Irish Gangster Richie Stephens’ Guide to Sobriety‎ (and Second Chances)

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Speaker 01

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

• 1:51Speaker 01

  My heart was coming through my chest. So I pulled over, I smoked like five cigarettes, and I was like, "I'm not going to jail for killing this fool." And I decided I would go to Australia.

• 2:16Rich Roll?

  So today, we're going to spin an addiction to recovery yarn, old school style, what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now vibe. So gird your loins, because this story is pretty fucking wild. The teller of said story is my friend, Richie Stephens. Richie is an Irish gangster turned actor, turned sober storyteller, best known for playing, you guessed it, gangsters and hardened criminals, and a long line of movies and television procedurals. Given his past as a drug trafficker, a kidnapper, a drug addict, an alcoholic, and basically just an all around criminal himself, this

• 2:57Rich Roll?

  is a bit of a real life Barry situation. It's a tale he lets loose in his wildly entertaining and darkly comic new book called The Gangster's Guide to Sobriety, which chronicles his descent into the abyss and his slog to redemption, and also is currently being developed into a television series by the creators of the hit TV show Silicon Valley. Richie's a hell of a storyteller. This one is no holds barred, and it's coming right up. But first.

• 3:36Rich Roll?

  So as many of you know, I've been sober for a bit. When you've been around, you tend to meet more than a few colorful characters. You have the privilege of seeing lives transformed. And Richie happens to be one of those guys. I've known him for about a decade. But even as someone who believes in transformation, as I do, I could not have predicted the stunning, remarkable arc of this guy's life. Richie's somebody I admire for his commitment to service, because this guy anonymously, he wouldn't even mention it in the podcast, but I will, helps so many people, mostly some of the hardest, most discarded, down on their luck

• 4:18Rich Roll?

  folks you can possibly imagine. This conversation is wall to wall stories that will blow your hair back, and I think make you realize that if Richie could go from where he was to where he is today, that truly anything is possible.

• 4:36Rich Roll?

  A little alert for the more squeamish. There's a fair amount of profanity in this episode. Tales of violence throughout the conversation. So maybe not ideal to play in the car with the kiddos in the backseat. And without warning, let's do the thing. This is me and Richie Stephens.

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  I'm just super excited to talk to you. It's always cool when I get to have friends on the show and I was thinking back to when we first met and I can't remember the very first time, but it has to have been at least 10 years.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Maybe nine at least.

• 5:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. So you moved to, you moved to LA in 2010?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  No, I think it was 2013.

• 5:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, 2013. Okay. So yeah, maybe just under, under 10 years. And I just remember, I have like a vague memory of you just telling insane stories. And I was thinking, this guy, man, this guy's full of shit. There's no way this stuff is real, you know?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Well, the first person to read like my original manuscript was the book agents. Well, besides my partners. And the original one was like really long. It was like 105,000 words, 430 pages. And they read it twice and they were like, this is crazy. Like it can't be true, but there's so much detail in it. It could be true. And then they were like, did this really happen? You know, like this is great, but how do we sell this? Because it's just like a crazy.

• 6:05Rich Roll?

  Just on and on and on with like one insane story after the next. So what was the decision to cut it down to be, you know, such a relatively small book?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Well, so we rewrote the book. Like my original book was just all my experiences written down. And then I partnered up with John and Dave because they want to make a TV show out of it. And they were like, it's not really accessible. So we need to like reformat it somehow. So it's relatable to people because most people don't know who I am. So why do you care about this guy? You know, but so I got sober with the, using the 12 steps by going to meetings. And they were like, why don't we format it like how you got sober through the 12 steps and each chapter will be. Thematically written around a step.

• 6:51Rich Roll?

  Right, so each chapter is a step with your own kind of like spin on the subtitle for that step. The guys wrote a foreword and then the first chapter is you breezing through the whole story from like 10,000 feet. So you get a sense of just how crazy your life has been. And then each chapter takes you through the steps and uses stories from your past to illustrate how you worked the step, which I thought was a really cool kind of narrative technique.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And it's, I guess it's more relatable for people. It's not too long. It's under 200 pages. So.

• 7:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:26Rich Roll?

  It's a good yarn dude, and nobody loves a good addiction recovery yarn more than this guy. So well done, my friend. And it's exciting that it's going to be out in the world. And such an amazing arc, given where you came from to where you are now. And I thought it would be cool to just format this conversation around what we know best, which is what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. We can kind of do it like a meeting, you know? So take us back and like paint the crazy picture of growing up in this small town in Ireland and how it kind of all went insane.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm, you know, born and raised in Ireland. I came to America in my early twenties. And where I'm from, it's like middle of nowhere, you know, countryside. And when I was a kid, I was like, I was really shy and quiet, you know? I didn't have a lot of self-confidence and, you know. Where I grew up was like a tough place, you know, like if you compare it to America, like when I was growing up, men where I'm from don't drink cocktails, you know? Men don't drink cocktails. Men don't really use umbrellas. Like it rains a lot in Ireland and you might see like a doctor or a teacher maybe carrying an umbrella, but like it's piss and rain all the time. Everybody's just standing out in it.

• 8:44Speaker 01

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

• 9:04Rich Roll?

  So the town is called Cavan. How do you pronounce it?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Cavan's the county, C A V A N, Cavan.

• 9:10Rich Roll?

  And what's interesting about that, I actually like, went to Google Maps and pulled down pictures because I wanted to get a visual sense of what that place was like. And not a lot going on, a lot of pictures of like a church. It's kind of it. But you grew up close to the border of Northern Ireland. So you have this spillover of Protestants, right? So you have the Protestant Catholic kind of tension that was going on that I'm sure kind of underscored, you know, just the whole vibe of growing up there.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, so where I grew up is at the border, so the border of Northern Ireland. There was a lot of like, I guess terrorists around there, you know, because it's at the border. And I'm Catholic, you know, I was raised Catholic, but my dad was a Protestant. So I have a Protestant name. Like in Ireland, if you're Catholic, you'll have a name like O'Reilly or McDonald or something like that. But if you're Protestant, you have like a British sounding name. So my name's Richie Stephens. So like, I sound like I'm Protestant and then I was sent to like a Catholic school. And it wasn't a whole lot of fun, as you could imagine. Like, like in Ireland, maybe when I was growing up, where I'm from, maybe 90% of people were Catholic.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  10% were Protestants. But my mother was like devout Catholic. So we were all sent to Catholic schools, but I hated it, you know? It wasn't, it wasn't easy, like, you know, a lot of people kind of romanticized the IRA, you know, the terrorist group over there. You know, I got dogs abuse in the school because, you know.

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  Right, even though you were in Catholic school and were raised Catholic, you had this Protestant last name. So it puts like a target on your back.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. Yeah, and I was, you know, I used to let myself get pushed around. I used to always worry about things. It was like, I was very, very self-conscious all the time. Like where I'm from, it's really important to play like football, Gaelic football. And That's all really people care about in the area. So it's like, if you go to a bar with your parents and you meet somebody, the first thing they'll say is, does this man play football? And you could be a fucking brain surgeon, and if you didn't play football, you were no good. You know, so I played football, but I was no good at it. I had zero talent for it, no matter how hard I tried. But it's kind of like, if you didn't tog out, that's what they call it, like to show up, you were no good. Like, so I played football, but

• 11:37Speaker 01

  I was never any good at it, you know. Every time I would play a game, if I get the ball, I'd be so self-conscious, I wouldn't even know what to do. Like, and I would just get nailed all the time by the other players. And, you know, I tried to fit in as best as I could, but what really did it for me was the drinking, you know. I started off, I went to a concert one time, like, I was about fourteen or fifteen, I went to this concert over on the West Coast. It was Beastie Boys, Garbage, all these kind of bands. And a girl on the bus on the way home gave me, gave me a beer to see if I wanted to drink, like, and I was like, okay, I tried this drink. And then I was like, it was like, wow, it's like.

• 12:17Rich Roll?

  Lights went on.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I didn't care what anybody thought about me. I had zero fear about anything. I was like, this is like the special sauce that I want to drink all the time, you know?

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I really related to that sense of internal turmoil that you experienced as a young person, just feeling like out of place all the time, not comfortable in your own skin, that sense of self-consciousness and kind of free-flowing anxiety. And what was interesting, what I didn't know, was that you grew up like a pretty good kid. Like, the book's called The Gangster's Guide to Sobriety, but it's not like you grew up in a notorious Irish crime family. Like, you grew up with parents who cared for you, and, you know, your needs were met, and you were kind of a shy, introverted kid. So all the insanity doesn't spawn from like a completely dysfunctional family situation.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't blame that on anybody. Like, you know, I have a brother and sister who are normal, like, and as far as I know, like, nobody in my family's ever been in trouble with the law before. So I'm like the black sheep. But it was weird, because some people can just have a few drinks and nothing happens. And then there's just certain people who just, the rulebook goes out the window. And I was that kind of a person, you know? That's how it affected me.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

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

• 13:49Speaker 01

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

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  And very industrious and entrepreneurial.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  In my own head, I was, yeah, I was keeping the show on the road.

• 14:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it did something for me that, that I didn't have beforehand. It was my solution to how I felt.

• 14:41Rich Roll?

  So you have that epiphany on the bus ride, coming back from the concert, having the drink because the pretty girl asked you to. You have this sense like, oh, this is the solution to the problem I didn't even know that I had. So where does it go from there? For me, like just in reading the book and knowing you, it's pretty incremental. Like, that's a very innocent kind of introduction to alcohol that probably is extremely common. Like, a lot of people have their version of that. But that relationship to alcohol and what it meant to you at that time, sets in motion a chain of events that just spiral crazy out of control.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it didn't happen overnight, the craziness. It was kind of, the problem was with me, there was no predicting how, how it would end up. Like, sometimes I could have a few scoops and, and score with a woman and, and go home and everything was fine. And then there's other times I would blackout, wake up on the floor of someone's living room, you know? There was no predicting, you know, but, but I didn't care. Like, for, for me, it was worth it. For the ease and comfort that I got out of it, it was really worth it. And like,

• 15:50Speaker 01

  The way it works in Ireland, if you're, it's eighteen to drink in a bar or a club, right? And I was fifteen, maybe fourteen or fifteen when I started drinking. And I wanted to drink with the grownups, like, I wanted to go to clubs and bars, but the problem was, you need an ID, because I still look pretty young, I have a baby face, like. And so I decided to start making fake IDs. And first I just made one for myself and a couple of my friends, and it was great, it worked, I could go to all the bars and, you know, all the other kids heard that I had a fake ID, so a few people asked me to make them, and they said they'd pay me, and that's how it started. I had this buddy, he was a year older than me in school.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  We'll call him Walter for the, for the sake of the story.

• 16:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was wondering if you anonymized all these people.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  I had to, yeah, lawyers made me, you know, well, some people are dangerous, you don't wanna, you don't wanna, you know, it's a bad, but, but, so, yeah, Walter, he came up with the idea, he said, why don't you make the IDs and I'll sell them, and we'll have a business, and we can make a bunch of money, and, and, I said, okay, and first I started making IDs for all the people in my school. And then I was making them for people in other schools who I'd never met before, I had like a-

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  What were you charging for an ID?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  It was really cheap, it was like five bucks.

• 17:11Rich Roll?

  Should've charged more.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, but I, I was, I was only doing it for some drinking money, I wasn't trying to become a kingpin or something like that. But, yeah, it just got out of control, and, but it was great, because like, I would go everywhere around the county.

