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

There is extreme. Then there's Charlie Engle – a man who has run across deserts, summited ice-covered volcanoes, swam with crocodiles, overcome crack addiction and survived a stint in federal prison. The story goes like this: after a hair-curling, decade-long love affair with booze and crack cocaine that culminated in a near-fatal six-day binge and a hail of bullets, Charlie finally gets sober. For solace, he turns to running, which becomes his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He begins with marathons, but it wasn't enough. Ultramarathons soon became the focus of his affection, a new love affair that takes him to stunning heights and accolades. During this second act, Charlie would clock a handful of impressive top-10 finishes at prestigious races like Badwater, a 135-mile jaunt across Death Valley widely considered to be the toughest footrace on Earth. But his athletic zenith is an unprecedented, absolutely astonishing 111-day, 4,500-mile run across the Sahara Desert — a feat chronicled in the Matt Damon narrated documentary entitled Running the Sahara. Life was pretty good. Then came quite possibly the most bizarre and improbable challenge Charlie could ever imagine facing. A bad B-movie narrative that involved an obsessed IRS agent with an axe to grind. Wire taps and garbage probes. Even the requisite wily enchantress dispatched to entrap. A saga that culminates in an unjust conviction for mortgage fraud. A poster child for everything awry with the mortgage-backed security crisis, Charlie serves 16 months in a West Virginia federal prison – what Charlie jocularly refers to as his federal holiday. He could have played the victim. Instead, he spends his days pounding the small prison track, running endlessly in circles. Soon his fellow inmates were joining him, struggling to keep their spirits up in dehumanizing circumstances. A prison hero by the time his sentence concludes, Charlie now embraces his third act as a more fully actualized version of his pre-shackled self — armed with newfound perspective and a grateful appreciation for what matters most in life. Charlie is one-of-a-kind. A world class talker and master storyteller, I knew Charlie's new memoir would be a page-turner. But I didn't expect the book to be so well written. Running Man: A Memoir* is every bit the gripping, raw, honest, funny, emotional, at times cringe-inducing, but ultimately inspiring story I hoped it would be – and then some. I'm thrilled to bring you my second conversation with Charlie. Picking up where episode 67 leaves off, (a must listen if you're new to the show), this is an intimate discourse about high highs and low lows. It's about addiction, sobriety, service and spirit. It's about perspective. Nine lives and third acts. What it means to touch the threshold of human endurance. And then transcend it. Enjoy! Rich 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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• 1:05Speaker 01

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

• 1:48Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:52Rich Roll?

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

• 2:31Rich Roll?

  Today on the show, I've got my good buddy Charlie Engle. He's on the show for a second time. He was on the show back in the old days, episode 67, where we went into his life story in quite vivid detail. So if you missed that, I would definitely rewind and go back and listen to that for a full recap on his arc. Because today, we're going to pick it up where we left off last time and delve deeper into more specific subject matter. But essentially, for those that are new to the show, Charlie is a father. He's a husband. He is an ultra runner. But I think if you were to ask him, if you said, Charlie, who are you?

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  He would probably say that he's a very proud, recovering, sober alcoholic and addict. Charlie is also an incredibly charismatic person who is exceptional at weaving a fascinating story. And he does this throughout today's conversation. And his life is really marked by a lot of high highs and low lows. Low lows with drugs and alcohol and all kinds of insanity that comes with that. And the high highs of some pretty extraordinary athletic achievements. This is a guy who has competed at a very high level in ultra marathons with top finishes at Badwater.

• 4:00Rich Roll?

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

• 4:42Rich Roll?

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

• 5:22Rich Roll?

  Google Zeitgeist, which is basically a Star Chamber brain trust of some of the brightest minds in the world congregating at a resort for a weekend of talks and mingling, I suppose, an invitation-only event. So that's a pretty cool arc from basically hiding out in $10 a night hotel room, smoking crack, to delivering a speech at Google Zeitgeist. Kind of punctuates the extent to which Charlie has traversed some pretty amazing terrain to get to where he is now. So, without further ado, let's just tap right into it. Enjoy my conversation with Charlie Engle.

• 6:09Rich Roll?

  I think we should kick this off by at least taking note of this extraordinary hotel room that we're in right now.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:16Rich Roll?

  At the Omni-whatever-it-is.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  It's the Montalucia.

• 6:20Rich Roll?

  Here in Paradise Valley, Arizona, because you spoke yesterday at an event called Google Zeitgeist. So, explain to me what this event is all about.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Google Zeitgeist, I had been vaguely aware of, and interestingly, from my 21-year-old son, Kevin, who had watched some of the Google talks in the past, because this has been going on for seven years now, and it is a very...

• 6:50Speaker 01

  It's a very small gathering.

• 6:52Rich Roll?

  It's like 200 people, right?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple of hundreds.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  Invite only.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Invite only.

• 6:55Rich Roll?

  Like international star chamber, brain trust.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  We are talking about, I mean, and I, I know for sure that I did, I wasn't in.

• 7:04Rich Roll?

  Come on. I know you're a hustler, but like, that's some serious hustle game.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I wasn't even in the top 10% of brain power in the room, you know, probably at any given time. I mean, it was a, it was an incredibly intelligent crowd, which begs the question, why was I there? Uh, cause these are, these are innovators. We're talking about, you know, the founders of Google, the head of Alphabet.

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  Alphabet being the parent company.

• 7:29Speaker 01

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

• 8:09Rich Roll?

  So at least you sold 500.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:12Rich Roll?

  Listen, I, I don't want to interrupt you because I want to hear the rest of this thought, but, but it needs to be said that you wrote an amazing book. Like, I just.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 8:21Rich Roll?

  Love this book. I mean, of course it's, it hits my sweet spot, like all the things that I love to, you know, talk about and learn about and read about. But you did a beautiful job writing what I think is really a timeless, extraordinary memoir. So you should be very, very proud and I loved every aspect of it. It's fantastic.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Coming from you, it really is huge because I mean it when I say, you know, your book, Finding Ultra was. It was an instigator of sorts for me, mostly because you're humble enough to have said to me, you probably don't remember, but you know, something to the effect of, look, if I can do it, you certainly can write one.

• 9:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, your stories, you go like 100x, anywhere from 10x to 100x on everything that I talk about in my book. I mean, your story is so amazing and unique that it would have been a crime had you not, you know, put pen to paper to share it.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Thank you. Well, and I'm happy to say, you know, I, I came into the publishing process as naive as a person could be and, you know, thought, okay, you write a book, somebody reads the book, they, a publisher buys the book and then they sell the book. And of course, that's as, that's as far from the way the process works as anything.

• 9:37Rich Roll?

  Well, we're going to get into that in a minute, but let's finish talking about Google Zeitgeist while we're on that.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  So I came to find out that in fact, I got invited because of a couple of things. A woman who is one of the people that finds speakers for, for this get together was a producer for the Rock Center television show with Brian Williams, where, you know, Harry Smith was the correspondent and it was talking, this is after my federal holiday and, you know, and...

• 10:09Rich Roll?

  That's gotta be one of the best euphemisms.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, you know, it's perfect. It just, it makes it easy, takes the pressure off other people. People either know what I'm talking about or they don't. And so it's, I like it. And she, you know, she knew my story and she knew that I had a book coming out and, and she had seen another talk that I did. I did a talk right after my federal holiday in Northern California, over Marin County called the DO Lectures.

• 10:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  D O. And, and DO Lectures, I literally was fresh out of prison, like fresh.

• 10:44Rich Roll?

  And that's a cool event, too.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Fantastic event. And... That one, they, you know, they published those talks online. So it was 25 minutes. So it was a very tight time space. And, you know, I, I told, I guess, a compelling enough story at that to get a lot of views. And really, that was it. Because these are, these are very, this, this event is incredibly short talk. So my talk was 15 minutes. I, I actually, for, for those who end up watching it online a little bit later, uh, it, it went a little long by probably three or four minutes. I know. But

• 11:19Rich Roll?

  They tell you, they're always like, look, you know, you cannot go over. Yeah. And people, the other thing is, people think that, oh, it's 15 minutes. Like, that's easy. I could get up and talk for an hour, 90 minutes. I get up and talk for two hours, no problem. But tell me I only have 15 minutes, or 13, or 17. And I like, that's like panic attack inducing.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  When I speak publicly, very often, you know, you get that hour window. And I have learned through the years that like, if I can make myself shut up at about 45 minutes, that's usually a pretty good sweet spot for some questions and all that. But 45 minutes is enough time to do what I do, which is I interrupt myself all the time. I'll be talking and I, and all of a sudden, I fly off in some crazy direction for five minutes. But I can pull it back and I can get back on topic with 15 minutes, you know, you're basically screwed.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  Every sentence, every word counts.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  It does. So Plus, very, very well produced. And I mean, we had, you know, it started off with, you know, Dan Rather, and, you know, I was on the same card with Kerry Walsh Jennings and Charles Barkley, and then Mark Ronson, DJ, and, and just, I shouldn't call him a DJ, DJ music producer.

• 12:35Rich Roll?

  He's quite the music producer. He has an amazing TED Talk, too. I'm sure all these people have done amazing TED Talks.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 12:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And Morgan Spurlock, would, he was like, doing the Q and A. Right. Yeah.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he was the one who introduced me. And he's been on your show.

• 12:48Rich Roll?

  No, he hasn't.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Oh, he hasn't. For some reason, I thought he had been. So I told him, though, that he should. Oh, yeah. You know, I'll hook it up.

• 12:56Rich Roll?

  You're lying.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  No, no, I did.

• 12:57Rich Roll?

  I would love to have him on. He was on, he did Tim Ferriss's podcast. That actually was a great conversation. I would love to have Morgan on.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  No, because he's the right kind of guy for your podcast. He is, he is, um, you know, he's a little off the wall.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  You know, but he's done a lot of stuff.

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, he's incredibly prolific at what he does.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  He is.

