car. You must've thought I was a lunatic. I'm that guy. No, it's funny. Cause, uh, sorry, I got like a frog in my throat today. Um, yeah, I think you had sent me a couple of Facebook messages or it emailed me and he's like and and i'd heard like oh this guy started this you know it's a juice bar over in

malibu you should check it out so when i got the messages i was like oh this is the juice guy like why does he keep emailing me he wants to hook he wants to meet me he wants to hook up and i had like i had emailed you back and said hey let's yeah definitely let's do it or whatever but we still hadn't met right and i was out riding. I was riding down PCH and you recognized me somehow. I chased you down. Driving by me in your car. Chased you down. I was yelling at you. That was right before we went to Kauai for three months. That was right before we moved to Hawaii for three months last year. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty good, man. Pretty amazing. Yeah. It's been an amazing year for you. Amazing year. amazing year and um and i'm really

looking forward to uh we're opening up a yoga studio next door literally right next door when is that going to open um it could be a month it could be three months i don't know i've learned you know that i'm at the mercy of the powers that be but i just keep i keep putting one foot in front of the other but um we're opening up malibu Beach Yoga right upstairs from Sun Life Organics Malibu. Sun Life Organics Thousand Oaks has now got some traction, and we've got, like I said, 150 to 250 people a day going through there. And we're looking at what our options are. We just bought our partner out, and Haley and I now own a hundred percent of Sun Life Organics

together. Um, we just celebrated seven years together and yeah, it's so cool. It's so cool. I'm so in love and happy. And I never thought I'd get to say that. And I really never did. I mean, even in my early recovery, I used to walk around, look at couples and go, I'll never have that. And even in my early recovery, I used to walk around, look at couples and go, I'll never have that. I'll never have that. No, I have it. God has blessed me. You're living an amazing life.

You're living the dream. You truly are. I really am. You know? And you're an inspiration. You inspire me to be better. So I appreciate having you in my life, man, and being my friend. Thank you. So, yeah, you're changing lives, man.

Thank you. You really are. And it's beautiful to see, and I'm so glad that this is all successful for you. Thank you. Well, my, my next goal is to, is to do what you did is to write a book and I've got a pretty, I got a pretty good foundation for it. Um, I just need to edit it and I need to, um, take some of the sensationalism out of it. Because as I was writing it, I'm so insecure and I so want people to like me that I think I went too over the top in terms of shock value. I didn't embellish. I just told stories that probably didn't need to get told.

The story is what it is. I had a sad childhood. I was a morbidly depressed person. I got on heavy booze and drugs. I, by the grace of God, recovered from that and have an incredible life today. And it's pretty simple. But, you know, I like to complicate things. Right.

So before we sign off, I just thought it would be good for the listeners. thought it would be good for the listeners if you could like share maybe one or two things that that you find helpful on a daily basis to try to sort of keep you on track or or you know on that trajectory towards always being conscious of improving your the quality of your of your life i'm going to just say something really simple and i was talking about this yesterday with somebody um just do do kind things for other people and don't get caught. That was probably the most helpful advice I've ever been given. It was by a man named Bill Galvin. And he said, when you see trash on the ground, pick it up. And when you're finished with your grocery cart, return it to the front. And don't be looking around at everybody to see if they're noticing

you do it. Just put the grocery cart back where you got it from. And when someone asks you for money, that's not your money. God gave you that money. Share that money. Don't worry about what they're going to go do with that money. And he said, and when you hand them that money, don't stand around and wait for them to say, God bless you, man, and this and that. Don't shame them. Hand them the money and walk away right away. And do kind things for people where they won't even know that it was you that did it. And he said, and don't tell anybody about it. Do kind things for people.

Don't get caught. And don't discuss it with people. And I started doing that. And my God, talk about the greatest antidepressant you can ever put into your body. Do something amazing for somebody. Even if it's dumb, like putting in a quarter and a meter that just expired when no one's looking. And just walk away and know that you just saved that person $35 or $50 or whatever it is today. That's all I want to say about that.

That's the best advice I can give to someone. That's pretty good, man. I like it. Thank you. Cool. Beautiful. Thank you. All right, man. So if people want to know a little bit more about Sun Life Organics, the website is... We don't have a website. You don't have a website? No. Come on, man. We don't have a website. It's one thing to get off Facebook. You got to have a website. We don't have a website. We have Sun Life Organics Facebook page. I think it's just Sun Life Organics or it might be Sun Life Organics Malibu.

We're going to get a website eventually. We'll probably do all that stuff. But we just – honest to God, we really thought we were going to open the doors and have like 30 or 40 customers. We opened the doors. There was 250 people that walked in that day. That was the first day. People need this. People want to heal.

You Instagrammed a picture of the opening day out in Thousand Oaks too, and I think there was like a line out the door. Oh my God, it was unbelievable. Yeah. So the people have spoken, man. The demand is there. People want to get well. They want good food, good juice.

If you want to check us out, go to our Sun Life Organics Facebook page or come out to Malibu and let me make you a juice or let me walk your dog or wash your car. Watch out, man. Yeah, I know. I'm in trouble now. Yeah. You're mean at detailing cars. Yeah. Or come to Thousand Oaks and support us out there. We could use the support or, or I don't know. You could always, my email's on, on all of those things. It's just my first and last name at hotmail.com. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, man. So if you're in LA, definitely drop in,

say hello to Khalil, give him a shout out, man. And, uh, thanks for taking the time, brother. Thanks man.

All right, dude. Peace. Peace. Plants. Thank you. you you you you