• 17:27Rich Roll?

  You're popular.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was popular.

• 17:29Rich Roll?

  You go from being this kind of quiet kid to suddenly being the guy that is in high demand.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was, it was fun, and I had all this, like, I was broke, so I got all this drinking money from it, and I could go to different bars and clubs, and people would, like, I'd already shown them my ID before, so they knew my name and what I drank and all this kind of stuff, it was, and I was just a kid.

• 17:52Rich Roll?

  What's great, though, is that you get busted for this racket, right? And you get charged with like offense of the state or something like that because of the official seal or something like that, that you figured out how to create in a unique way that like freaked out the authorities.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Well, basically, the way IDs worked in Ireland back then, you get what's a police ID or in Ireland is called the garda. So you have a guard ID. So I was copying the guard ID because it was an official, an official ID. But back then it was like, it was easy to make one. It was kind of like, it was like a card, a blue card, and then typewriter would have your name and your date of birth. And then in the back, there was a stamp. It was like a police stamp and I was able to forge the stamp in order, you know, that was tricky enough. But what happened was Walter got caught and he rolled over on me. And, you know, I found out about it. I was out of the house one day and I came home and my mother says, "The police were looking for you." I was like, "Fuck, what happened?" She

• 18:54Speaker 01

  goes, "That friend of yours fucking told the police you were making the IDs." I was like, "Oh, God." So I had to go in and like talk to the police, make, you know, have an interview. And it was nerve wracking, you know, they thought I had either stolen a stamp from the police station, or maybe there was some kind of a mole or something, you know, they didn't know how I was doing it. So I had to go in and explain to them that the way I make these is I just make the stamp on my computer. I print it onto like an old photograph, you know, like a glossy photograph, like an inkjet printer, if you print onto a photograph, and if it's glossy, it'll stay wet.

• 19:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't dry.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically, I would print it onto an old photo and then stamp it onto the card. And then it looks like a stamp.

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  But you had to print it in reverse, right?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had to print it in reverse because if you do that, it comes up backwards. So eventually I figured this shit out and I was trying to explain it to the cops. And I was like a 15, 16 year old kid and they're listening. They're like, "Jesus, huh? Jesus." You know, because... They must have thought I was some kind of a criminal genius, but yeah, they were like, these are very serious charges, because that's like what they charge terrorists with. Because terrorists in Ireland, they make fake documents and stuff like that. And my friend Walter, his family were known to be terrorists as well. So the fact that I was working with him was kind of, well, they wanted to get to the bottom of it. And in the end, I just pretended I only met a couple of them. I was, I'm sorry, I only met a couple of my friends, I won't do it again.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  And I hadn't been in trouble before, so they let me away with it.

• 20:29Rich Roll?

  Right, so a couple of observations on that. First of all, this is your first brush with the law. And also, you know, the first kind of like true resentment with a friend, because this guy Walter sold you out, right? And that's where, you know, the anger kind of enters the picture, right? And anger plays a much bigger role as you, you know, walk this path. But I'm curious about like where you think, like, what is the genesis of that anger? Like, you would have these crazy outbursts and you get in all these fights later on and stuff like that. Like, what is that about? And how have you kind of made peace with that or resolved it?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Well, I think originally because I used to get pushed around in school, like because my old man was a Protestant. Like, so in Ireland, where I'm from, like a derogatory thing that they'll say to somebody who's Protestant, they'll say, you're a black cunt, you know? Not black as in the color of your skin, but back in the old days, like in the nineteen teens or whatever, after World War One, there were these British soldier group called the Black and Tans. And they came to Ireland and they massacred a bunch of people and stuff like that. So when they're calling you black, they're calling you one of those Black and Tans. Like, so I was pushed around at school because of that kind of stuff. So I think when I was little and I had no confidence or no courage,

• 21:48Speaker 01

  you know, that affected me. And then after I started drinking and I had this psychological change, made me a different person, then I was like determined not to take any shit from anybody because of how I had been treated when I was younger, you know? So I think I probably had a little bit of it. It took, it took a while for that to grow, you know? Like, even when I first started drinking.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  I don't know what it's like now, but when I was growing up back home, Ireland was like violent, you know, not a lot of people getting murdered, but when you go out drinking, everybody used to drink a lot. And then at the end of the night, we would go to these fast food restaurants, they call them chippers back home because they sell fries, like fish and chips, you know. And after the night of drinking, everybody goes to the chipper and that's when you would see the fights, you know, because you have.

• 22:41Rich Roll?

  It's like sports, like a spectator sport.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I used to sit in the chipper and watch these fucking buys throwing each other, beating each other. It was, it was mayhem. And when I was like, when I first came to America, I was only a hundred and sixty pounds. I was light, you know. So back then I was like a skinny, light kid, but I'm like taking all this shit in. And it was really exciting. It was like an action movie in front of you.

• 23:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  You know, and, and it was funny. Sometimes it was like, um, sometimes it would be over nothing. Like, like, say you're in the chipper and, and there's a guy there with his woman and, and a drunk guy like gives her the eye. He could get knocked out for that, you know, or spill some chips on somebody. You'd see, see them flying over tables.

• 23:27Rich Roll?

  It reminds me of that scene in, uh, The Gentleman. You see that movie where Colin Farrell beats the shit out of a bunch of kids in a chipper. You know, that idea.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that could happen anytime. But when I first started going out, I used to work at a gas station. Back in the day, there was people called gas station attendants who would come and fill your gas for you. Like now, everybody just, uh, everybody fills their own gas. Well, that was my first job. I was like fifteen or sixteen and I was working with these older boys. And one of them, I probably shouldn't say his name, but his nickname is Tits, because he, he had man boobs, you know. But Tits used to bring me out and, and I used to look up to him, you know, he was one of these guys. When I first met him, he had been arrested like thirty times just for like fighting or stupid drunk shit and he never went to jail. Cause when I was growing up, there was like, there was no real penalties for that.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Like, like in California, I couldn't believe when I got here, there's not a whole lot of fights because if you like, just put your hand on someone or spit on them, you're going to jail. But back home, you could kick the shit out of someone and maybe if the cops got you, you might have to go to court and pay a couple of hundred dollars fine. That's all it was. It was like a boys will be boys mentality to the law.

• 24:44Rich Roll?

  Is it still like that there?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  I don't know. It might not be, but when I was growing up, that's how it was. And I used to hang out with tits and he'd bring me out and, and you know, he, he, he was kind of a role model for me.

• 24:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is the truth or the lived experience of growing up around the IRA? Cause you know, my relationship to that is just what I've read in books or seen in movies.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? I'll tell you, I'll tell you the main thing that Hollywood never gets right about the IRA. Like whenever you see the movies or anything like that about the IRA, they make it out like it's this really fucking secret thing where these guys come out of nowhere and nobody knows who they are. But in real life, you know exactly who's in the IRA. Cause in Ireland, like it's a small country. Everybody knows everybody. So if your neighbor is in the IRA, you know, like if their kid is on the team with you, everybody knows because they have marches and shit and you see them at the marches or they might come to the bar to collect money for whatever, the prisoners or whatever the fuck they're collecting money for. So in real life, everybody knows exactly who's in the IRA.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  So there's, there's no secret, you know, but still.

• 25:56Rich Roll?

  And you just sort of tiptoe around it and tread lightly?

• 26:01Speaker 01

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

• 26:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  You know, but I always ended up with being friends with a bunch of their kids because there were a lot of them were kind of wild like I was. You know?

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, wow. So the drinking starts to escalate. Hash enters the picture. At some point you start kind of selling, dealing a little bit, like walk me through that next phase.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Exact same shit as the drinking. With the drinking, I started selling IDs to fund my drinking. And then with the hash, like I started smoking hash when I was maybe 16 or 17 too. And because it was, I knew it couldn't kill you and it looked cool, you know? And I had seen it on TV and movies and stuff like that. And so I wanted to try it. And I met these guys one night in Calvin. Can't really use their names. Let's call them.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  This guy has a really obvious name. We'll call him Pigeon, right?

• 27:07Rich Roll?

  All right, there you go.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I met Pigeon and his buddy one night and he goes, he says, you want to buy some hash? Hi. They have all this funny way of talking. You think my way is funny. They have all this weird lingo, like where I'm from, they say, hi sham or hi sobla. He'd say, hi sham, you want to buy some hash? Hi. They say hi about everything. It's weird. So I says, yeah, how much is it? He goes, I'll give you a five spot. It was five pounds at the time. Now we have euros, but back then we had pounds. So he like sold me this little ball of hash and it was in a matchbox. And he said, do you know how to smoke it? I said, no. And he rolled me a joint and we smoked it together. And it was like, it was like discovering alcohol all over again.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Except not so crazy. It was more chilled, like there was no, you wouldn't fall down on hash really. You probably couldn't crash a car on it, you know? But, but I, once I discovered the hash too, it was something that I, I wanted to do all the time, even though I knew it was illegal. Had to be careful not to get caught, but yeah, I started to sell it to fund my my use of it.

• 28:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And what's going on at home at this time? Like, what's mom?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Oh, I kept it quiet from from the parents, you know, like, I led a double life, really, with my folks and even with my wife and everything down through the years. I would do a lot of secret shit. You know, I would stay over with friends and, you know, sometimes I would come home and my poor mother would be like sitting in the kitchen at four o'clock in the morning waiting for me. I'd walk in the door drunk and, you know, I felt bad about it, but I still felt like it was worth it at the time.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  Well, it's also that thing where you think you're getting away with this, that double life, that they're not aware of what you're doing, but it's pretty transparent.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is what it is. Like, yeah, I put I put my poor parents through a lot, like, you know, because later when I got into trouble, everybody around knows everybody and stuff like that. So when I got into trouble later, I got caught dealing, everybody knew.

• 29:08Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, how are they now? What do they think about this book and this potential TV show and all of that? It must be a mind blower.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  Well.

• 29:16Rich Roll?

  Have you? You probably haven't been. Have you been back home at all?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I've been home a load of times. Yeah, I'm sure they don't like this stuff being brought up, but it is what it is. It's a positive story. I turned my life around. It's not like I'm still doing this kind of stuff, you know?

• 29:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but just the idea that like, there's a book out there and you're kind of being feted, celebrated.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, my mother like said to me, she goes, Jesus Christ, you're not worried about people knowing what you did? And I'm like, I give a fuck. I wouldn't have wrote it in a book, like, you know, I'm sorry you feel that way, but

• 29:52Speaker 01

  that's only natural, I suppose.

• 29:53Rich Roll?

  But that's that shame thing, right? That kind of emanates out of Catholicism. Like, we keep our weaknesses private.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, when I was a kid, I was like, I was super into the Catholicism, like, even though I didn't like been forced to go to church every week, I was an altar boy at the at the church and and that shit used to make me nervous as well because you got to sit up in front of everybody at the front of the church and. You know, if you're an altar boy, you have to like ring the bell at certain times during the thing and I would always be so nervous about that shit as well. I'd either missed the fucking time I was supposed to do it or ring it too early or it was fucking mortifying. You know, same shit with the water and the wine. You bring over the water and the wine to the priest at a certain time. I was always fucking that up, you know?

• 30:42Rich Roll?

  Well, when you get sober though, and you're kind of confronted with the idea of embracing a higher power, Catholicism didn't exactly, you know, strike you as a good option at the time.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  No, by the time I got sober.