• 13:15Rich Roll?

  He's really, I mean, what started with one documentary, he's built into this unbelievable career, you know, it's quite something.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  No, he keeps replicating and you know, one offs, well, one offs are hard too, but you know, staying, staying in the game or near the top of it is really difficult.

• 13:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  So.

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  So that was your segment. So basically to kind of, you know, generalize or encapsulate this event, not only are all the speakers extraordinary, but everyone in attendance who's watching you is somebody of extraordinary substance. You can't just buy tickets to this. There's 200 people that are here in attendance by, you have to be invited just to watch.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  It's not like, that's what distinguishes it from something like Ted, you know, a Ted conference where you can actually purchase a ticket.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  No, exactly. You, you had to have been invited. And I mean, I'm, I'm not kidding when I say there were a hundred people in the audience who were the founders of some high-tech company, whatever it might be, that they either sold to Google or they've partnered on something. And it's like, I mean, person after person is telling me what they're doing. And I'm like going, you're kidding. I use that. Or, you know, it's some app that I use or whatever else it might be. And it's just, it's fascinating.

• 14:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, what an honor. That's so cool. Congrats that you were doing that. All I know is that I, that Jason and I, who's sitting to my left right now, my, my wonderful audio engineer and producer who lives in Phoenix, we pulled up to the hotel, to the resort, and there was no shortage of black Suburbans off run, which is like, okay, there's either some kind of political dignitary in town.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Or the FBI is here.

• 14:56Rich Roll?

  There's something serious happening here. You know what I mean? And, and to kind of bring it full circle, this hotel room that we're sitting in right now is a far cry from the $10 a night, you know, sort of hole up in smoke crack for four days.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  Type of hotel room that you spent more than your fair share of time in.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  There's a certain hominess to those other ones.

• 15:19Rich Roll?

  There is.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  But you know.

• 15:20Rich Roll?

  Well, like when you have those four walls, like sort of closing in on you, there's a womb-like aspect to that, right?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  No doubt. And I mean, I, I actually told the story of my, my talk, and I'll tell you this, just very briefly. So two days ago. I've got a particular talk laid out and quite frankly, it's going to really focus on running the Sahara because you know, it's a, it's an iconic expedition, you know, there's the film, people know the story and the theme, if you will, of this Google conference was great expectations and it was kind of this, so it's this forward looking idea about what do you expect from yourself and you know, and I, I was trying to like be true to why they'd brought me here potentially and like, I'm not kidding you by, I, I went to bed

• 16:07Speaker 01

  two nights ago, 11 o'clock, I'm like, F this and I balled it up and I threw it away.

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  Two nights before.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you why, you know, and it was the night before my talk and, and I got up the next morning and my talk was going to be in the afternoon and what, what was bothering me was, I was trying so hard because of what I felt like the magnitude of this place was, I was trying so hard that I was actually memorizing things and I am not a memorizer, you know, I am a talker and it doesn't mean I wouldn't have a cue sheet, you know, I might have five words that just remind me where the hell I am in my talk if, you know, if I get lost, but I got up there and I started with, you know, Wichita,

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Kansas and crack and, and, uh, you know, bullet holes in my car and the police and, you know, and so I kind of brought the audience into my world within 30 seconds and, and it was, it was good, it was, it was, it was powerful because this is a group of high achievers of which we know if there were 200 people in the room, there were certainly more than a few addicts sitting out there in the audience.

• 17:18Rich Roll?

  Probably between 10 and 20 people there who have had their, you know, sort of analogous version of that in their own life.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  But like always, and I'm sure it happens to you, I had people come up to me after and not only congratulate me for my talk, but say, yeah, you know, my, my brother has this problem, I said, my son, we've put him through, you know, rehab twice and.

• 17:40Rich Roll?

  Nobody's untouched.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Right, is he ever going to get it? And I'm like, you know, it's, he, he might and don't give up on him, but. You have to figure out for yourself that fine line between, you know, enabling and, you know, and loving, you know, and anyway, I just had a, I had more of those conversations than I expected to have here.

• 17:59Rich Roll?

  That's beautiful.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:01Rich Roll?

  You know, and I think there's something inescapable about the power of just showing up and being honest and vulnerable and, and sharing from the heart, you know, and I think, you know, in my own experience, when, you know, I've done the memorization thing and it's flat, you know?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  It is.

• 18:15Rich Roll?

  It's fine if you've done it enough times where you kind of say similar things because you just know it wrote, but that's different from remembering something that was written on a page, you know, when you can free yourself from that. And look, all of this I learned from, you know, sharing in the rooms.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  It's like being scared to get up and be honest and vulnerable and in front of a group of, you know, anywhere from five to 200 people to share your story. And I have found that when I just allow myself to be blank and ask for a little help to be, you know, of maximum service to whoever is in front of me and try to understand who that audience is and what they're, they're kind of, what they might be most interested in. And when you're in that headspace, it always works out and it's always better than whatever you thought, you know, you spent the last month scripting and rehearsing.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Well, and it's so true, and I think that the, the honesty, I think both for you and I is, I don't do it for other people. I really do do it for myself because I understand the power of saying these things out loud without it coming across as me almost, you can, you can like that old part of your life too much where it almost becomes bragging.

• 19:31Rich Roll?

  It's, there's a romanticization.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  And there's an ego, there's an ego attachment to that.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I was the worst addict ever.

• 19:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, my, my story is so insane.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  It's so much worse than yours, you won't believe it.

• 19:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  That's nothing. I put four needles in me at one time.

• 19:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  You know, and, and there's that temptation and, and I think though that, um, I'll even take it to another place. There's, I learned it, if you will, in, in the rooms, but I also learned it being on, um, ECO Challenge in 2000, and this is a funny lesson, but I, I carried a camera, a video camera for the television show 48 Hours back when it was a news magazine. And, you know, I did this video diary and...

• 20:14Speaker 01

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

• 20:57Speaker 01

  But then if there's a camera when they come into the, you know, into the aid station, like if they know the camera's gonna be there, then it's like, yeah, everything's going great, you know, doing fine. And you know, it's like, why? Because people actually wanna share, shared suffering, even if you're only watching it, is so much more powerful than, you know, sharing what experience, you're almost trying to make it look easy.

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  But you can only know that when you've experienced it like you have, you know, because most people, we're programmed from infancy to put the mask on. And the idea of being vulnerable and sharing your weaknesses with somebody else is in and of itself a sign of weakness. And that's something that, you know, has sort of been bred out of us. And the truth is, and you've, like you're a walking example of this, is that when you can get to that place of owning your story and owning, you know, all your warts and all your blemishes, and to do it without it, you know, raising your heart rate or creating beads of sweat on your forehead, that's the most powerful thing you can do. You can stand, you know, in your strength and just be like, this is who I am.

• 22:07Rich Roll?

  People freak out, like they're not used to seeing somebody who can do that. And it's disruptive in its own certain way, I think.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, you know, and this was really a, um... I got a lot out of this conference because I did get a lot of positive reinforcement from people who, look, there's some brilliant people speaking here and very smart, but a lot of this talk was about tech.

• 22:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  So they're explaining the next new thing in, you know, 3D printers and, you know, moon robots and I mean, like seriously, some just blow your mind stuff. And I found it all incredibly fascinating, but these guys, because they're all techies in general, they kind of live in this world and so they, they know these things are out there and it's in, whatever. And, and hearing a story like mine, I realized in a way, it was my responsibility to be even more, almost more honest than usual, if that's possible.

• 23:06Rich Roll?

  Right, these are people that live in their minds, right? And it's almost like you're there to serve as a reminder that we're human beings.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  And that's why I changed the talk. Running the Sahara was a great, cool, interesting experience.

• 23:20Rich Roll?

  Let me impress all these people.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I'm like, okay, so I'm really going to get up for 15 minutes and just show these people, you know, here's a couple of scenes from the movie and we ran this far and we, you know, we sweated this much and we lost this much. And I mean, I was like that, it was hollow for me, even though I think it would have accomplished like the minimum goal. And the maximum goal was to tell them a story that went from addiction to running and exploration to prison. You know, and I, and I, and I left them with, I don't mind saying, I left them with what

• 23:59Speaker 01

  my, what I consider to be, you know, my mantra these days, which is the, the simple idea that it doesn't matter what happens to you, all that matters is what you do with what happens to you. That's it. That's all, that's all of life. Good and bad things happen to every single one of us. And only in hindsight normally do we classify though, them as good or bad. Like some are on the surface.

• 24:29Rich Roll?

  We, we classify everything as it's happening. We're just doing it with poor information.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so I'll give you the example, you know, you're you're somebody you love gets into a car accident, right? And so that's a bad thing. They're injured. They go to the hospital. They get a brain scan and it finds a brain tumor that they didn't know was there. So is the car accident a good thing or a bad thing?

• 24:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  You know, and the point is that you don't, you really don't know how things are going to work out. And if you absolutely classify something, you know, in my case, and we talked about it before, in my case, would I have ever chosen to like, go to prison? Of course not. I wouldn't sign up for it. Like if there was a sheet on the wall, like, hey, let's try this, you know?

• 25:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  But classifying it is either good or bad, which I don't really do. I don't really classify it as good or bad. It just is. But the things that have come from it are actually very good.

• 25:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And

• 25:28Rich Roll?

  Undeniable, undeniable, you know, and it would be very easy for you. And this this kind of brings up, you know, a larger conversation about sort of cultural mores that that are are creeping up in society right now, that are kind of more indicative of the generation below us. But nobody would have put it past you to, you know, architect some great victim narrative around all these things that have happened to you, whether it's your addiction story, or whether it's, you know, your, your, your federal holiday. You could weave like a whole identity around persecution, right? And and you would be applauded

• 26:12Rich Roll?

  for that, I think, in a way that maybe you wouldn't have 20 years ago or 10 years ago, which I think is a very interesting thing. But the choice to to perceive and and act upon these events in your life as springboards for, you know, continual evolution and growth, to look at them as opportunities, as divine moments to, you know, sort of perpetuate your evolution. That's the beautiful thing. That's the, that's the magic in all of this.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. And it is a

• 26:45Speaker 01

  It is an interesting thing how the temptation in writing this book even, and I will, I would love to tell you that this was the first and only draft and that I got it right.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  The exact first time. No, no, I would love to tell you that, but it's not true.