• 30:56Rich Roll?

  Like there's a soured relationship.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Just God in general. When I got sober, I was a complete atheist. I didn't believe there could be God. Like, the way I saw it was, God is like something that people believe in when they're children, like Santa Claus, you know, and all these bad things had happened to me. And I just didn't believe that there could be a God, you know, and that's, that's the way I felt before I got sober. Yeah.

• 31:31Rich Roll?

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

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I got to college and by the time I got to college, I was, I was a regular hash smoker and a regular drinker. And, you know, I wasn't afraid to fight or I wasn't afraid to score with the women. And I was just, I was dealing a little bit of hash. And then I met my friend Tomo. So Tomo kind of changed everything. Yeah. I was introduced to him by my friend Ferret. And he was, he was called Ferret because he talks really fast. He sounds like a ferret. But yeah, so Ferret introduced me to Tomo and he was a real character. He was always talking about where he's from. Apparently he used to deal a lot of ecstasy. People talk a lot of shit. So I was always, I was always skeptical, you

• 32:30Speaker 01

  know, and we used to hang out with Tomo. He'd be telling us about these tall tales about how he was dealing ecstasy in his hometown and all this kind of shit. And one night we were all drinking around Halloween. We're over at my place. We were drinking a load of beer and smoking hash. And we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood. And there was a There was a house party going on. So we walked up to the house party. It was like four or five of us. It was me, Ferret, Pat the Rat and, uh, and Tomo. He was called Pat the Rat because he kinda looks like a rat. He wasn't, wasn't a snitch.

• 33:04Rich Roll?

  Also lots of Pats, right? So every Pat had to have like an appendage.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you're Irish, you'll know a lot of Pats, a lot of PJs, all that. So, so a lot of boys that I knock around would have nicknames. So we saw this house party going on and we walked up and we rang the doorbell. Some dude answered the door and we're like, oh, can we come into your party? And they were like, uh, no, no, we don't know you. You can't come in. So I'm like, fuck. And, uh, then they closed the door on us. We went back to the house and we're drinking again. We're like, fuck those pricks. Wouldn't let us into the party like. And Tomo had like a bottle of wine there and he goes, he goes, "Mush, do you dare me to come back and put this through the fucking window?" We were, we were, we thought, oh, that's always bullshit. He's never gonna do that. And we're like, yeah, we dare you. Do it. So we walked back around the block again.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  And Tomo got the fucking wine bottle and just fucked it through the window, like straight through the window of the fucking house like. We were like, wow, Tomo's fucking crazy. He actually did it. Like we all ran away, like, you know? And then after that, I was like, wow, Tomo's the real deal. He's, he's, this guy isn't a bullshitter or anything, you know? And then, so me and Tomo were out one night. There's a bar called the L A, Lancer Arms. We were in the Lancer Arms and I knew Tomo did ecstasy. But I was afraid to do ecstasy because I thought, you know, in the news, you read these stories about how people took ecstasy one time and they fucking died like, and then.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  I, I always thought like, I'm kind of unlucky. So that would probably be me if I took the ecstasy one time. So. Tits used to do it, my old friend from Calvin, but I used to hang out with him while he was on ecstasy, but, but, uh. I was always scared to do it because I thought I would be that unlucky person that it kills. And then one night we're out in the LA, me and Tomo, and he goes, Mush, do you want to try one of these ecstasy? And I was like, uh, well, I don't know, I fucking, I'm afraid it might kill me, you know? He goes, Mush, these are light ones. They're really light. They're not strong. You'll be grand. So he handed me this beige pill with double O seven on it. And I saw this pill and he goes, go on, take one, fuck. Go into the bathroom, take it.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  So I went into the bathroom. I was really scared. I had this fucking double O seven pill in my hand. And I was thinking, hmm, Tomo's smart and if they haven't killed him, maybe I'd be okay with it, you know? So I said, fuck it. A half wouldn't kill somebody. A quarter definitely wouldn't. So I broke it in half and then I broke it in half again and I took a quarter and I put the other three quarters back into my pocket. And I came back outside and Tomo goes, did you take it? And I was like, yep. He goes, all right, let me know when you're coming up. And then coming up means it started to take effect. So maybe half hour later, three quarters of an hour later, I'm not feeling anything.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Tomo says, are you coming up yet? I was like, oh, no. He goes, did you take it all? I was like, oh, I only took a half. And he goes, Mush, take a whole one. These are really light. You gotta take a whole one. So I went back in, took another quarter, went back in, took another quarter and then eventually I started coming up. And ecstasy was like nothing I had ever tried before. It was, it's called ecstasy for that reason. It actually feels like ecstasy. I came out and I was like, I loved everybody in the fucking place, you know, I had no bad feelings. It was overwhelming like, and I was just thinking, fuck, why doesn't everybody on earth take these all the time?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  You know, I was thinking there would be no wars or anything. This is fucking great. And, and that, that night I ended up, uh, like I would be all sweaty and my jaw would be hanging and my foot would be tapping. And music sounded good and I ended up taking two on my first night. And it was kind of like, it was like discovering alcohol all over again, except a hundred times better. And I loved it. And then ecstasy costs money as well. So there was the financial problem of paying for the ecstasy. And I was the first one out of my friends to start taking it. And then Pat the Rat started taking it and other boys as well. And so I was sort

• 37:25Speaker 01

  of friendly, right? Tomo was kind of quiet and antisocial, so not a lot of people knew him. So I was kind of like, all my friends started taking them after me and we were all doing them together. A lot of people were telling me to to get pills off them from Tomo. And so I was ending ending up getting ten or fifteen a night for everybody and just getting them as a favor. And Tomo says to me, he goes, mush, why don't you take a hundred of these? And you can sell some of them. And then you get a bunch of money and you get do your own for free. And I was like, oh, no, no, that's dealing. That's serious. If the cops catch you dealing, it wouldn't be like the ideas. I'd fucking go to jail for that shit for years. Like, and he goes, mush, you're already dealing

• 38:07Speaker 01

  them. I was like, no, not I'm getting them as favors. And he says, mush, if the cops catch you, the charge is for sale or supply. You're supplying them. So you're already dealing them for free. I was like, fuck, he's right. Yeah, I was like, fuck, I'm already dealing them for free. You might as well. And it made sense. And Tomo was smart. So I was like, okay. And then I just by default, just like that, I became an ecstasy dealer because I ended up getting them from my friends. And then Tomo started like, training me how to do it. Like, it's, you know, say if you're a parent out there and you're wondering how does your kid get involved in drugs, like, someone has to show them, you know,

• 38:47Speaker 01

  at least the ins and outs of how to do it. I get like bags of a hundred and and he like, you know, he'd tell me how much to charge and not to give people credit and, you know, all the ins and outs of it, how to watch out for the cops, all this kind of stuff. Just like that, it just seemed to happen in a short period of time. I was supplying the whole college with it, you know?

• 39:11Rich Roll?

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

• 39:35Speaker 01

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

• 40:16Speaker 01

  about 10 pounds a piece for one pill. And I was getting them for three or four pounds a piece in bulk. So when they're cheaply available and, and when they're not working as good, you end just end up just taking more and more and more, you know? And, and that's what happened to me. The tolerance went up and

• 40:34Rich Roll?

  But then the come down, you get that depression and all that.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, the highs were very, very high and the lows were really, really low. And, you know, I started dating this girl, we'll call her Tabitha. I was madly in love with her. Like, before I started doing ecstasy, I don't think I could even experience the emotion of love. I was like, really, really closed off and stuff like that. But when I started doing ecstasy, I was like, you know, I think it did something to my personality that wasn't there before. And I was madly in love with this chick and we were, we were going out for a while. And she would always end up getting me into fights with people. I remember one time. Uh, I was staying at her house one night, her bedroom was on the second floor.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And I was sound asleep in bed, I'd say it was about one o'clock in the morning. And I wake up and she's screaming Richie, Richie, Richie. I fucking wake up, right? And the window was right beside the bed.

• 41:32Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:32Speaker 01

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

• 42:13Rich Roll?

  Second floor, I mean, if he had fallen and cracked his head.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then the next day, now this would only happen in Ireland. This would never happen in America. The next day I'm sitting in the living room with her and her roommate and the doorbell rings and it's the guy from last night. And I looked out the window and I saw him and his, the poor guy, I gave him a bad old beating with the window. Like I probably hit him about 20 times where his face was all swollen and cut. But I thought he was coming back to, to get me. So I, I grabbed the poker out of the fireplace and I came out like, and, but she answered the door, but the guy just came to apologize. I guess he sobered up and realized what happened. This would only happen in Ireland, like, but the guy came to apologize.

• 42:56Rich Roll?

  In LA.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  That would never happen in America, you know? But the dude had come back to apologize and she answered the door and she saw his face and I'm behind her with the poker. I was gonna fight him with the poker because I didn't know what was happening. And she was trying to invite him in for a cup of tea because she felt bad and all he wanted to do was apologize and hope that she wasn't gonna call the police, you know?

• 43:16Rich Roll?

  Well, now I know why John and Dave want to make a TV show out of this, because the thing about the book and these stories as sort of, you know, horrid and awful as some of this stuff is, like, there's this undercurrent of hilarity. Like, there's a lot of comic relief in all of this.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  You have to have a dark sense of humor.

• 43:34Rich Roll?

  Without making excuses for your violent behavior and, obviously, people were hurt and all of that. Like, just imagining in my mind, like, what that must have looked like. Like, it's very cinematic.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think that one even made it into the book.

• 43:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, I didn't think of that.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but...

• 43:51Rich Roll?

  But I think the thing, too, like, to go back to something you said a few minutes ago, you said that you couldn't access that feeling of love until you took ecstasy. And I think it's an important point to make, that you make in the book, which is, like, these things work, man. And when you're an addict or an alcoholic, something does get unlocked. Like, it is serving a purpose. And I think in terms of talking openly about the nature of addiction and recovery, it's important to acknowledge, like, that fact. Like, they serve a purpose. And in recovery, when you look back and kind of regale in these stories, to acknowledge, like, I needed that, and actually, it did something for me. And

• 44:33Rich Roll?

  it worked until, obviously, it stopped working, and then it became very dark and terrible. But there is that peace there, that it's important to be honest about that.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll be real about everything, you know. Obviously, some of the stuff is very embarrassing, but like, if you can't be honest, like, what's the point? You know, that's the way I see it. But, basically, anyway, I was madly in love with this girl, and we ended up breaking up. And I was pretty down about it. And by that stage, I was probably doing ecstasy three or four times a week. I was averaging 15 or 20 pills in a night. So I was, like, all over the place. The head wasn't working right. And, you know, I was feeling really down. It was around the time of 9/11. And I remember one day, I decided to get

• 45:24Speaker 01

  two bottles of Jack Daniels. I was just kind of drowning my sorrows, you know? So I brought them to the house and it was like, I was drinking these bottles of JD and I got more and more depressed and I said, fuck it, I'll just kill myself, you know? And I had a hundred ecstasy. I started with a handful of five. So I started just drinking and swallowing the ecstasy, started putting out cigarettes on my arm. I still have these scars on my arm from where I was doing that and got a knife, I started cutting my hand. It was like, I barely even remember it, but what happened was, I took about thirty pills