• 27:00Rich Roll?

  We're gonna talk about all that.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, you know, just this, this thing of, you know, as you said, I, I might be either applauded or at least justified in complaining about certain things in my life. You know, I could complain about being an addict and I spent, hell, I spent years, the first few years of recovery because I didn't understand the power of being an addict. I spent the first few years like, like trying to have that surgically removed. You know, if I could just get rid of this part, then I wouldn't have all these just crazy feelings and, and, and all of that. And it took me that long to figure out that, hell, if you cut that out, I, I might never get out of bed again. I mean, there, there's, it is

• 27:44Speaker 01

  the thing that drives me to, you know, accomplish whatever it is I manage to accomplish.

• 27:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't compartmentalize it out of all these other aspects that define who you are.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  No, and, and then, then the lesson to learn about just something like my, my federal holiday, do I, I have no desire to spend the rest of my life like, you know, complaining about that or whatever. I can make a couple of blanket statements kind of about criminal justice system in the US and priorities and this and that. And I think I'm, I think I would, I can say them and they would be correct, but they're also pretty much accepted things these days. Kind of like everybody knows that there are some pretty confused priorities. And I think we agree, there's way, you know, mass incarceration is a complete waste of time. And there's a lot of things that. Uh, we should be focusing on rather than the things that we are.

• 28:40Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  But, you know, that's politics, that's, you know, it's, it's money, it's around elections. It's, it's all that stuff and I'm not a, I'm not that guy that wants to spend the rest of my life. You know, I, I like to acknowledge injustice when I see it, but I'm more interested, I'm much more interested in the injustice that happens to you than I am in the one that happens to me.

• 29:02Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think at its core, like the message that I get out of, at least, you know, the, the, the federal holiday aspect of your story is that things are neither good nor bad. They just are.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:17Rich Roll?

  Life just is. Life is in session and you have a choice, you have domain, you have power over what you're going to do with this information that's presented to you. So you can be the victim, you can, or you can take it in a completely different direction. And the idea that you could sort of perceive these four walls that were, you know, imprisoning you and channel that into a positive direction is, is, you know, sort of a, a comment about the human spirit and, and your character. But I think that anybody, no matter what your circumstances are in life, can find, you know, hope and inspiration out of that. And that's the power. Like to then divert the conversation into politics and privatization and all of that

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  is a distraction from the, the bigger, the more powerful, uh, component of this story.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Well, and I think, I know you, you will relate to this completely, you know, you can't, you have, I had a choice. You know, I had this, this incredible choice to either be miserable. You know, when I went to prison, I could have been miserable. A lot of people were miserable in there.

• 30:24Rich Roll?

  And you know what? I'm sure you were, I'm sure you had moments where you were miserable. It's not like you're some superhuman.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  No, I reported on Valentine's Day, you know, man, my only worry was not being somebody's Valentine. You know, I mean, I just wanted to get through that day. And, you know, but very quickly I was there and realized that, uh, there were, there were actually people that were, that were doing all right and, and getting along okay in there and in fact, improving their lives. And I had more than a few people tell me very early on that. You know, their life, life had been incredibly improved by this because they were on a track to die, or whatever it might be. You know, some of that is hindsight. And what are you, what are you going to say? You're either going to cause yourself pain by always saying what an awful tragedy this is, or as a human being, you're going to say, I've learned something

• 31:15Speaker 01

  from it. And, you know, prison is a, it's a place where you get a lot of time to reflect. And, you know, what I found for me was just simply that, that it was up to me, my happiness, just like the rest of the time. It was, it was totally up to me. And if I wanted to be happy, you know, on even under those circumstances, that, you know, I could do it.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  Well, this is probably a good moment to kind of take it back a little bit and reprise the story for those that are new or new erd of the podcast and have not had the opportunity to go back and listen to our initial conversation where we kind of recap your entire, you know, the arc of everything that's happened to you. But maybe we can kind of nutshell it a little bit and bring people up to speed before we dive into the book.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So how far back you want me to go? Are we just talking about this last, this?

• 32:17Rich Roll?

  What it was like, what happened?

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, there we go. There we go. So, um, you know, so in a nutshell, for, you know, for me, I, I, I grew up in this very eclectic sort of hippie world and only child of very young parents in North Carolina and just cast my mom was a writer. She's a playwright.

• 32:42Rich Roll?

  I didn't realize until the book, until I read the book, just, just what a hippie your mom is.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So she was a, she is a, my mom has Alzheimer's. She's in a facility. So I struggle with is and was because the person I knew is no longer the person she is.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  How old is she now?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  She's very young. She's only 73. She just turned 73 and it was about 10 years ago that she was diagnosed. So.

• 33:07Rich Roll?

  Really early.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  And, you know, for a writer, you know, I tell the story in the book, but you know, she, she called me one day or I called her and I don't remember and. She like said, you know, I can't spell the word thee. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, no, I can't spell the word thee. I can't remember how. And you know, and I heard the, I heard the fear in her voice. And there was, there was another time where she called and she'd gotten lost going to the grocery store, you know, the same grocery store, two miles down the road that she'd gone to for years. And she, she turned out the wrong way of the parking lot. And you know, it took her two hours to find her way home. Anyway, she is the, she's certainly the most, you know,

• 33:51Speaker 01

  formative person in my, in my life from, you know, from start to here. And I like to think that she's sort of the, uh, the hero of the book in a way too, because she's, she's my perpetual all time supporter, you know, no matter what idea I ever had, running across a desert, uh, it didn't matter, whatever it was. I obviously I didn't call her and say, Hey, Mom, I'm thinking about doing some cocaine.

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  She would have had a problem with that.

• 34:19Rich Roll?

  She always saw the best in you and she always had your back and she was always supportive of you and, and all your crazy, you know, harebrained creative pursuits.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:27Rich Roll?

  Uh, of which there have been many.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Many, yeah.

• 34:30Rich Roll?

  And on the, the flip side, you had a dad who was more of a taskmaster and a guy who, you know, basically had difficulty sort of seeing the good, these things that you were doing. And we, we talked about choices before, right? Like you have a choice of how you're going to perceive your federal holiday. And as a young person, you had a choice to sort of be influenced by your mom or your dad. And you make this choice to really, it seems like what I got out of the book is that you're very driven by this, uh, you know, this need, this desire to impress your dad. It was almost like everything your mom was doing is great, but what you really wanted was for your dad to get on your mom's page. And that was a, you know, pursuit that availed you nothing.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  My mother went through her entire, I, I would probably guess that, you know, my mom never made more than. You know, 15 grand in a year was probably a good year. You know, she was the type of person who she was all passion.

• 35:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  You know, and just didn't, she just didn't pursue, you know, money and, and it's not to say, I mean, my dad's, my dad's actually a really great guy. He's a nice man. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of things, but he is, you know, if I was to go to dad and say, you know, hey, I'm joining the Peace Corps, or I go to dad and say, hey, I just got a job making 200 grand a year. You know, I can just tell you that the reaction to those two things would be quite different.

• 35:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  You know, and he, he, you know, he believes in traditional, you know, uh, things around, you know, you're, you earn money and you buy a house and car and, and you do those things. And it's just not, what's funny is in my pursuit to please my dad through the years, I, I still though, it was, it was dishonest most of the time. So I, when, when push came to shove, most of the time I still made a decision that was exactly the opposite of, you know, what would have made him happy. Like I just couldn't, I just had no follow through. I had a good, I had a good game. It's like, you know, it was like, you're gonna marry somebody you don't love, you know, you get to the altar and it's finally like, oh my God, what am I doing?

• 36:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, and so it, it, it's taken a long time to come to terms with that in a way that I'm, I'm never going to have the kind of relationship with him that I want to have. But what it has also done is turned my relationship with my boys, my two sons, into this, I mean, powerful, you know, we're as close as any father and sons could be. And they're as different as two boys could be from each other. And they, they know without a doubt that I, you know, I love them truly as unconditionally as possible. And I want the best for them, but they're the ones who have to determine what's best.

• 37:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Breaking the cycle.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I, right. And they'll have kids of their own someday and hopefully that will, you know, that, that cycle will continue in that loving. Accepting direction because it's still what I need. It's still what I need.

• 37:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  And I actually get it from them.

• 37:42Rich Roll?

  And there's a serenity prayer kind of aspect to that, too, of letting go of that need to try to get your dad to be anything other than who he is. And that's, you know, that's a journey that kind of infused. That's a theme of the book as well.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Well, it's unfair of me to assume that he would change or that he, that I would somehow convince him to treat me differently than he's capable of treating, treating me. I mean, that's a little bit naive. And, and I know my dad loves me. He just, you know, has a, has a bit of a difficult time showing it or showing it in a way that, that fits what I need.

• 38:19Rich Roll?

  Right. So the running thing kind of enters your life pretty early and you show a natural, you know, talent for it and inclination and passion for it. Clearly, you know, it tapped into, you know, something primal for you and you found joy in it from a very early age. And what I didn't realize until I read the book was this sort of

• 38:41Rich Roll?

  genetic, you know, predisposition to running, like your grandfather was the coach of UNC.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Rich Roll?

  Like a legendary track and field coach.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he was, he was an All-American and Jack himself.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Like the track was named after him?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the cross country course at UNC Chapel Hill is actually called the Dale Ranson, you know, cross country course.

• 39:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  You know, my family actually still funds a full scholarship there.