• 46:06Speaker 01

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

• 46:48Speaker 01

  around two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, I have a life insurance policy, right? In case something happened to me, the missus and the kids would be okay, you know? And I used to, I used to party with my life insurance agent, this guy called Chris. And anyway, I was on the tear, drinking loads and doing loads of drugs and I decided, fuck it, I'll just kill myself. But I was like, oh, what if, if I kill myself, will that nullify the fucking policy for the life insurance? So I'm outside my house, smoking cigarettes, like planning my death. And I ring up Chris, he's like, hey Richie, what's going on? I was like, hey Chris, if I kill myself, does that nullify the policy?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  And he says, he says, yeah, you fucking idiot. It's fucking suicide. I'm like, shit, I don't wanna fucking leave my fucking kids penniless. And you know what he said to me that just snapped me out of it that night? He said, he said, Richie, you're like a fucking fat kid who's crying because he can't eat his fucking cake. That's what he said to me. And for some reason, that just snapped me out of it. It was weird. I had loads of incidents like that. Like another time, I'd say it was maybe around two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight. I used to be a carpenter. When I came to America, I learned how to be a carpenter. I was a drug dealer, but also a carpenter. And this buddy of mine, Dav, he had a side job for me to do on the weekends.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  He says, he calls me Fetch. So he says, Hey Fetch, do you wanna do a side job at the weekend? I says, yeah, what is it? He says, it's at a fortune teller's up in Laguna Honda. You have to, you have to like, she wants to build a couple of walls or some shit. I was like, okay. But the night before, I was on like a really bad bender. So I was, I was dying while I was working. And I was thinking about killing myself while I was working at this fortune teller's. You know, she was very nice. I was working away, I was putting down my plates, nailing them with a nail gun. And, and she's watching me while I'm working. And, and, and I'm thinking, you know what? When I'm done here, I'll go to the fucking bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge. I'll, I'll, I'll, cause a lot of people kill themselves on the Golden Gate Bridge.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  So I'm, I'm nailing my plates and I'm thinking, I'll go to the bridge when I'm done. And, and then I was thinking, fuck, you know, there's a net around the Golden Gate Bridge. So if you jump in the wrong place, you'll end up in the net. So I was thinking, fuck, knowing my luck, I'd probably end up in the fucking net, you know? And, and I'm nailing my studs and, and she's watching me. And then I'm thinking, you know what? I'll just go down there to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge and I'll blow me brains out. Nobody ever kills themselves with a gun on the Golden Gate Bridge. That's what I was thinking. Yeah, I'll do that, you know? And just while I'm working, I'm debating with myself how I'm gonna kill myself. And the fortune teller's watching me. And she she looks at me and she goes, oh, my God, you have a wonderful aura.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  And and I was, I just, it was so ridiculous. I laughed out loud. I was thinking, you fucking fraud. I didn't say anything to her, but the ridiculousness of what she said to me snapped me out of it for that day. It was so, so bizarre. Like, I had so many of those moments.

• 50:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, little little interventions.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  You weren't even aware of. But amongst all of these efforts to end your life, did it ever enter your mind, like, maybe I should get off the drugs and alcohol? Like, a normal person who's listening to this, like, I I understand where you're coming from. But a normal person is thinking, dude, it's the drugs and the alcohol, man. Just quit that shit.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I knew I had a problem with the drugs and alcohol, but I didn't put two and two together about the depression being linked to the drugs and alcohol. Like, as I said, growing up, I had no idea of what alcoholism really is, you know? I just basically thought it was someone who couldn't handle their shit. I didn't realize that part of it is it can make a person so depressed that they want to end their life, you know? So I thought there were two separate issues, you know? So until I got sober and I I found out, oh, that's part of the deal, you know? Yeah, depression is part of the deal. But, yeah, no, like, it crossed my mind.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  But when I was younger, like, in my early twenties, I was like, this is what people do in their twenties, right? And I I kind of thought, maybe I'll quit sometime in the future, maybe like when I'm thirty. You know, if I live that long, that's kind of what I thought.

• 51:22Rich Roll?

  Those goalposts keep moving.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. I moved the goalposts every time. And the funny thing was, a lot of times after a really bad bender, I'd be fucked for a day or two after it. And then during that day or two, I would kind of think, maybe I need to quit this shit, okay? Or maybe if I pissed off the wife, or if I did something, or maybe went missing or whatever I was doing. I would make promises to her as well, like, you know, because I wasn't fucking behaving like husband of the year, anything like that, you know? So and at times, I would really mean it. I'd be like, okay, never drinking again, never doing coke again. And then after I would feel better, after whatever, a week, once I start to recover.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  I thought my mind was changing. For a lot of years, I thought I changed my mind. I wanted to quit last week, but I don't want to quit this week. And then my mind would change, and I thought that was me changing my mind. For a lot, a lot of years, I thought that was me that was changing my mind each time. But then eventually, after a lot of years, I was 28 when I got sober. Eventually, it became obvious to me that it wasn't me that was changing my mind. It was something else that I was fucking powerless over. Like, you know, if you have a problem with the booze and the drugs, it's a very sneaky fucking mental condition. Because it'll tell you, you don't have the problem, you know?

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And I used to hang around with a lot of dudes who like, in my perception, were worse than I was. Because I could look at Eric or whoever I'm hanging out with and go, I'm not as bad as Eric, look at him, you know? But it's a defense mechanism.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  Sure, it's a wise strategy, though. So that you don't really have to own your own shit.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it happens even, it happens beyond your own consciousness. It fucking works in the background, it's weird.

• 53:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  You know?

• 53:14Rich Roll?

  You mentioned Travis and Tomo. I want to talk about the kidnapping. This is where shit gets serious.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Oh, God. So, after a couple of years of working with Tomo, working for Tomo, I could never seem to get ahead. I was always, always ended up owing him more money. He'd give me a hundred pills, and I would end up either taking most of them myself or giving them away and not being able to collect the money. And he, you know, he was throwing good money after bad. He would keep giving me more chances, giving me more pills.

• 53:51Rich Roll?

  This guy seems incredibly patient, given the fact that you were a terrible drug dealer.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Infernos, yeah, he was, you know? But, so, I was my own best customer, that was the problem. So I never got rich or anything like that, I was, I was a disaster. And so I ended up owing him a lot of money. And this guy Travis that I used to live with, we were only nineteen or twenty at the time, we were only kids still, but this guy was in his thirties. He was a good dude, he was kind of a hippie, you know, he was from down south in Cork. And like a nice fellow, wore glasses, you know, harmless, right? And Tomo was a wholesaler, I was like a street dealer that time, and Tomo was a wholesaler. So he would, he would be giving large amounts of drugs to different people.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And this guy Travis, he got a few kilos of hash on credit. So in Ireland we say on tic, that means basically on credit. So he gets the couple of kilos and then just disappears, just stopped answering his phone, no intention of paying it back, you know? He like, he wasn't telling Tomo to fuck off, he was just saying, just ignoring him. And then, so Tomo had got that on credit from his supplier. We had a bigger supplier, we used to go to down in a place called Navan. We called this boy Smiling Pat, because he was always smiling, but he was, he was really dangerous.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Anyway, Tomo's supplier Pat was getting impatient for the money. He's ringing up Tomo and putting power tools on the phone, like saws and shit like that, and saying, this is what you're gonna get if you don't pay that fucking money for, for what you owe. So I owe money to Tomo, Travis owes money to Tomo, and Tomo owes money to Pat. So that's where the dilemma started. And at the time, Tomo had this roommate up in Dublin, this guy called Mick, he was a British guy. Mick was like a shitbag, he, he, he borrowed a load of coke off a bunch of different gangsters up in Dublin, and they were shooting at Tomo in the street and everything like that, they

• 56:03Speaker 01

  tried to kill him over that, like, so. I was like, Tomo told me, I was like, what kind of a gun was it, you know? He goes, mush, I didn't stop to look at it, they were firing shots at me in the fucking street, you know? So we're all in a lot of trouble, right? But I'm trying to pay Tomo back, I'm his friend, so he's not really mad at me, but he's getting upset. And so the word is that Travis's parents have money. So Tomo says, okay mush, if you help us kidnap Travis, I'll write off your debt, and we'll get his parents to pay the money that he owes.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  So I'm like, fuck, that's really serious shit. And Travis had saved my life before. He wasn't a bad dude, even though he owed the money. So I was like, if you guys are gonna kill him, I'm not fucking helping you with that. He doesn't deserve to die, you know? So he goes, no, mush, swear to God, we won't kill him. And Tomo was actually Catholic enough, like if he swears to God, you believe him, you know? I did anyway. So Tomo lived in Dublin and I lived outside Dublin in a different town. And Travis lived in my town. And he goes, mush, soon as you see him, fucking call me. I'll be down with the boys from Dublin. We'll take him to a safe house and make his parents pay the money. So my job was to like, find him and let the boys know.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  So one day I'm down in this bar called The Roost. It's like a busy, fucking crowded place with like a DJ, you know? Kind of a college bar. So I'm down at The Roost one night and I see Travis and I message Tomo. And I said, he's here in The Roost. And Tomo rings me, he goes, mush, stay on him, we'll be down from Dublin. Stay on him, don't fucking lose him, let me know if he moves, right? So I'm watching him and then eventually he moves to go to another bar. There's one up the street called Caulfield's. It's like an old man's pub, like quiet, fucking, there might be five people there, dead, like. So I follow him up to Caulfield's and I'm waiting there with Tomo.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  And he's just having a pint of Guinness by himself, just fucking enjoying himself. Place is empty and quiet, like. And next thing, Tomo arrives, he had a separate crew of boys from Dublin. Like, there was me and the other boys, we hung around, but who were young lads. But Tomo was like my age, he was only nineteen or twenty. But he had these older ex-cons who like, followed him round up in Dublin. And like, he had a separate crew of boys from Dublin who were like really dangerous fellows, you know? Like ex-cons, you know? They were probably in their thirties, I'd say by that point. But in he walks with the boys, with his crew from Dublin. And I'm standing there watching and Travis just looks up and he sees the boys fucking in front of his table.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  And he looks at him and he goes, "Mush, come on, you're coming with us up to Dublin." And he didn't fight, he didn't kick or scream, he just fucking got up, he took it like a man. Right, but he knew the shit was real. Well, yeah, because he owed like thousands of pounds at the time, that was before the Euro changeovers, it would have been pounds, we had pounds at the time. Actually, when we changed from pounds to euros, Tomo had to change my debt from, "Okay, so you owe me a thousand pounds, that's equal to twelve hundred and fifty-six euros." We had to like change over what was owed to fucking euros, like, but, but yeah, so the boys walked out with Travis, like, and then,

• 59:29Speaker 01

  until I seen them walking out with him, I felt okay about it, you know, I was like, the guy owes the money, we're doing the right thing. But then when I seen them walking out with him, I was like, fuck, he might not make it back alive, like, you know, they might, and then I felt really bad about it and, you know, he had saved my life before too, that time I was gonna kill myself, so I felt terrible about it, you know? Right. Yeah, but it was, it was out of my control, like, so then later I found out what happened off Tomo. Basically, they brought him to the safe house, the safe house was Tomo's own house in Dublin. Yeah, no, no real safe house. They didn't really have a safe house, brought him to his fucking house, like, and they brought him up there and, and they were trying to scare him and,

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Tomo's brother, he's a really nice fellow, he's a gay dude, anyway, Tomo's brother comes in with like a tray full of tea, to the boys while they're in the middle, and Tomo's like, "Mush, get out the fuck, you're ruining the mood", like, you know, it sounded funny to me, like, but, first of all Travis was saying, "Oh, my parents don't have any money", you know? And then eventually, Tomo went down to the kitchen, he brought out some trash bags, and he says, "Mush, you pay the fucking money or you're going in the fucking bin bags." And then at that, Travis rang the parents and they drove up with the money, I don't know what it was, five or six grand, I think, plus, each of the kidnappers got five hundred apiece, plus whatever I owed, like, so they came up with the cash and,

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Tomo told me, they met in like a deserted parking lot, you know? Tomo came and he put one of those scarves around his, around his face, so, so they couldn't see his face and. Travis's mother had the money and she said, please don't hurt him. And Tom was like, I don't know nothing about it. I'm just here to pick up the money. You know, and she gave the money. They let him go. That was the end of it.