• 39:06Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that. Wow.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, it's a, it's a source of real pride for me because he coached a lot of Olympians. But I, but I'll tell you the power, the biggest power in it is that, okay, he died when I was a year old, but, so I never knew him. I mean, there's not even a picture of him holding me because apparently I, I hear that he was like always at practice. So, but I grew up with this narrative from family members of them telling me, oh, you know, you're just like Coach Dale, you're just like your granddad, you're going to be a runner. And it's weird what you can do as a parent for a kid by. Not telling them that, you know, some parents might say, oh, you're going to be a doctor.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And maybe, okay, maybe that does sort of work sometimes and a kid, but, but more often than not, that kid's either destined to be one or he's not. And for me though, this love of running, you know, developed through an acceptance of running to begin with. So I at least was open to the idea because I'd been told about my grandfather and I saw the awards on the wall and I had a pocket watch that was like conference championship 1936. And I had these couple of little possessions that were so important. And in my head, I wanted to like make him proud. He was, you know, not, not on this earth anymore. But there was that desire.

• 40:32Rich Roll?

  I have a very similar thing in my own life. My grandfather was captain of the University of Michigan swim team in like 1929, I think. Swam for Matt Man, the natatorium at Michigan now is called the Matt Man Pool, who was a legendary coach at the time. And, and my grandfather had an American record and was an Olympic hopeful. He didn't ultimately make the Olympic team, but he died long before I was born, so I never had the opportunity to meet him. But, you know, I'm named after him. So there's this doppelganger kind of aspect to it. And, and much like yourself, I was told like, oh, you're a lot like him. And, you know, then I become the swimmer and follow in those footsteps. You know, but I'm not consciously thinking about that when I'm in high school and college.

• 41:17Rich Roll?

  But it's interesting how those, you know, that DNA can, you know, send you on a trajectory. That's, you know, sort of beyond your conscious awareness.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  No doubt. Well, and so I, I do in high school, I end up running and I run pretty well, you know, but I'm actually, I'm more interested in, you know, the football players are the ones that date the cheerleaders. And so I, I will admit to, you know, I played football and I played basketball.

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's very different. Most runners can only, they're just, they run. That's it.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  You know, have them do anything else, forget about it. But you're playing basketball, you're playing football, you played basketball at UNC on the freshman team. Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And all of that said, and I don't, I don't like to live ever in regrets. And I'm an ad, so to take these two things actually and say that they don't live in the same world would be very naive, but you know, I went to Carolina after a stellar high school career. And as I say in the book, you know, it's, it's this like I expected there to be a welcome Charlie banner on my dorm and I get to UNC and of course, there's 4,000 other fantastic freshmen who are all top 10 in their class and great athletes and, and all these things. And you know, I, I was, I was almost, I was shocked to see how average I was under those circumstances.

• 42:39Rich Roll?

  I think it's very interesting and perhaps alcoholic that you're this kid who, who is, you know, president of your class and had been, you know, throughout high school. Obviously you're very gregarious, you know, charismatic person. You have a big personality. You were great in sports. And I'm sure had a very sort of solid opinion of yourself going into college.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  And yet beneath that is this deep self-loathing and insecurity. And, and I saw that in the book when you basically refused to run cross country. And part of that is informed by the fact that this cross country course is named after your grandfather. Like there's this legacy and with that comes expectations that you feel like you're never going to be able to live up to. So why even try?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  No, and that, that is the regret right there is that I didn't, you know, it was very few things I'd want to go back and redo, but I could have run there. I wouldn't have been like a star athlete and I wouldn't have been, I would have been just average and I probably wouldn't have been a scoring athlete on the cross country or track team. But you know, those programs do allow, you know, they have a lot of runners and not all the runners get to go to all the meets or anything else. And I'd probably get to compete a few times, might not, not have earned a letter or whatever, but so what? And, and I, I think back about that. And here's the thing though, here's the dose of reality that I.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  I am very capable of still swallowing and that is I'm an addict. I'm an alcoholic and those traits weren't going to magically go away just because I went out for the track team across country game. So in a way, maybe what I was afraid of wasn't not being, wasn't being good enough. You know, this, this idea of not being good enough to run there, but I knew somewhere deep down already that I was going to screw this up. You know, and I did, you know, I did the, you know, I totally just devastated the rest of my college career after the first couple of, of years. And I think I knew it was coming and maybe not as a freshman. As a freshman, I still had, I had great hope, but you know,

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I actually went to Carolina, if you can believe it, to play football.

• 44:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what I thought of it. I got an invitation, only an invitation to walk on, but I had spoken to the coach and, you know, there was at least the opportunity to make the travel squad or potentially even be on the team. And so when that didn't happen.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  And get your college education paid for.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. Exactly. And I.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  But you made sure you screwed that up.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Oh, man. If you, if you can just, you know, if you can just sabotage that early enough, then you can be sure you never have to fail. You know, I got very good at sabotaging pretty much anything three steps in advance. You know, you, you.

• 45:30Rich Roll?

  Don't wait till that weed's three foot high.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Oh, God, no.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  Step on it when it's a seedling.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  When it's a seedling, absolutely. Because, you know, heaven forbid, you know, you, you sabotage yourself by like on the playing field, doing something disastrous. I make sure that I never get anywhere close to the playing field in those days.

• 45:49Rich Roll?

  So what happened? How did you blow it with the football?

• 45:52Speaker 01

  You know, I, well, I actually got hurt. I turned an ankle playing basketball the first week of my freshman year in, in college. And that was just kind of the end of football. And, you know, I ended up going out for the JV basketball team and, you know, made the team and knew I was never going to play, of course, because.

• 46:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  You don't go play at UNC Chapel Hill as a, as a walk on. I mean, once in a very, very long time that happens.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, man. But you played JV or you played freshman, you did?

• 46:21Speaker 01

  JV.

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  Did you know a guy named Bill Spindel?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Bill Spindel, my age, man, that sounds incredibly familiar. He played JV there?

• 46:30Rich Roll?

  Played JV. He's my cousin.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That's, that's very funny.

• 46:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And my, his younger brother, David Spindel, who was my year.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:38Rich Roll?

  My year also played, I think he played freshman. I don't know if he played JV.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 46:43Rich Roll?

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

• 46:51Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 46:52Rich Roll?

  But, but, yeah, I used to go visit David at UNC. I have a huge scar on my leg to prove it from a night that I can't recall. So maybe I was, maybe I ran into you.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Right. Did you come to a bar called Purdy's, you know, on Franklin Street?

• 47:07Rich Roll?

  I have no memory of any of it.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I'm sure you were on Franklin Street.

• 47:10Rich Roll?

  But I, you know, I, I have a huge scar. So something happened.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Well, I'm sorry about that.

• 47:15Rich Roll?

  Anyway. I'm gonna blame you.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Is it in the right, is it in the shape of a, you know, a tar heel?

• 47:20Rich Roll?

  Uh.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so college ended up being just this launching pad into, uh, into addiction. You know, I left there and, you know, as you know, from your own story and, and from us talking about it before, I basically spent the next seven or eight years just doing my best to actually achieve. I actually, you know, I started a business. I got married. I bought a house. I got a car. Because if I can do all those things, then my five day binge is off in some, you know, coke, uh, heaven, you know, and drinking and then slinking home. I could get away with those.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  You know, because they can't fire the top salesman, right?

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Which turns out to not be true, by the way.

• 48:07Rich Roll?

  You can't possibly be an addict or an alcoholic if you're bringing home good cash.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:12Rich Roll?

  Or if you're able to get out there and, and, and run.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  It says it in my, it said it in some contract I signed. As long as I'm making a hundred grand or whatever it was, then you can't possibly be an addict.

• 48:23Rich Roll?

  The thing that, that just struck me that was so powerful for me in your book was that phase of your life. Like just the, like as the, it's like if you're on. Slow boil, right? Like you can just feel it getting hotter and hotter and hotter as the stakes get higher and higher and and this, you know, this this addiction is becoming increasingly, you know, more and more out of control and just the level of like incomprehensible demoralization that you would continually subject yourself to and bounce back and get clean for a little bit and then do it again and be absolutely baffled that you that you went back for more and then it would continue to get worse and worse and worse. And you're doing all the

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  classic things. You're pulling the geographics and, you know, you're spinning the lies and living the double life and all of that. And I was just, I mean, literally, I wanted to vomit, you know, because it was so real for me.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I always say quitting quitting is easy. I've done it a hundred times.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  You know, that's the and we and we meant it. I mean, there was no lack of conviction. Every time I quit in that moment, 100%, I meant that I quit because I I felt so bad. The only thing that was redeeming in my entire world was this this conviction to all of a sudden quit, you know, I've spent all my money again. I've, you know, ended up in some place I definitely shouldn't be. I've destroyed my body, you know, once more. My car has a frigging bullet hole in it. I'm whatever it might be, you know, I mean, I've done it again for for again, for the the

• 50:05Speaker 01

  almost uncountable time. So absolutely, that has to be the last time I'm not doing that again. Oh, by the way, does anybody have a Valium?

• 50:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  So I can go to sleep. And and then when I go to sleep, you know, of course, two days later, I wake up and it's like, okay, I don't feel that bad. And, you know, then it all starts over again.

• 50:26Rich Roll?

  And it usually would start over when you had the opportunity to go out of town.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  So it's like that geographic, like failing to understand that wherever you go, there you are, that you're bringing yourself with you that, you know, and I know what that feels like. In early sobriety, it would terrify me to go out of town and be in a hotel room somewhere by myself, because that's like, hey, nobody knows. Like, I could do this. I could, I could get away with something. Who's gonna know? No harm, no foul.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Why should I tell anybody if I did that, you know? And I had the, I had the, I had the curse, if you will, and I'm doing, I'm doing air quotes for anybody out there listening. And that's the, that I actually had a business that was lucrative enough that I could, you know, I could make a thousand dollars in a day when I was on the road. And I mean, that was, that was in a limited time span, but come on. I knew the calculator.

• 51:17Rich Roll?