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So when it comes time for you to make amends for your role in this whole thing, it creates quite a dilemma for you.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Rich Roll?

  But now you've written about it in a book and even though you're using different names, these people have to know.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  These are all real people. Yeah. These are all real people. Yeah. But yeah, it's not fair to use the real names.

• 1:01:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So that's a tricky one, right? Like, how do you make this wrong right?

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Later on, like part of sobriety is when you're working the steps, you have to make amends to people you've hurt. Like when I was doing my amends list, he was the top of my list. Like my sponsor was this guy called Bernard. And he says, well, show me your list. And I took out the list and the top of the list was kidnapped Travis. And, you know, for the amends, you're supposed to run it by your sponsor. So, you know, it might be something like money owed or whatever. So I would always try and figure out in my head ahead of time what the amends might be, you know, and so I was thinking, what's the opposite of a kidnapping? I could send him on a lovely vacation. You know, that's what I was thinking in my head

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  when I first got sober and I was talking to my sponsor about it. And I told him, I says, do you want me to send him on a vacation? He says, does that man know you're involved in the kidnapping? I says, no. He says, well, don't fucking tell him. He says, it's probably the worst experience of the man's life. Just don't fucking kidnap anyone again. And that was the amends. It was you just want to leave the guy alone. Just don't ever do that kind of stuff again.

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  But now at some point, he might come across the book. And see this. So you might have to reopen that case.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Travis, if you're out there, let me know what I can do.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  Right. There might be a vacation coming your way.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Might be a vacation in your future.

• 1:03:13Rich Roll?

  Well, at some point, you pulled this geographic and moved to San Francisco, right, thinking like, oh, if I just get out of Dodge, all will be rainbows.

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, make a long story very short, I thought that Ireland was the problem. Maybe if I got out of Ireland that my fortunes would change. And I got married really young. My ex-wife was from San Francisco and that's how I ended up moving there when I was 22, became a dad. I tried to be good, really, at the start when I got there, and I was good for a few years, but eventually, things, I couldn't keep myself.

• 1:03:48Rich Roll?

  Well, you brought yourself with you.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, the only thing that changed was the location. I didn't change.

• 1:03:55Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, there's so many stories and incidents that you have, but the one thing that I do want to hear from you about is how you got involved with this Asian gang.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  I didn't even realize that was funny until I started working with John. You know, I told him I was in this Asian gang. He was like, "You were in an Asian gang?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he goes, "But you're not Asian." I was like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess I'm not." He's like, "Well, what were you doing with the Asian gang?" I was like, "Well, they had the best cocaine." You know, around recession time, there was no more work for a carpenter, and I was broke, and I had a bad enough cocaine habit. So I started dealing again because I couldn't afford to just be a user anymore. And I started off getting this crappy coke from this Irish guy I knew, this little Irish guy. His nickname was The Pony.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  So The Pony was giving me this crappy coke for 800 bucks an ounce, and it wasn't that strong. And I don't know if you know anything about drug dealing, it's way easier to sell stuff that's strong than not. So I was selling this crappy coke that I got off The Pony, and... And I used to get my own coke off these Asian guys. They were like organized crime, like professional dudes and they had really, really strong coke. It was, it was extra money per gram, but it was like pure, like uncut, fish scale. The shiny rocky stuff, the good stuff. So I was getting my own stuff off them for, for whatever, a couple of years and I, I was finding it hard to sell the shitty coke.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  And then I, I came up with, with the idea, why don't I ask these guys to buy the bulk off them, you know? And the main guy, we'll call him Ronald. I says to Ronald one day, I says, hey, can I start getting ounces off you guys? And he knew me for a while at this point and he goes, you can get it under one condition. And I'm like, what's that? He says, if you start getting it off us, you're not allowed to get it off anybody else. I'm like, why? He says, because we have really good shit and if you're working with us and then, and then you stop working with us and then you start selling crap, then it'll ruin our reputation. So I was like, fuck, that's a bit of a commitment, but, but they had the best coke around. So I was like, okay.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  And then he says, there's one other thing. If you ever rat on us, we'll kill your whole family. And I was like, fuck. Like, well, I never ratted on anybody before and I wasn't going to start now. So I was like, yeah, I can, I can, I can.

• 1:06:36Rich Roll?

  That's not a problem.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like.

• 1:06:38Rich Roll?

  But you were the, I mean, were you, how, how did you, I guess you had established some level of trust, but like, how do you ingratiate yourself into that community of people? I mean, you were, there couldn't have been any other non-Asian people working with that gang.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  I'll tell you now, right? So just to finish how I was, how I joined those guys. So, so he says, if you ever rattle us, we'll kill your whole family. And I said, okay, I won't rat on you. And he goes, if you're ever arrested, just keep your mouth shut and a lawyer will be provided for you. And that's what he told me. And he said, and the other good thing about working with us, if anybody fucks with you, we'll be up there with machine guns. I was like, fuck, okay, this is really serious. So that was me in with them, but before that I had, I had got coke off other people as well, but in San Francisco. Might be the same now, I don't know, but there's a few Asian gangs that supply all the Irish people with coke. There's a chick, a Vietnamese chick, I won't tell you what

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  her name is, but she's one of the big, big suppliers there. And, and then there was my guys, Ronald and Leroy. Leroy was kind of like off the boat Asian dude, he like never wore any shoes or socks when he was driving, you know. And then there was another guy called Johnny Go Anywhere. He was a, another Asian taxi driver. He had these business cards that said Johnny Taxi, Go Anywhere. So his nickname was Johnny Go Anywhere. But Johnny got killed around 2007, 2008. Yeah, somebody called him to go somewhere and he pulled up in the sunset and they shot him in the head and his car drove into a fucking house and exploded. But, uh, yeah, the, the word was that the chick, the other

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  rival killed him, but I heard it was Chinese moneylenders. But, but yeah, long story short, there's a lot of Asian gangs up there.

• 1:08:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you start working with this Asian gang, you're dealing, you're married, you got a girlfriend, you're out all night, like, it seems pretty insane. Then you have this accident on a construction site that breaks your back. Like, there's a lot of chaos that's coming into your life.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  I had the accident after I got sober.

• 1:08:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, that happened after?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I was, I was all good while I was using and, you know, things, well, I wasn't all good, but, you know. So, yeah, I was working with these Asian guys for a while and, and selling coke. And I was selling Viagra as well. Um, yeah, there's a thing, I don't know if any of you coke heads out there, there's a thing where if you take too much coke, you get this thing called coke dick. So if you have Viagra with you, you can avoid that, that situation.

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:09:13Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so I used to sell little, the little blue pills as well. Those, that was part of my thing. But, um, yeah, things got really crazy around 2009.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  But walk, walk me up into the bottom.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is coming to the bottom. Yeah, yeah, this is coming to the bottom. Um, so.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Let's just say somebody hurted somebody I really cared about and I decided they'd have to be be killed, right? And so I went about hiring a hitman to kill this guy. And first I tried my gang. I asked Ronald, would they do it for a price? And he said that they would only kill somebody who had fucked us over in business. Wouldn't kill anybody for personal reasons. And he told me he had killed a bunch of people when he was younger and he told me that they haunted him, you know? So he was trying to talk me out about it and wanna, or he didn't wanna do it.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  And then I knew this Norteño guy, Mexican mafia fellow called Joe. And I asked Joe, would he do it? And Joe said he'd do it for five thousand. I only had two thousand. So I says, Joe, I'll give you two. I only have two thousand. He's like, no, no, that's not enough money. So then I decided I was gonna rob this bar in San Francisco. So there used to be, it's gone now, but it was a money laundering operation for the Irish terrorists.

• 1:10:52Rich Roll?

  This just sounds like such a good plan.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Well, cocaine gave me these kind of good ideas, you know?

• 1:11:00Rich Roll?

  I mean, it's a comedy of errors, like out of a Coen Brothers movie.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, but the sad thing is it's fucking true. So basically, this place would have a half million dollars behind the bar every Friday. So if you had a check and if you were, say, if you had problems with the IRS or child support, or you were an illegal immigrant, you could bring your check into the bar and they'd cash the check for you and give you give you cash for it and you tip the barman. That's how the thing worked. And I knew somebody who worked there and I said, well, I knew it could be robbed, but it was like a two man job, like one person would have to watch the customers and the other person could go in and get the money. And so I was like trying to get some of the guys I hung around with to do it, but they were all too scared.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  And then I asked the girlfriend to do it with me and she was scared too. And we ended up not being able to do it. And then I get a call from Joe. Joe got a DUI, so he badly needed the money. He says, I'll kill the guy for two thousand. Just you have to get the gun. So.

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  Two thousand isn't a lot of money, so he's not spending that fucking money on on getting the gun. So I had to provide the gun for him. And I had my own gun, but it was a legal one. And you can't, if you have a registered gun, you can't kill somebody with that because it can be traced, do you? So I hit up this guy Silva, another fellow I knew, asked him if he could give me a gun. And he said, yeah, come to the mission. And before this, I had been on like a really bad bender. It was around Burning Man time. And this undertaker from Ireland was going to Burning Man, and he wanted a half ounce of coke. So I got

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  I got an ounce, give him half the ounce, and the other half went up my nose. So I was awake for a few days. And and I drove down to the mission to meet Silva. And I was like sleepwalking around the place sweaty, fucking on edge, you know. And when I got there, he saw how bad I was. And he's like, I'm not giving this fool a gun, you know? He didn't say that to me, but I know that's what he was thinking. So so I ended up not not getting the gun off him. So I'm driving back to my house, out by the beach, and fucking cops start following me. I'm up, I was driving up Fulton, and the cops followed me. And I'm all sweaty, and I have an ounce in the glove compartment, and I have a twenty two

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  under the seat. So I'm, I'm sitting in a jail sentence if they catch me. So they fucking followed me. And then the the lights come on, and the siren, and I'm like, fuck, I'm nearly having a heart attack. And then they turned around and went back. The way they came, they must have got a call on the fucking on the radio. And I nearly had a heart attack. My my heart was coming through my chest. So I pulled over, I smoked like fucking five cigarettes. And I was like, I'm not going to jail for killing this fool. And, uh, and I decided, I decided I would go to Australia.

• 1:14:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Instead.

• 1:14:12Rich Roll?

  As one would.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so, yeah, I figured I was like, fuck it.

• 1:14:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  I thought San Francisco is the problem. I need to get the fuck out of here.