  Like you're like undenting cars that have been, you know, pelted in hailstorms. Like, that's just the weirdest.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  So I fix a car and it's a thousand dollar repair and it takes me a day to fix that car. I fix it, you know, and I might have three or four guys working for me too. So I'm, I'm taking 20% of, of their job too. So it wasn't uncommon in those days for me, you know, to, you know, I could earn a thousand or even a couple thousand dollars in a day. And it, it might only be a couple of weeks, but my, my calculator was on, my mental calculator was on full standby, you know, because I knew in my head, okay, this much, I need to like, I need to like take it and move it out of the way so that I've got, that I can pay these bills and I can do that. But hey, look at that. There's like $3,000 extra

• 52:06Speaker 01

  right there that, you know, that I can.

• 52:09Rich Roll?

  Were you getting paid in cash?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  No, every once in a while, but generally speaking, I got checks. And I mean, so, so yeah. So then I had to, of course, you know, at the end of the year, make sure that I'd paid taxes on everything, which I did, you know, that's, that's another story, but that is, that is another piece of.

• 52:25Rich Roll?

  I like how you were so quick to jump on that and clarify that.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  I knew it.

• 52:29Rich Roll?

  That is definitely a function of your federal holiday.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Somebody that's been beaten. Yeah. So, you know, but, but it's a, but still, a customer could write me a check. I could deposit it. It's my account, my business account. I can go put it in there and I can of course pay myself. And so, and then when I pay myself, there's, you know, my money.

• 52:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  And so, you know, I just, I did this over and over and it was a dangerous thing to feel like, how many times I said, oh my God, let's just take 300 out, I'll go buy an eight ball, you know, it'll be, it'll be just tonight.

• 53:03Rich Roll?

  That's the thing people don't, don't get, I think about addicts and alcoholics, like that persistent delusion that tonight's going to be different, that I am going to be able to enjoy my couple of drinks like a gentleman and call it a night. And convincing yourself that that's a possibility, despite copious evidence.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Well, every, every once in a while, which is actually terrible, you actually pull that off.

• 53:31Rich Roll?

  Right. So that's the night you remember, that one time five years ago when I went home after two beers.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, then my first sponsor said to me, okay, you do understand that like, normal people don't have to control their drinking. You know, you get that, right? Because we all tried the, okay, I'm only going to have two, or it's the weekend now, so I can blow it out on Saturday with a six pack or whatever. And, and again, normal people just, like my wife is a normal person. She has a glass of wine. And if that second glass of wine gets started, about 75% of the time, it doesn't get finished. And I'm like, I'm actually astounded. I'm like, what, you know, aren't you going to finish that?

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  That's more baffling than like waking up, you know, like naked in Vegas.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still say it today. I'm like, aren't you going to finish that? It's like, come on. Well, let's see if somebody else wants it. You know, it's this crazy thing. So.

• 54:24Rich Roll?

  Somebody's at the door.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  They are.

• 54:26Rich Roll?

  Hold on one second.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Hi. I'm still in a meeting.

• 54:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.

• 54:35Rich Roll?

  There was a sign on the door that said, meeting in progress, but she knocked anyway.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  She didn't believe it.

• 54:39Rich Roll?

  To see if we still needed the meeting sign.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  That's the best.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Can I take your sign? Well, we're still in the meeting.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Sorry. So it just defeated the purpose of having it in the first place.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  It's the real world in here.

• 54:55Rich Roll?

  You're, we should, we should clarify that your wife now is not, uh, your Anastasia is your second wife. And, and Pam was the name of your first wife in the book.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  Pam has the patience of like a saint in this book because the number of times that she would have to clean up your mess.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:13Rich Roll?

  Is beyond like what you could wish on any human being.

• 55:17Speaker 01

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

• 55:57Speaker 01

  And she won't mind me saying this. I said it in the book anyway, to a degree. I mean, she grew up in a household with a father who drank. A very nice man, but a drinker.

• 56:06Rich Roll?

  What a shocking revelation.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So she ends up marrying, you know, someone like me, but there's a comfort obviously in that for her. So she's not like totally freaked out by my behavior because a, and there's a, that's an illness almost in itself. Because any sane person who has the right self-confidence and, and just, you know, feels good about themselves. Never would have stayed with me through that stuff because they would have finally thrown up their hands. And, and I, you know, we sat together in, you know, marriage counseling one time and had a therapist actually say like point blank. She is never going to leave you no matter what you do. Because there was a time in there where I was trying to make her leave.

• 56:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Like I was trying to behave badly enough where she'd finally just go because I felt, I felt so bad about myself. That I wanted to be alone. But she wasn't going anywhere.

• 57:04Rich Roll?

  But yet lacking the maturity or the skills to actually confront it. Yeah, to confront it directly and discuss it.

• 57:12Speaker 01

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

• 57:55Speaker 01

  And my way of solving that problem was of course, hey, let's get married. Because I, I couldn't let her leave. And later on, our roles changed. I no longer needed the caretaker. I no longer needed somebody to call in. You know, I might still screw up, but I, I was there and present for my screw ups. And I, and I was willing and able to handle them myself.

• 58:17Rich Roll?

  And when suddenly she doesn't have to fill that role, that codependent role of cleaning up your messes, then what does that mean? Like, how are you, how are you relating to each other anymore?

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Without the person to take care of. And, and, you know, and she ended up with a lot of soul searching through that. Because she was this, this giving generous person who was willing to do this. But we, you know, we weren't, you know, we weren't in love or I wasn't in love. And the reality was I knew I couldn't spend the rest of my life in that circumstance. And I, I love her as the mother of my kids and she's never been anything but wonderful to me. And, and I think I pay, you know, very proper.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  You know, I honor her in this book as being a good mom and a good person.

• 59:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, you definitely, you definitely accomplished that. I mean, my favorite, my favorite kind of drunkalog story in the book, which simultaneously made my skin crawl and laugh out loud was when you go to dinner with her and your father-in-law. Can you just like tell that story? Cause like, I just love it.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  So, so Horace, who was just again, this great man and Horace had, you know, Horace had been a drinker earlier in his life and he had, but he had a quadruple bypass, you know, in his early seventies and like literally just was told he couldn't drink anymore and if he did, it would kill him, which doesn't stop most alcoholics. But, you know, he, he did have his drinking. He still had a cocktail, but under control. So he's there for the whole week and I, I was in this phase where I knew absolutely I couldn't handle.

• 59:55Rich Roll?

  You had to keep it together.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  I had to keep it together because I really liked him and he was there for a week and I made it through six days.

• 1:00:02Rich Roll?

  You were in Carmel at the time, right?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, Monterey. I'm selling cars at a Toyota dealership and I am like the, you know, I went through this little time. I mean, I'm like the number one car salesman in the country there for a little while. And so I'm selling a lot of cars because I'm an addict.

• 1:00:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  I can talk, I can talk, you know, and, and.

• 1:00:19Rich Roll?

  You got the hustle.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I do. And my joke was though, that with any sales, of course, your, your only job, especially in car sales is to prove that you're not like, you didn't hatch or you're not an alien and that you have a, a mother that loves you and you're not just out to screw the customer. Anyway, so I do my job all week. I sell a few cars and I sell this one car that's got like this, you know, $300 spiff, as they call in the car business, a bonus. And, and this cash is in my pocket. They do pay those in cash and then of course they take the taxes out on your check. So I had a lot of like small checks in that business because I'd spend the cash. But I got this 300 bucks and it's like, no, no,

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  no, I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to go to the dealer. I'm not going to do anything with this. And then, then my guy actually comes up to him and he says, hey, you know, I'm, I'm holding. I got, you know, I got some coke and if you want some. And I'm like, maybe for this weekend. He's like, yeah, you know, I don't think I'll have any more then. I mean, he was a good salesman himself.

• 1:01:22Rich Roll?

  It's like textbook.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  All right. So immediately I say, well, you know what? You're right. The practical thing to do here.

• 1:01:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Would be to go ahead and just buy it now and then save it.

• 1:01:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  I'll save it because of course I can just save it. And you know, five minutes, I'm going to the restaurant to meet. It's my, it's my father in law's last night in town. He's gonna take us out.

• 1:01:44Rich Roll?

  Almost made it.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  To the Monterey Plaza Hotel, man. He's taking us to this beautiful place, right down on the water. It's this gorgeous, you know, spot and good food and all that. And so, you know, I'm five minutes down the road and I stop and I'm like, ah, you know, what's one bump? I could do a couple of bumps. I'm a little tired, you know, because I still believe that. So I do that. And then before I get to the restaurant, I do two more lines and I, I show up, you know, wide eyed and chattering. And I know my wife knew exactly what the deal was, but Horace didn't know. And so we sat there at dinner for the whole night and, and just like, uh, you know, I talked my head off and I, I looked at my $25 steak and moved it around on my plate and cut it up and.

• 1:02:30Rich Roll?

  Pretending like you're eating it.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  If there'd been a dog, I would have fed it a couple of bites because, you know, because we all know that cocaine's a real appetite enhancer. And, you know, so I didn't feel like eating because it's, it's not for those of you out there who don't do it.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  But I managed to get through the meal and I went to the bar to the, I went to the bathroom a couple of times. And on the way I happened to stop and do, you know, a couple of shots of tequila and down a beer. And I'd come back to the table and I got through the dinner and I finally, you know, we leave thankfully.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  I used to do that, that thing of like, you know, I'm going to the bathroom and it always was a lap around the bar. And a couple of quick shots on the way to the bathroom and then back from the bathroom and then return to the table.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And here's the thing, and I don't know if you were, you know, married at the time or whatever, but I, I told myself that of course no one knew about it. And of course my wife knew.

• 1:03:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  But she knew there was, there was zero, I had put her in a position and, and addicts and alcoholics do this to their partners. I had put the. Her in a position where she couldn't say, what could she say? Like, I mean, there's nothing to say. All she could do is try to manage me and hope that I wouldn't just spin out of control or, or, you know, fall on the table and knock everybody's food off or, you know, I'm a loud person anyway. Like I'm, I may be the loudest person you've ever known, just with a natural volume and put that on cocaine and alcohol in a restaurant? And I mean, people across the restaurant are turning their heads going, oh my God, is there, is there an argument going on over there?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  But in your mind, you're just being super charming and engaged. Fantastic. If there was music, I would have danced, you know? I mean, it was, it was that kind of thing. So on that night, we finally mercifully finished dinner. Then we go home and I like feign,

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  like, man, I'm tired. I'm going to bed. And my wife was not a good drinker. So she, and she, she would have a couple of glasses of wine and like she would just, you know, pass out. So she'd had her two glasses and probably had half a glass when we came home. And so when she came to bed, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm gently snoring as if asleep and, you know, and she's out in three minutes. And I'm like up, out the door, you know, I'm out the front door and I walk, you know, to a, you know, to a bowling alley nearby. And I don't drive at least, there's that one thing. And I'll tell you this, I'll, I had left this out of the book and to be honest, it was a mistake and I'd forgotten about it. And I'll tell you a brief story. I'm on my way to the bowling alley. Two

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  cops roll up on me. I got the remnants of an eight ball in my pocket. Two cops roll up on me and on the sidewalk, cars, you know, and they take me and they're, they're like, you know, what are you doing out here? Whatever, you know, it's midnight or something. And they're like, empty your pockets. And so luckily I have enough crap in my pockets that I start pulling stuff out. And I hear one of them like on the radio, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, yeah. And they come back to me. He's like, never mind, put your stuff away. And I mean, like the last thing left in my pocket is the drugs. Why did you leave that out of the story in the book? You know what? To be honest, it was a mistake. And you know, you reach a point where you've

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  turned in the final manuscript and in my, in my drunk log. I actually had this as a different occurrence and, and it wasn't until later that I actually realized that it was the same episode. And whatever, maybe if there's a second, second printing, I can add it back in. But

• 1:06:11Rich Roll?

  Keep going.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  They like let me go. And so I go to the bowling alley. I do my thing. I'm there until like, you know, five o'clock in the morning and I come back. And this is actually highly unusual.

• 1:06:20Rich Roll?

  Having your own party at the bowling alley.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  I'm just bowling and drinking.

• 1:06:23Rich Roll?

  Bowling alley stay open that late?

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  It did. It was an all night bowling alley, man. And the craziest thing when I was doing coke, I bowled over 200 like multiple times. It was, couldn't bowl worth shit when I was sober. But, you know, it's a great, and maybe that's just my memory. I don't know. I don't know. Just focus, you know? I mean, it's terrible drug, but it had its, that's the other thing. Like in this book, I, I wonder sometimes if people will wonder about, you know, how much I remember, but you know, I wasn't. Cocaine was a part of pretty much every, every binge, every episode and cocaine is, it is a drug where you don't necessarily forget things.

• 1:07:02Rich Roll?

  Right. So you have this depressant of alcohol. Cocaine actually allows you to just continue to drink and drink and drink.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Without you being drunk drunk. Right. Exactly. Like I never passed out. Pretty much never. Like the passing out was not in my, you know, it just wasn't in my skill set. So I wish I could sometimes. But anyway, so I, I come back home and it's 5:00 AM. I'm like, oh, thank God, I've gotten home in time because, you know, I need to slip back into bed and whatever. And I, I'm coming up in the driveway and I see the lights on in the kitchen. I'm like, oh shit, this is bad. And my, you know, I like just skirt out to the garage. It's a detached garage at this house. And so I go into the garage and I'm in there pacing and, you know, frantic and

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  How am I gonna spin this?

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

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

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  But I just love like the idea that you're gonna pull this off, like that this lie's gonna go over.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  How could that not work?

• 1:09:28Rich Roll?

  Tried certain, I have my own version of that story that I've, you know, spun a couple of times and the idea that you're, that it's gonna work, you know?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  How could that not work? I still don't get it. You know, it's like, they outsmarted me. No, and it was the, you know, like it was another, another catalyst towards getting me into treatment and I was embarrassed and, you know, Horace died a couple of years later after that. And, you know, but he never, he never held it against me. I mean, I think he also, you know, he knew I wasn't a bad guy and, you know, I, we'd been married a few years and I was certainly good to his daughter and. You know, he was very forgiving, but it was, it was certainly a, I would love to say that that was even in the top 50 most humiliating things I've ever done and, and it wouldn't be

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  true. It's just that I did most of them away from family. That was one of the few times where I did something that was just like gut wrenching and, and like right in the face.

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  On public display for the people that you cared about.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  I preferred to disappear with my binges and I just would then show back up two or three or eight days later.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, pretend it never happened.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  And beg for forgiveness, you know, and, and usually I could get it because once again, I was very convincing about my, you know, I'm sorry, that's the last time I'll ever do that.

• 1:10:59Rich Roll?

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

• 1:11:40Rich Roll?

  by, you know, disappearing for four days and going down the, you know, drainpipe on drugs and alcohol. And if I can feel myself and punish myself through that visceral experience of running, then somehow that evens the playing field. But then it sort of morphs into this way of feeling more alive, right? So can you describe that evolution?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  I can. And I mean, and you actually described it very well, but it is a, you know, running became.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Well, first I should say, you know, I still had an ego. I was, I was certainly a drug addict with, with enough ego to not want to look like a drug addict. And so, running, of course, has this way, you know, it's a, it's a, it's to me, if you wanna get fit, if you wanna lose a few pounds, if you wanna whatever, I mean, nothing, nothing does it like running. And so, plus, it's, it doesn't take any equipment. It's, I could do it like, you know, that. Like, so I'm, I'm in my running shoes even when I'm still hungover and wasted sometimes, and it was-

• 1:12:53Rich Roll?

  But that also, that fuels the denial as well, because as long as you can keep doing that, and you can go out and do that, then everything's cool.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  I'm not an addict.

• 1:13:00Rich Roll?

  You're not, yeah, like, you're not one of those guys in a church basement.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  I can run a marathon. How can I be, you know, how can I be an addict?

• 1:13:07Rich Roll?

  I can run a marathon drunk faster than most people, and I can do it on two hours of sleep, hungover.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, but what I did start doing was using, I guess I used running almost as, as penance, as self-flagellation, where I would-

• 1:13:22Rich Roll?

  Your hair shirt.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  If I could, right, if I could have taken the thing and whip it over my shoulders and make my back bleed, you know, I would have done that. But this was my version of that, one that I understood. And the interesting thing about it, every runner has felt that. You do get control of the burning in your lungs. When you understand how to run, you can run just hard enough to like, to like, cause yourself with lactic acid buildup and, you know, oxygen depletion, and of course, not to mention an unbelievable amount of dehydration after the things that I would do. I actually knew that I would, I would, like squeezing a sponge, my desire was to squeeze dry

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  everything that I had done, and I wanted it out of me. Of course, that's not how it works, but that's how I pictured it. And so, when I ran, you know, I ran as hard as I was capable of running under those circumstances, and I felt like I was purging my, not just my bad, bad behavior, but the-

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Man, the deep seated, painful insecurity and shame. I mean, it's shame, right? It's because that's where I lived was in this shameful place where, you know, I knew how bad I was and I knew like most addicts that if other people knew how bad I was, they would hate me, despise me, whatever. And so I wanted all of that out of me and I found, you know, running, okay, I wasn't running for the right reasons, but running still saved my life in that way, you know, running and a combination of that and, and addiction recovery. When I finally got a handle on what that meant and why I was actually doing it.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  You mentioned treatment earlier. I went to treatment and I'll just tell you very briefly, the reason, I know this for certain, the reason treatment didn't work for me when I went when I was 27, was, you know, 28 day program in Pacific Grove, California, traditional, you know, you do the group counseling, get some one-on-one, you go to AA meetings that are right there in the building and all that. I was, it's because I was a genius, right? So, I mean, that was my view. I didn't really think I was a genius, but I was smart and smart people don't need spirituality. That was my-

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  They also don't need to do the work because they can read the book or skim it and go, I got it. I got this.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So I said, almost like training for a marathon, I said, okay, I'm gonna do this for 90 days. So I practically learned that big buck, word for word, I could, you know, I'd say the serenity prayer. I would certainly talk about a higher power, but in my head, I'm like going, yeah, whatever. That's for other people. You know, I'll do the rest of this. And I did get a lot out of, you know, doing an inventory and sharing it with somebody and talking about this, you know, I understood very quickly that doing all of that was a way of purging and therapy and it did feel good. But I wasn't about to allow some kind of higher power to, I wasn't turning shit over to that guy. You know what I mean?

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  Would require you to relinquish self your self will.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  And as somebody, you know, beyond the intelligence quotient, you're also an athlete and an athlete who excels in an individual sport. And if there's something you learn through the process of developing as an athlete in an individual sport. Is that your performance is directly related to the amount of work and focus and dedication that you and you alone decide to put into it. And what comes out of that is this idea that self-will will avail you everything, right? In the context of running or any other number of sports. So to then say, well, you gotta let go of that, like, not only does that create something to disagree with. It doesn't even compute. Like, what do you mean? Right? Like, the idea of surrendering that, I don't even understand what that.

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  No, so ninety days into treatment, I mean, I, or I mean, it's twenty-eight day treatment and then I stayed sober for sixty more days where I was going to meetings. And I was active and I, man, I was waiting for that ninety days. Because that was like, uh, that was like a graduation diploma for me in my mind and I knew that. Like, I wasn't telling anybody else that, but if I could just get to ninety days, then, you know, things would be fine from that point forward. And so I stopped going to meetings. I certainly didn't have a sponsor to talk to. And I did manage to stay sober another like ninety days. But what I didn't get at that point was that there's only about, what?