• 1:14:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Like, there was a recession in America, but Australia was booming. Loads of Irish going to Australia. So I decided to go to Australia. Fucking hopped on a, on a plane. We'll make a long story short. I, I hopped on a plane on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day and I went to Australia. I was never gonna come back. And I was like, fuck America, you know?

• 1:14:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you went with your girlfriend.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Rich Roll?

  And your wife was at home in San Francisco. Like, the insanity level is through the roof on all of this.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Different level. Like, and the other thing was, I didn't even want the girlfriend to come with me because like, um, this was towards the end of two thousand and nine. And I was like really suicidal, but I thought if I could get out of America, I wouldn't do it like. And I was staying at the girlfriend's house and I was, I was so fucking high and, and, uh, and I just wanted to book my flights to Australia. You could get a visa online. It was really easy. Like, I just wanted to book my flights and get the fuck out of there. And, uh, she, she was an accountant, right? The girlfriend was. And, and so she wanted to give two weeks notice. Uh, she wanted to give two weeks notice before, before we leave. And I was like, no, no, I can go now and you can meet me over there.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  I can't wait two weeks. I was on that store like. And, uh, and I got on the computer in her house to fucking book my tickets for Australia. And she turned the internet off in the house. And I was like, fuck, I'm trapped in Daly City. And, uh, and she came back in and I was high as a kite. And she told me the raccoons had eaten the cables outside and that's why the internet was off. And I, I was high, but I wasn't that fucking high. I knew that she turned the fucking internet off because, uh, she wanted me to wait. So I, I was stuck there and I was like so wasted. I couldn't go to like an internet cafe or something like that. I would, I would have called the police. I was so bad like.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  So I was stuck there and I was like mad at her for keeping me there, you know, um. In the end, she she eventually turned on the fucking internet and everything. And we both left on New Year's Eve. And I was thinking, I'm finished with this this chick as soon as we get to Australia.

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Right. And you go to Australia, it's a disaster. Pillar to post.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  More of the same shit. Lots of fighting, fistfights, lots of visits to the whorehouse, lots of drinking. It was crazy in Australia too, like, yeah.

• 1:16:45Rich Roll?

  So where do you where do you meet your maker and finally realize like, I can't?

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  So I stayed in Australia for like three or four months and I missed the kids as well. So I decided to come back to America. And then when I came back.

• 1:16:57Rich Roll?

  You got two kids at this point.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, two kids, yeah. And and, um, yeah. And I I came back and I was trying to be sober and and in the end I just became suicidal. I was I was gonna gonna shoot myself again. And, um, you know, even though I was a drug addict, I was a pretty good carpenter. I could always get work. And there's a bunch of Irish guys in San Francisco who were sober and they go to the 12 step meetings and they don't make any secret of it. And I I ended up working with some of these guys. And one of them was a guy called Bernard, or Americans would say Bernard.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  But Irish call him Bernard. So Bernard, he knew I had a problem and we used to work together and I I would always be curious about the meetings. I would like ask him questions and shit. What goes on at these meetings? And he didn't want to tell me a whole lot, but he just gave me his number and he says, if you ever want to get sober, give me a call. So I says, right. And for some reason that time I was suicidal again, I decided to give him a call. And because I had already tried to kill myself so many times and it, you know, wasn't working out and I tried to do it on my own, like I tried to tried to stop drinking and I my record was three months.

• 1:18:11Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  Like off everything.

• 1:18:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But every good alcoholic has that experience of a couple of months off, which just fuels that idea that you can do it yourself.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the game is to prove you're not an alcoholic. So like, I could stay sober for three months, so that proves I'm not an alcoholic. Let's drink, you know? By the end of the three months, I would be bursting for a drink. And then there was other rules, like alcoholics drink in the house. I knew that. So I never drank in the house. I was like, that's alcoholic shit. So I'd always drink at the bar and I knew alcoholics drank in the morning. So I never drank in the morning. I suffered all those hangovers for all those years. And then when I came to the meetings, people were like, oh, yeah, I used to drink in the morning to help me feel better. I was, fuck, I never did that. I suffered all these hangovers for all these years. So led me to this point where, um.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  What made me call Bernard, um, I was, I was doing this job out in the East Bay. And, and I had just tried to kill myself a few weeks beforehand and I knew I didn't want to drink again. And I would be driving home from work and I could feel something was pulling me to go to the bar. Cause I didn't drink at home, drank at the bar and, and this something that was in me was pulling me to go to the bar. And I was able to observe it, whereas it had been there all along, but, but it was in the background, but I could, I could feel there's some shit that's fucking not me. That makes, wants me to want to drink. So I called up Bernard and he's, well Richie, how are you doing? I says, Bernard, I have a problem with the drinking and the drugs. Can you bring me to a meeting?

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  And he goes, I'll pick you up this evening. So he came and he picked me up and, and that's, that was. Labor Day, two thousand and ten.

• 1:19:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  That's where I was started.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  The guy becomes your sponsor, not immediately, but you know, he's your Eskimo. He brings you into this whole other world and hence begins the slog into sobriety.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it was really weird. Like, um. I didn't know a whole lot about sobriety, like in Ireland, it's kind of, at least when I was growing up. It was more underground, like, you know, you wouldn't know shit about it. Like even now, what the last few years.

• 1:20:28Rich Roll?

  It must be weird in LA where just everybody's talking about it like a badge of honor.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Like people in restaurants would be like fucking working the steps in the, in a restaurant with their sponsor. That was so weird to me. Like, like back home, it's like so secret. You know, when you're there, you'd be saying, oh, he's a member. It's like Fight Club or some shit back home.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause in Ireland, you have to be really bad to go to AA like, cause like when I first got sober, I started coming home. And, and a lot of my old drinking buddies, like Tits and the boys like that. I go to the pub to meet them, but I I'll be like, what are you drinking? I'm like, Coke. Oh, we're not drinking. I'm like, no, I'm an alcoholic. He was, oh, you're not a fucking alcoholic. You know, because if I was an alcoholic, it could be.

• 1:21:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they don't want to have to look at their own behavior.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I think I think to hit that that grade of of maybe surrender in Ireland, you probably have to be a lot lot worse than than over here, you know?

• 1:21:23Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Right, so he brings you to meetings in San Francisco. This becomes like your thing, man. I mean, what's interesting is that you didn't relapse.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  No, I was very fortunate, but it was weird, though, Rich. It wasn't like I never relapsed, but I was at a point where I was willing to fucking do whatever was suggested to me, at least on on face value.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, talk about the willingness piece. That's that's something I talk about all the time, like that idea that you can't you can't compel somebody to get sober. Like, it has to be this internally driven desire, a true willingness where you're ready and prepared to do whatever it takes.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I didn't even really. At the start, I didn't even really think it would necessarily work for me, you know? Because, as I said before, I knew I had a problem with the sauce and the cocaine, but I I thought like maybe I have some kind of mental problems, like maybe I'm fucking depressed or manic depressing or bipolar or some shit like, you know, I really did did because I didn't understand the mental traits of somebody who has a problem like this, you know? And and I knew that alcoholics drank every day, but I didn't drink every day. I was like, I was a binge drinker, like I sometimes I could stay sober for a couple of weeks, but then I would just drink to extreme when I did. So so my understanding was that I'm probably not an alcoholic, you know, until I came there.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  And then when I came to the first meeting, I was really nervous, dude, like like. So all the Irish know each other in San Francisco. That's where it was. And I knew that the Irish Center had meetings, right? I didn't wanna go to the Irish Center.

• 1:23:08Rich Roll?

  Right, cuz that'll, it'll, it'll get leaked out.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Rich Roll?

  Find its way back to common.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Richie Stephens has a problem, like, yeah, yeah. So like, I didn't mind them knowing I was a drug dealer, piece of shit, or anything like that. This is how warped my thinking was at the time. Didn't mind them knowing that I was a drug dealer and I was a bad guy, but I didn't want them to think I had a problem. So Bernard picked me up that day and there was another guy with him, Nile. I'd never met him before, but the two guys were in the front and I was in the back. And I was really nervous cuz I didn't want the fucking Irish people to know. And this guy Nile was Irish too, who was in the car with me, like, and I was so fucking nervous, dude. I says, uh, where are we going? And Bernard says, we're going to the Irish Center. I'm like, fuck. And, and the car was already moving, so I, I was like, I have to go to the fucking Irish Center now, you know?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  And they, they knew I was really nervous, you know? And it was quiet in the car. And Bernard turns around, he says, did you bring your passport? I said, what? Did you bring your passport? I was like, no. I thought it was like a setup with the cops to be waiting for me to have my passport to deport me. I says, no, why? And, and then he started laughing. He had this fucking Santa Claus laugh. Like this, and, but he was just breaking my balls, like, you know? And, and that kinda took the, the edge off, like, they were kinda making fun of me cuz they knew I was nervous, you know? He's just fucking with me. So it, it kinda broke the ice a little bit.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  We got up to the Irish Center, he parked the car and I, and I, I was like looking around, fucking make sure nobody saw me going in or anything like that, you know? It was in the know Richie Stephens has a fucking problem.

• 1:24:46Rich Roll?

  Grandiosity or anyone who do shit.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and this guy saw me at the door, like, a northern fella called Steven. He says, well, how are you? Are you new? And I was thinking, how the fuck does he know I'm new? You know? But the thing is, if you ever go to the meetings, of course they know if you're new, because the same fucking people go every week. And if you're new, you probably look like shit as well, so I, I couldn't have been looking too hot after the session I had been on. So I was like, yeah, I am new. He goes, do you think you have a problem with drinking? I says, yeah. He says, what makes you say that? I says, well, I just tried to kill myself a couple of weeks ago. And he goes, he goes, that'll do it.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

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

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  I knew that like, from whatever I had seen on TV or any of this shit. I thought if you come to a fucking meeting, you have to tell everybody your story or you have to talk in front of a group. And like, that's, that scared the shit out of me, you know? I could go around carrying a gun and, and, and, and deal with the people I was dealing with, that didn't scare me. But being honest in front of a group of, of other drunks about my embarrassing shit, that scared the shit out of me. So I was, I was like intent on not fucking telling anybody anything, sit at the back, you know, keep to myself. And so I sat down in the back and, and everybody was, was shaking my hand and saying hello. And I was just trying to keep a low profile.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  And at the start of the meeting, the guy says, have we any newcomers here tonight? And everybody like turns around, looks at me like, and I, I would have like pretend fucking or give a fake name or something like that and just leave. But Bernard and Niall already knew who I was, so they put up their hand and, and I was like, I'm Richie. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I never, I don't think I had ever admitted that before in a group like, and, and I couldn't believe it. They all fucking clapped. And I was like, wow. Do you people know who I am? Like the things I have done? And, but didn't give a fuck. Some of them did, but they didn't give a shit. All they, all they cared about was there's a dude here who has a problem.

• 1:27:15Speaker 01

  And, you know, we're gonna help him out for fun and for free. And, and it really, I couldn't believe they were clapping for me. They're, they're really like not what I was expecting, you know?

• 1:27:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you say that out loud for the first time, but at what point? Did you believe that about yourself like prior to that? Because you thought it was some other mental defect or you were making rationalizations or excuses for yourself, but deep down, when your head hit the pillow, you knew like, you knew you were an alcoholic.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  When I started drinking at the age of 15 or 16, I knew I had a problem back then. But.

• 1:27:53Rich Roll?

  You push it way down.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I remember one time going to the doctor. You know, when you go to the doctor's office and there's a bunch of leaflets and shit like that sitting around and it's in Ireland, same as here, you'd have a bunch of leaflets and shit in the doctor's office. I remember when I was a kid, like a teenager, I saw one of these leaflets and it was a an alcoholic questionnaire. I think it's called the 20 questions. I think that's what it's called. So I remember as a kid fucking opening this shit up when I was at the doctor's office and I had just discovered drinking at this time. And I'm reading through the questions. Do you ever do things you regret while you're drinking? Ah, who doesn't? Do you ever lie about your drinking? Of course. You know, have you ever blacked out? Ah, it happens to everybody.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  And I remember back then, when I had done the questionnaire, I probably got 16 or 17 out of 20. And if you ever do that questionnaire, they say, one yes means you might be an alcoholic. Two yeses mean you're probably an alcoholic. Three or more, you are definitely an alcoholic. So I saw it in black and white when I was a fucking teenager, but I, but I thought it was a joke, you know, I was like, everybody drinks in Ireland, you know, it's like, it's in our culture, it's in our blood, like, you know, so, so I knew I had a problem from the start, but, but when you're doing the steps, right? You're like, it's admitted you're powerless over drugs and alcohol and your life is unmanageable.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  So I knew I was powerless from a teenager, but I thought my life was manageable. If you looked from the outside looking in, you'd say this guy's a fucking fiend, like, you know? But until the very end, I probably hadn't admitted that second part that my life was unmanageable.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  Right, and that's the baffling thing. Because any outside observer would say, this is nothing but chaos and insanity. But your lived experience was, this is under control. I'm managing this alright.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, in my own head, you know? But obviously not in everybody else's head. The people I was working with, you know? The dolls I was seeing, my wife, obviously.

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're gonna get to the wife. But first, you know, one of the things I appreciated about the book is your candor around the character defect piece. Because there is this idea that when you get sober, like, it's just about getting rid of the drugs and alcohol, and then all my problems are gonna go away. And what you don't realize is that then, you know, you have all of these emotions that come to the surface that become very unmanageable until you learn these new tools for how to work through them. And in your case, like, a lot of it goes back to the anger.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, basically, when you're getting sober, right? It's really difficult when they take away your medicine. Because the booze is your medicine. If you're an alcoholic, booze is what you use to feel good. Or to deal with all your problems. For me, like, anytime I had any kind of a feeling, the impulse was to drink or get high. Like, if I was happy about something, yeah, let's celebrate. If you're sad about something, drown your sorrows. If you're angry about something, need a drink to calm you down. It was literally my solution for everything, even boredom. Fuck, I have nothing to do, let's go to the bar. So if you have a problem with drinking and drugs, like, that's your life.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  And then to suddenly have your comfort taken away, you're raw as fuck, like, you know? So when someone's newly sober, they're definitely really irritable. And like you were saying with the defects of character, there's no such thing as a perfect person. I still have defects of character, obviously.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  They're more obvious when the booze is gone and your head is clear and you have to get real about what these, what these problems you have. Mm-hmm. Like for me, um, I would say, yeah, quick to anger was one, you know, uh, I probably got as many beatings as I gave, you know, but violence was, uh, was a way to solve problems. I never hit my missus or my kids or anything like that, but other dudes like, you know, and, and, uh, that's not how you behave. Like, when I came to the meetings, they says, it's a spiritual program. And I said, what the fuck is spiritual?

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  And I have a college education, but I ne- I never used the word spiritual. It wasn't in my vocabulary, like, I was like, what, what does that mean? Do we all fucking sit around and do yoga or, or become vegan or what the fuck is that? You know, the, the, that's what I was, that's what I thought originally. Maybe. Man, it was not, not me, but, but, uh, but yeah, so, so I, I, I, I heard that like, you hear these people at the meetings and be like, yeah, it's a spiritual program. This is what the fuck is spiritual? And, uh, the best definition I got, uh, an old priest I talked to at one of the meetings, he said spirituality is freedom from the bondage of self.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  So I had bondage of self, that's why I was drinking and doing all these drugs, like, I was like, okay, that sounds cool. The, the booze and the coke used to be my spirituality. How the fuck do I, how do, how do I feel good now without that stuff? And they said, it's very simple. You just, uh, you just, you just do whatever your sponsor suggests. Uh, you try to be honest, you try to help other people instead of just thinking about yourself and you do other shit like praying and meditating if you wanna do that kinda stuff, like, I didn't do that kinda stuff at the beginning, but, uh,

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I slowly learned the tools to not have to drink and get high anymore. And it was a learning process and slowly my feelings started to become more normal. The highs weren't so high, the lows weren't so low, you know?

• 1:34:09Rich Roll?

  Right, and there's that fear that comes with that because there is an addiction to those highs and lows on some level, like what is my life gonna be like if I'm just flatlining all the time? You know, I can't live that way.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Rich Roll?

  It's gonna be boring, it's gonna be intolerable.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought before I actually decided to get sober, like when I decided to get sober, there was no more options. I was like, it's either do this or die. But before that, the concept of like getting sober, maybe even going to meetings or something like that, I thought it would be like the most boring shit ever. I thought it would be like a bunch of people fucking hanging out in a room, trying not to drink, you know, like kinda sad and pathetic. But it turned out to be the exact opposite for me. The people I've met in recovery are the most interesting people, the people who were like me so fucked up that they couldn't do it anymore, you know? And, and there was a lot of fun around it and I learned how to do normal things sober.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Like, there's this thing that they do, another new word for me was fellowship. So, like what the fuck is fellowship?

• 1:35:23Speaker 01

  Bernard said to me one day, when I was new at the meetings, I was just, I was just getting like, I was just getting stuck in at the start. He says, "We're going to meet for coffee. Meet me at the coffee shop." I says, "Go for coffee? What the fuck are we gonna do there?" And he goes, "We're gonna talk and drink coffee."

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  And that was like, that was weird to me as well, cause since I was a kid, when you're in a social fucking surrounding, you wanna have a beer and, but it was a catch 22 with me, like before I got sober. If I was in a social setting, some shit like this, where I didn't really know the people and I might feel nervous, I'd want a beer just to feel okay. And then the problem was, once I started drinking the beer, I drank too much beer. And then I started making a fool of myself. So it was even when I was drinking, it was a no win situation. So we had to like, so, so I remember the first time we went to the coffee shop and we were drinking coffee and just chatting. It was like, it was weird like, but, but I got used to it fairly quick because

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  there was something about being around other people who were the same as me, who had the same problem as me. I found to have a connection to other people who have my problem. There's something about talking to another fucking drunk or another addict that they understand you, you know, so. And, and I, I used to trip out so much about it at the start. I'm like, oh, how am I never gonna drink again? Fucking, what if my parents die or, or what if my, my daughter gets married in 20 years? And I'm, and I'm at her wedding, will I not be able to have a glass of champagne or whatever? And Bernard, he says to me, he says, never mind that shit. He says, we, we do it one day at a time. So today you don't feel like drinking.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  Maybe tomorrow you won't either. Don't worry about fucking 20 years time, you know?

• 1:37:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man. Those annoying adages that are so true.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

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

• 1:37:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  That means just take it easy. Don't worry about that shit. And.

• 1:37:40Rich Roll?

  The other thing is like the levity, right? You talk about in the book, like the first time that you kind of really shared your whole story in a group setting. And the fear around that, but in that community, like it's so welcomed, right? Like that level of, because it takes courage to be vulnerable on that level, right? But tapping into that vulnerability becomes part of the healing process. And we can laugh at this stuff that we've done and that has happened in the past, even though we're also appreciating the heaviness of it and kind of where it took us. And that's like a salve in the wound, right? To sit and listen to other people's version of your story, how they got through it,

• 1:38:24Rich Roll?

  and the kind of ownership, like this is what happened. I'm not ashamed to talk about it because I've done all of this work to repair my relationships, make peace with my past, overcome those resentments and everything like that. That is really like when someone walks into the room and can share as openly as you just have about all these things that you've done, like I think that's, that's something that helps us feel more connected to other people.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, like for me, it didn't come easy to me, like, you know, I'm nearly 12 years sober now, so I've told my story fucking at least 50 times to groups of people. But it was very difficult for me to share at the start because most people who were in recovery haven't done the things I did, you know? Like, I think the first person I heard speaking who had a similar story to me was, was a Hell's Angel. You know, and I remember when I heard his story and it actually gave me a kind of a sense of relief that like, because I always feel like I'm the worst person in the room, like, and you know, I am ashamed of some of the things I've done, like you can't be proud of some of this shit.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  But the bottom line is it happened and it was at a time in my life where I was powerless over something. You know, I, I wouldn't have made those kind of decisions today, like how I am. And I'm not proud of like a lot of the stuff I've done, but, but it happened, like, you know, it's the truth. And I was most worried about, you know, what if I tell these people about this shit that I've done? And they think I'm a fucking asshole, like I feel like I am, you know? What if they don't want to know me like, and, and like expecting judgment from people? And of course, some people are going to judge you. It's not like.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  Things I have done aren't things to be proud of like I'm lucky I'm not dead or in jail for the things that I have done but when I'm asked to share at a group I do because it might help somebody else who like maybe feels like they're the biggest piece of shit in the room too like or maybe they have something that they have done that they're not proud of you know

• 1:40:34Rich Roll?

  How have you stayed plugged in after almost 12 years because you really embrace the program and you're an ambassador and you know in a very service forward way to a lot of people

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had a bit of bad luck at the end of my first year and so after I got sober I turned my back on criminal lifestyle completely out of it no more drug dealing or any of that kind of stuff and and I tried to switch my life around and fucking get everything back on track I tried to fix my marriage tried to become a productive member of society and I wanted to be a contractor you know construction business because I was a carpenter I had the skills and experience even though I was high as a kite a lot of the time I had been doing it and so I

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  took the test to get my contractor license and that's what my plan was gonna build houses for the next fucking 30 years that's where I thought my life was gonna go that's what my plan was and then I got into an accident construction accident and I broke my back a beam fell down and hit me broke one of my discs herniated another one it's permanently damaged so I had to stop being a carpenter and it would have been very easy to go back drinking at that time because I was feeling sorry for myself and I thought oh I got sober now everything should be cool you know but the thing is like whether you're sober or not sometimes bad things happen you know and what

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  got me through that time it was around the time when I had just finished my steps in the program and the last step is you gotta like help others work with other people

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  So I ended up sponsoring some other guys who were trying to get sober and that kept me out of the self pity like um because there's something about working with somebody else that it's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you're trying to help somebody else. You know, it's impossible to do both at the same time. So I started working with others and that got me through a hard part in my life. And I ended up doing what I'm doing now as something I enjoy far more. I got into acting and moved down here to LA. But a part of it is, part of it is like, if you want, if you want to keep what you've

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  got, you got to give it away. So I don't say which programs I go to, but I go to multiple. You know, there's, there's a few things wrong with me. So that just, you know, so yeah, I still, I still try and be a service to others where I can. And it's not broke, don't fix it. So I keep on doing the same shit that I was taught at the beginning.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There's a bit of a comparison to Barry in your story. Like, here you are, this guy, you know, who's, who's living this gangster lifestyle and then you become, you become an actor. And it's hard to not like, you know, think about Barry when I think about your arc.

• 1:43:46Speaker 01

  Hmm. I suppose it is like Barry, except mine's a true story.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And you weren't, you weren't a hitman, let's be clear.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  No, I never killed anybody. Thank God.