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  There's only like one percent of the time for a recovering addict that is actually dangerous. And the other ninety-nine percent of the time is when we're supposed to be building up our power and our guards to be prepared. For that one percent, that one moment when a drink appears or a drug appears or a feeling, heaven forbid, appears. You know, an emotion that we're not prepared for that in the past, we could take care of that emotion in a second with a drug or a beer or whatever. And, and so I didn't understand that all of this time was like training for a race. You know, you're training ninety-nine percent of the time and the race is only one percent.

• 1:18:51Rich Roll?

  That race is that, that one moment where suddenly you're like. What's the big deal?

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  I have a beer.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  You got this thing in the back of your head, this voice going, hey, you know, you deserve this.

• 1:19:03Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  You don't, you don't just need a beer, you deserve it, damn it.

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  Look how hard you worked. So at nine, it was around nine months, right?

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So at nine months, you take your diploma, you graduate from sobriety and, and celebrate this great achievement by, by going out on a bender.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:19:22Rich Roll?

  Right? And so when people come to me and they're like, I don't, you know, like I'm not an alcoholic. I, I, I'm not sure I really understand, you know, what that means or what that is, like what is an alcoholic, what is an addict? And I just, I always say, imagine a person who works extremely hard to repair their life. They stay sober for an entire year. They put everything into it. They make it their number one priority. And then when they get that one year chip, they celebrate it by getting drunk and they think that's a good idea.

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Rich Roll?

  That is the essence of what it means to be an alcoholic, the insanity of that tweak, that mental tweak, that mental, you know, whatever it is, disrepair that would lead you to believe that that's a perfectly good idea.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Well, and here's the thing, the discipline that it took to go that year and to know, and probably in, in the back of your head that on your, you know, I mean, that, that year didn't just appear and then you decided to get drunk. Like that thought of drinking started.

• 1:20:24Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Way before, right?

• 1:20:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

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

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  Right. But then when you do that, they accuse you of just being addictive in that other discipline.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:21:12Rich Roll?

  Which brings us up, and we talked about this last time.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  We did.

• 1:21:14Rich Roll?

  But I think it bears repeating, or maybe your definition or perception of that has evolved.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when people say, well, you're still, you're just a crazy alcoholic. You just channeled all that into your running and you're, you have this unhealthy relationship with it.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  And it couldn't be, it literally couldn't be farther from the truth. Because everything about my addict and my addictive behavior when I was drinking and doing drugs was about hiding every bit of who I was. I mean, first of all, I didn't really know who I was, but heaven forbid that starts to surface. I would drink it or drug it down back into the pit where it came from. So all I wanted to do was destroy and hide every bit of my personality. Running, on the other hand, does the exact opposite. You, I really do feel like I become the true essence of, of who I am and who I'm meant to be in the course of a run.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  And that doesn't mean it's all light and sunshine. Sometimes that means I'm a dick. Sometimes that means I'm whatever, but it's, but, but it's an emotion that I actually get to have. So maybe my view has evolved. I think this is different than what I said, but it's more expansive. I now understand that I'm not, it's not a requirement just because I'm sober that, that life is going to be good or that I have to be nice all the time or that I'm not going to be, you know, hungry or cranky or snap at my wife on something when I absolutely shouldn't. You know, the difference is now I get to apologize.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  I get to, you know, admit my wrong or even potentially stick by, you know, my, my rightness, but without that alcoholic's conviction of, based in fear that everything I do, you know, has to be justified in some way. You know, now I'm, and running has taught me. That I, and it doesn't have to be running. It can be biking. I mean, if I couldn't run again tomorrow, I'd find another outlet for this. And I don't do it addictively. I do it instinctively. I don't run every day. I like to exercise every day because it makes me feel good. Why the hell wouldn't I want to do that? You know, racing is more about culture and travel for me than it is anything else now.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  I don't want to do the neighborhood 5K every year.

• 1:23:39Rich Roll?

  Right. That begs the question of why so extreme then? Why, why run across the Sahara? Why do Badwater, however number of times you've, you've done it? You know, why run across the United States? Like, why can't you just go do the 5K?

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, Badwater is unique for me because it's the only race that I've really ever gone back to over and over. Except for, I did Boston a bunch of times, the marathon. And the reason I did that is because I was going every four or five years. And it was cool to see my own evolution at Boston because the course doesn't change. Same course, same great crowd, whatever. The difference is, my first year at Boston, I didn't even realize there were spectators. You know, I mean, it's like I was so, because this is all about me and my time. And by the fourth or fifth time I did it, you know, I high-fived every kid. I took orange slices, even if I didn't want to eat them because I didn't know if they'd washed their hands.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  You know, I, you know, stopped at Wellesley and made out with a couple of girls. You know, I did, I had the experience because I wanted to have it.

• 1:24:43Rich Roll?

  Well, that's its own evolution too, because you know, this, this sort of arc is throughout the book as well, where it starts out like, you know, running is a sense of, is a means of proving to yourself that maybe you're not, you know, as crazy as you might want to believe. But those involve running marathons, like drinking, you know, drinking beers at mile 20 or, you know, doing all kinds of other insane stuff. But then you finally clean up and you become very focused on your times, right? Like, it's all about, like, I gotta go under three hours and all of that. And it drains all of the, the sort of joy out of it. And then it's a journey towards trying to recapture that, that sense of joy that you experienced as a young person running.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  You nailed it.

• 1:25:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  I mean, that is, that is, that couldn't have been, that couldn't have been better.

• 1:25:28Rich Roll?

  It's something that, that Julie, my wife, tells me all the time. Like when I was training for Ultraman, I, I, I kind of lost a little bit of the, the joy. Cause I was so performance oriented and she's like, and then it's easy to like, then to not have a goal, then it's harder to get back into it. And she's like, you gotta get back into it, but you've gotta find a way to find the love. You gotta do it for the love. It's not for the, the goal or the end point.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Well, and so i- i- in the book, there's a, there's an interesting scene that, that really resonates with me still where I'm in the Sahara Desert and a lot of people have seen that film and the film, whether it is or is not.

• 1:26:07Rich Roll?

  Just tell people really quick if they're new.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So running the Sahara, you know, I, along with two buddies, you know, I ran all the way across the Sahara Desert, 4,500 miles and it was 111 days. And Matt Damon narrated and produced this, this film. And it's a, it's a beautiful film and it's also a very, it's an interesting and divisive film because some people, some people see me as this, you know, sort of heroic person in it and others see me as the biggest asshole in the world in it. And I, I've got, I've got the emails to prove it.

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  The edit threw a little shade in your direction.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  No doubt. So the edit made me look like a dick in, certainly in the last part of the film. And the, the beauty of being sober is I can actually respond to the people who think I'm a dick because of it and say, through a lot of years of maturity, you know what? Absolutely. I understand why you say that, you know? And I'm not saying, I'm actually not saying that I'm not.

• 1:27:03Rich Roll?

  It's very disarming to people when you do that.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:05Rich Roll?

  Cause they're not expecting you to kind of own that.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

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

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  And that is culturally, yeah, I want to test myself. Certainly, there's ego involved in wanting to see if I can do something. There's nothing wrong with that. I didn't have to lose that just because I have sobriety and humility. It's okay to want to be good at something or first at something.

• 1:28:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what you learn in sobriety is you don't have to apologize for wanting to be, you know, better or more expansive than you are.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  What I've learned, and I know it now even far better than I did after the Sahara, is for the most part, I'm no longer, you know, attached to the outcome. You know, my happiness or satisfaction is not directly attached to how something comes out. And my wife is actually very good at pointing out something to me that I didn't understand about myself. I don't talk about the Sahara. I don't, yes, I wrote about it and whatever. If somebody, I mean, if I have questions about it, of course, I'll talk about it. But I can be, I can be sitting on an airplane next to somebody and we start talking about running and we'll end up spending the whole time talking about the half marathon that they're getting ready

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  to do. And my wife will tease me about, you know, why didn't you tell them, you know, that you've done a lot of running? I'm like, why? I don't, I get it, but it's not humility either. I would absolutely tell them what I want to do, what's coming up. But I'm way more interested in the other things that I want to do than the things that I've done.

• 1:29:22Rich Roll?

  Well, also, the moment that you mention that, it almost creates an emotional divide between you and the person you're trying to connect with. Because their perception of you will then switch from somebody they can relate to, to somebody who's unrelatable.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I don't want that. The reason I travel, the reason I run and go to crazy countries all over the place is I actually want to connect with people, you know, and I want to, running, running is this gift. And I'll tell you this one story. I told it to a guy today, in fact, who asked me here at Google about.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

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

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

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

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  their behavior is not one single person had their hand out for anything. They weren't asking and they needed stuff. You know, this is, you know, this is an oasis and they have water, but it's still, you know, not exactly by any standard. It's impoverished. And, you know, we leave, we run out of the town and, you know, but many towns that we'd run out of under those circumstances, we got like kids running with us. And I mean for five or 10K. It just imagine somebody running, you know, what if, what if a couple of guys ran through your hometown and your kids just ran out the front door and just headed down the highway with them for like a couple of hours. I mean, we'd be calling the cops and saying, oh my God, my kids are gone.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  You know, and it's just so, it's so different. And that is the experience that I want to keep having for the rest of my life.

• 1:32:18Rich Roll?

  Which is what?

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Well, it's just this connection, this human connection, and especially without, it's interesting when you can't speak the same language. I mean, these, this was totally Arabic there. There were some French speaking, so Ray, you know, Ray Zahab could talk to, you know, some of the kids, but generally speaking, it was all Arabic. I didn't speak any Arabic, but there was this joy, this laughter, and I mean, holding my hands and, you know, touching me and not being afraid of the difference of this person. And these are in places where, I mean, tourists don't, tourists don't come to these towns. So they're not like, they don't have some vast experience with Europeans who are much more prolific as far as their travel.

• 1:33:03Rich Roll?

  There's no Yelp reviews for this oasis.