• 1:43:56Rich Roll?

  But it is, it is, there is a, there's sort of a comedic undertone to that as well.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, you know,

• 1:44:03Rich Roll?

  You come down here and then you start playing gangsters and heavies and bad guys and, you know, all these procedural shows.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's kind of like, I didn't choose to do that either. It chose me. I didn't like, start acting and go, I just, I want to play bad guys. It's like, you look like a bad guy.

• 1:44:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  You'll play bad guys.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  So that's how.

• 1:44:24Rich Roll?

  And you've been at it for a while, man.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:26Rich Roll?

  You're doing good.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been in a lot of shows and I enjoy it.

• 1:44:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Um, the wife and the kids, how's everything going there? Ex-wife now.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  I'm divorced. Um, I have a good relationship with my kids. Uh, they were only toddlers when, when I got sober and they're teenagers now. And, uh, yeah, I just try to be a good dad.

• 1:44:51Rich Roll?

  And they live in San Francisco.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, they live with the, the ex-wife. And it was kind of a weird one because I had to tell them a bit about my story because they had no idea about how I used to behave because they were only babies when I got sober. So they.

• 1:45:06Rich Roll?

  But you're, I mean, it's, it sounds like life for your wife was an absolute living hell.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like, I'm sure, I'm sure, uh, I was not fucking husband of the year for any of those years or father of the year, you know? Um, yeah, so obviously she, she, she won't have that good of an opinion of me, especially since we got divorced. But, um, there's nothing I can do about that, you know? I just try and be a good dad to my kids, but it's kind of weird, like having to tell the kids about some of the stuff I used to do because they didn't know about any of this shit. And I was like, well, I wrote this book and, you know, I'm gonna have to tell you some of these stories, so.

• 1:45:45Rich Roll?

  How does your ex-wife feel about the book?

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  You'd have to ask her about that.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, we're not close or anything like that, but we, we, we co-parent, you know?

• 1:45:56Rich Roll?

  And so you go up and visit the kids or how does that work?

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, yeah, I get them every month, yeah.

• 1:46:03Rich Roll?

  So how does the, the book come about in this relationship with, with John and Dave?

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  Oh, so.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, the book opens with, with them talking about how they met you and, and, and kind of it, it being its own little miracle because ordinarily they would have known, you would just sort of cold emailed them.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Rich Roll?

  Ordinarily, they would have never even opened that email.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  They didn't know me from Adam. So, so basically.

• 1:46:28Rich Roll?

  And explain who these guys are.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Okay, so John Altshuler and Dave Krensky, they're the co-creators of Silicon Valley. And they were showrunners on King of the Hill. They wrote Blades of Glory starring, um, Will Ferrell.

• 1:46:42Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're successful writers and showrunners.

• 1:46:46Rich Roll?

  Big time Hollywood showrunners and writers.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  And the way it came about, it was, it was a funny thing. So, one of my buddies, a guy called Sean, Sean Mann, he's another actor. We moved to LA around the same time. He's a really good guy. And he was, he was working on this comedy project. And I was helping him do a little bit of producing on it. And, uh, you guys wanna see it? I think it's on YouTube. It's pretty funny. He did like a proof of concept. It's called Roommates. So, he says, see if you can get me some, some, someone big attached to this. And, uh, if you can help me out. So I was just helping Sean out. So I was like, this is, this is a good comedy. It's, it's kind of a, an out there comedy that, that he was, he, he had created.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  And so I looked at who were the best comedy people? And at the time Silicon Valley was, was one of the top ones. So I reached out to like a couple of people. The first one was Danny McBride. I, I got Danny McBride's email. I emailed him. And then his assistant got back and said, we don't accept unsolicited materials. And then I sent it to John. And, uh, and John, John responded and he said, this is cool. Let's meet. And, uh, we met up with John and, and-

• 1:48:01Rich Roll?

  Right, which is highly, highly unusual.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:04Rich Roll?

  That's not, you know, that's not how things work.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  That kind of shit doesn't happen, really. Yeah, usually if you send unsolicited materials to top people-

• 1:48:12Rich Roll?

  For legal reasons alone, they don't do it. Other than like, who is this guy? Like, you're not gonna get the time of day from anybody.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But, uh, it just turns out that they were really nice guys. And, uh, and we ended up meeting up with them. And, and that particular project wasn't a fit for John. But he said, I like you guys, keep sending me stuff. So I sent him another couple of things and he passed on those. And then I had, I had written my original draft of the book and I sent that to him and he liked it. And then he, he read like 50 pages of it and, and he says, I like this, but I don't really know where it's going. So then I told him about my past and, and he was like, let's meet again. Cause the first time that we met, he, he had no idea I used to be a gangster or anything like that. I'm not scary in person, I'm friendly, like. And then we met up again and I told him a couple of yarns. And he's like, wow, this is crazy. Do you want to partner on it?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  And I said, okay. And then, so first of all, he has another show coming out. I'm not allowed to say what it is, but basically it's about somebody who's an author. And then he put us in touch with our book agents. And the book agents read the book and they were like, wow, this is, this is, this is pretty crazy, but I don't know how to sell it. And then John had the idea of rewriting the book in the format of the 12 steps. Cause so it will be shorter and more accessible to what my story really is. And then we rewrote the book together. And the book is coming out on May 24th. And it's going to be a TV show as well.

• 1:49:46Rich Roll?

  So what's the deal with the TV show? Like, is that a pilot deal or a series deal? And what's the status of development there? Like, cause it's one thing, like, oh, there's going to be a show. There's a long, you know, a lot of things have to happen before something ends up on, on the air, right?

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  Well, we took it into John's manager before we, the book was, was done. And he said, he said, you should get a book, he should get a book deal first, cause it's easier to greenlight. And then we got, we got the book deal and we have a bunch of people who are interested in it right now. We don't know where it's going to land yet, but, but I can't really say who's looking at it, but some cool people.

• 1:50:27Rich Roll?

  It's exciting, man.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:29Rich Roll?

  It's quite an arc. When you look back on the whole thing, it's, it's pretty miraculous.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of unbelievable. Like, number one, that I'm alive after all this kind of stuff. And yeah, it's, it's pretty crazy.

• 1:50:46Rich Roll?

  Do you find that that makes it easier to connect with gratitude and all of that?

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Like, you know, they told me when I got sober, if you stay grateful, you won't ever drink again. So I have a lot of things to be grateful for. And yeah, I have, I have a crazy life. Today.

• 1:51:05Rich Roll?

  But it's pretty balanced now.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, the only drama I have is on the stage now, thank God, and try and keep it down.

• 1:51:14Rich Roll?

  And meanwhile, you're still auditioning and doing that whole, doing that whole deal. You did some movie with Halle Berry, right?

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did that a few years ago. That was, that was called Kings and last year.

• 1:51:26Rich Roll?

  I did see that one.

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was about the Rodney King riots. And I did, last year I did Days of Our Lives and NCIS. And I've done Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds.

• 1:51:37Rich Roll?

  All the Procedurals.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that kind of stuff. I've been bad guy of the week a lot of times. Yeah.

• 1:51:45Rich Roll?

  That's cool, man. Well, let's round this out with some words of wisdom for the person out there who's, who's still suffering. Whether or not they're an alcoholic or a drug addict or just battling with some kind of substance or addiction related issue. How do you communicate to that person, throw them a lifeline and, and kind of, you know, help them figure out a better path forward?

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  Well, I would just say like, no matter how bad you think things are, it can still be fixed. Like, I kind of thought that I was just gonna be messed up forever. And that I didn't think that it would work for me. And, and I've seen it working for a lot of people. So, all you have to do is ask for help and the help is there if you want to take it.

• 1:52:41Rich Roll?

  Easier said than done sometimes.

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to be fully cooked. You know, the best advice I ever got, when I was out and about, one of those sober guys, I was working with him and I was, came in really hungover like, and.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  He says, why do you do this to yourself? And I looked at him and I was like, do you think I'm an alcoholic? He says, of course you're a fucking alcoholic. And I was like, why? He's like, you're fucking, you're doing coke with hookers in motels. Like fucking non-alcoholics don't do that shit. And then I was like, well, do you think I should go to the meetings? He goes, no, not yet. He says, keep on doing it until you can't do it anymore. If you're not ready, it won't work. He said, you have to.

• 1:53:32Rich Roll?

  Research.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he said, he says, keep going until you're cooked. And then you'll know when you can't do it anymore, then you go.

• 1:53:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. If you're ready, you're ready. It's all about willingness.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:45Rich Roll?

  If you can summon that willingness and, and, and do the thing like yourself. Um, I've seen so many lives changed and transformed. So it is possible. And I think the real inspirational piece in your story relates to that arc. Like honestly, your story is so insane. So if you could figure this out and get sober, like I think it, it provides a lot of hope to a lot of people.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  I didn't figure it out on my own either. Like really, I owe my life to that guy Bernard, who, who brought me to my meetings.

• 1:54:16Rich Roll?

  Who you, the, the book is dedicated to.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, he saved my life. Like, uh, I wouldn't be alive only for that man. He's good. He's over in Canada and he's married and he has a little baby and.

• 1:54:26Rich Roll?

  Is he still your sponsor?

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  No, no, I have a new one now, but, but, uh, yeah. Cause when he moved home, I got, I got a local guy, but no, we still, we still keep in touch and, uh, yeah, I owe him a lot.

• 1:54:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, good then. Well, I'm super proud of you. I've had the privilege of, of bearing witness to a part of this arc. I remember when you were telling stories about San Francisco, like way back in the day. And you've, you've come a long way, my friend. So I'm excited for this book to come out and for everybody to, you know, get a taste of, of, of what your life was all about. And I'm excited for the possibility of this new TV show. And I feel like this is a inflection point in your life. And I would just encourage you to continue to tell your story and to do it with that level of humility and vulnerability that you, that you did today. Cause I think it's, it's, it's really powerful and I think it has the potential to help a lot of, a lot of people.

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  Thanks a million for having me, Rich. If any of you guys haven't heard Rich before, I would subscribe and like this podcast and. Thanks very much for having me on.

• 1:55:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:55:30Speaker 01

  And yeah, if you guys want to learn some more about me, you can see my shit on IMDb. It's Richie Stephens. I'm on Instagram, Richie Actor, and the book is coming out on May 24th, 2022. It's on Amazon, Simon & Schuster, Barnes & Noble, and Audible.

• 1:55:49Rich Roll?

  All the places, man. So Audible, I wanted to ask, final thing, obviously you read the book, right? Of course. And you're this master of accents. We got to hear a bunch today. I didn't realize there were so many versions of an Irish accent, but there are.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  Can you understand them?

• 1:56:05Rich Roll?

  Do you do all the voices, like the different voices for the different characters in the book?

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  They do, yeah.

• 1:56:09Rich Roll?

  That's a reason to get it on Audible right there.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope you guys understand.

• 1:56:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. No, it's good, man. Cool. The book is The Gangster's Guide to Sobriety: My Life in 12 Steps. Always a pleasure to see you, and I look forward to trudging this road alongside you, my friend.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  Thanks, Richie.

• 1:56:27Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace out.

• 1:56:32Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a

• 1:57:14Rich Roll?

  review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg and Grayson Wilder.

• 1:57:57Rich Roll?

  Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Jessica Miranda, Daniel Solis, Dan Drake, and A.J. Akpodiette. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]