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  Hey, which restaurant should we eat in, you know, and then there's, you know, there's none of that. And so, I mean, that's, that is the, you know, sort of the epitome of what I would like to keep having in some fashion as long as I can do it.

• 1:33:21Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think it's, it's about trying to develop a healthy relationship with that desire. You know, you, you, it's very vivid in the book when you describe the first time that you get high smoking crack, like doing something you thought you never would do before, because that would mean something about who you are in a way that you never perceived yourself to be and where that leads you. And then all of the, you know, the sort of crack smoking in the wake of that first experience is an attempt to feel like you felt that first time that you did it, right? So is it the same with running, like in the wake of having that experience on this, in the Sahara and at that oasis, are you chasing that high with what you're doing subsequent?

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:34:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  You know, and it is, that is a, hey, dude, that's such a, you know, I worry about that almost because when, you know, I do even worry about it for myself in the sense that will there, and actually I know it won't, but will there ever come a day when there's simply nothing left to do? And then what am I going to do? Because, and I do talk about it some in the book, but I've spoken about it a lot, this feeling of You know, I've spoken at a lot of marathon expos and pasta dinners and stuff and you get people that like, you know, they raise their hand. Cause I'll do it. I'll say, who's run, you know, 10 marathons, who's run 20, you know, you get some guy over here who's run 79 marathons.

• 1:34:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Like where does it end?

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:48Rich Roll?

  And what does it mean?

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  And my question for him is, and I'm not trying to be demeaning about it because it's, I have to be careful because I'm, I'm admiring him and his dedication on one hand. But I, I've asked a couple of times, you know, like, so tomorrow morning, when you toe the line, are you worried about being able to finish the race? And he's like, no, not at all. And I'm like, don't you miss that? Because why would I want to do something over and over and over again, that I absolutely know that I can do? For a while, it was about time for me in marathons. And so that was enough to sustain me. I'm no longer going to set

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  a PR in the marathon. I'm just not, you know, I'm not going to be faster. I don't know. Of course, the ego part of me says that if I dedicated the next two years of my life, maybe I could, but that's not what I want to do. So if I can't find, you know, joy in toeing the line, in what I need in a marathon is more a beautiful place. And, and I love the energy of a marathon because it's thousands of people there for the same reason. But my preference would be to go do some hundred miler or some stage race in a foreign country and, and run through an area. And I, I am standing on the starting line going, holy shit, I hope I can actually do this.

• 1:36:13Rich Roll?

  Or just what that experience, what that journey is going to entail involves a question mark.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  Right? As opposed to a foregone conclusion. So this is, this is, I feel like we're, we're peeling the layers and we're getting at the real Charlie because there's nothing wrong with, I think, I think I understand completely and relate to that idea of why would you do something like, you know, you're going to finish this. Like, so what's the appeal? But what I've learned, um, and what I've come to also appreciate is that I think part of Drive for someone like that is that they get to enjoy the community like that there's something to just the experience in and of itself. It doesn't have to be driven by any agenda outside of that, which is a leap for me to get to because like yourself, like I'm not interested in just going and running a bunch of 10 Ks and marathons and all that kind of

• 1:37:00Rich Roll?

  stuff and be a middle of the packer. Like it doesn't really appeal to me.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:05Rich Roll?

  But to recognize that that's a beautiful thing in its own right and works for a lot of people is great too. But what drove me like in my drinking career, part of the allure for me, when I was getting ready for what I knew was going to be a big night was that there was a question mark. Like I never knew where it was going to go. And that would scare a lot of people, but to me like that's the best part.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:37:28Rich Roll?

  We're going to go on this adventure and I know I'm going to come across some crazy people and some weird stuff's going to go down and I just can't wait to figure out what that's going to be. And it's very similar to toeing the line at an ultra like what's going to happen?

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, when, when you got, I love this like idea of, you know, when you're a drug addict, when I was doing so much coke and smoking crack, the far more powerful part of that was the acquisition of the drug. Because having that in my hand and in my pocket.

• 1:38:04Rich Roll?

  Potential energy.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  The, the possibilities were limitless, you know, because every single time I had those drugs in my pocket and you know, I was.

• 1:38:15Rich Roll?

  That's its own rut, that dopamine rush of that alone, just that idea.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  So this narrative of I'm going to go do this, I'm going to go find some people to party with and I'm going to go like this is going to be this best night ever. And then of course I, you know, I do the line or I light the pipe and all of that is gone for two reasons. What you said a moment ago, the high, because I've been doing it now for so long, doesn't even approach the first time I did it. So that's not there. Number two, I now have enough experience to know that once I do that first line, I'm not sharing this shit with anybody. And once I smoke that first little bit, like this is mine. I may go find somebody, you know, whatever, because I need a, if I'm in a, you know, another city that's not mine, I need to find a way to acquire

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  more. So I need a, you know, I need a person. But I would also relate it in a weird way to running in the sense that there is huge power still in boom and pushing, putting your finger on the enter button on the computer. And you know, are you, you know, are you sure you want to enter this race?

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  It's like, yes. And man, you get that, you get that email back that says, congratulations, you're in the race.

• 1:39:28Rich Roll?

  Now you're in.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Whatever it is. And man, that is a, I tell people all the time, I had the conversation with a woman this morning, running here from this beautiful hotel and I, I let her run for people that wanted to show up. And you know, she's run a bunch of half marathons and she really wants to run a marathon, but you know, she wants her life to be perfect in order to do it. She has kids at home. She's married. She's got a great career. You know, there's just not time. And, and you know, and I gave her the talk, as I call it. I'm like, all I can tell you is trust me on this. Enter the race. Find one you want to do. If you've been running half marathons, I guarantee you right now, you and I could get

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  together tomorrow and you could run a marathon distance. You might walk, run, you know, it might be a six hour marathon, which might not be your ideal goal, but so what?

• 1:40:22Rich Roll?

  Right. You're having the experience. I mean, I would, what I would say to that person is, was your life perfect when you got pregnant?

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:29Rich Roll?

  You know, cause that's the big thing. You, you know, people don't want to have kids until everything is lined up and they know that they're going to be safe and secure and all that kind of, and it's like, life doesn't work that way. What, life is messy.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wait till you're 62 then.

• 1:40:41Rich Roll?

  She had kids, it's fine, you know?

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  Wait till you're retired, just to have kids then. Yeah. Maybe life will be perfect then, but you know, and I think she got it because I think she understood how scary it is to hit that button, not knowing whether you could do it. But oh man, what a gift. There is no greater gift than having the opportunity to be fully present for a first in your own life. Cause very often all we ever do is look back at first and we have such skewed memories. And I don't care if it was a first sexual experience, a first race, a first time you tasted. tasted a food or visited, visited another country.

• 1:41:21Rich Roll?

  Or smoked crack.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Or smoked crack. Absolutely. No, that's exactly right because man, my, my memory of the first time I smoked crack i- is just as powerful of than, than what it actually felt like, if that makes sense. Because of course, I can't remember what it felt like. So all I have is the memory of it. But man, I've been, I've walked even in ice hotels, I've walked down a hall in a, in a normal hotel and I've smelled crack coming out from under the door of somebody's room. And I've stood outside it like going, I, because I can, I can see through the door practically exactly what is going, what hell is going on behind that door.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  And I, you know, and I've, I've wanted to knock on the door a couple of times and, and I don't know if I wanted to knock to like, say, hey, you know, can I join? Or, you know, you guys should, should think about a new path because I can promise you this one isn't going to work out.

• 1:42:19Rich Roll?

  Right. I'm sure they would have really welcomed that.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  They would have because we all know that the best thing to do as a recovering person is to try to force people into our way of life.

• 1:42:30Rich Roll?

  How, how, how has, uh, how has your sobriety evolved or your perspective on sobriety evolved? Maybe since the last time we talked, maybe it hasn't, but.

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

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

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Capable and allowed to tell how I did it. And if how I did it in some way appeals to somebody else and they find their way into running or into sobriety or into prison for that matter, you know, I mean, then so be it. Hopefully, my book doesn't take them to prison, but you know, the fact is, I think, and I've had three instances already where people who are going to prison have been in touch with me to want to have a conversation. Now, that's a

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Crazy conversation because

• 1:43:54Rich Roll?

  You told them to get a nickname?

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, absolutely. There's no, well, there's no manual out there.

• 1:44:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  You know,

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  There should be.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  There should be.

• 1:44:02Rich Roll?

  That's your next book.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Well, we have enough of people incarcerated in this country where

• 1:44:06Rich Roll?

  Here's what you need to know. Can you imagine how helpful that would be?

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  Prison for dummies.

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  Here's what you need to know going in. Is it federal? Is it state? First of all.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Right. Here are the things to say and don't say when you go into the bathroom. You know, I mean, you know, don't, don't look. I still, and I know we haven't been talking about this, but like in prison, like one of the craziest rules was you don't look in cells as you walk down a hall, you know, because it's natural. I mean, you know, just imagine if you're walking down the hall of this hotel and everybody's front window is wide open or their door is open. It's human nature. What are you gonna do? You're walking down the corridor and you're gonna glance over into every room. Not even because you're being nosey. It's just, you know, you're a person and you're curious.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Curiosity is not a good trait to have when you're in prison.

• 1:45:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  You know, so learning how to like walk in a straight line down a corridor with 50, you know, cells on each side of you and not ever look to one side or the other.

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, how would you know that?

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  You know, you gotta be told.

• 1:45:16Rich Roll?

  And it just occurred to me that if people are, are newer people who didn't listen last time, maybe you should explain how you ended up in prison.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Well, yes, I'll keep this part brief. So I'm in, and this is in the book. So anybody who wants real detailed explanation can certainly find it. But, you know, in 2010, the premiere of my second film, Running America, which was, you know, running across the country, Marshall Ulrich and, and I, and, and, you know, we, we finally have this film to show, and I'm in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I, I have this amazing premiere one night, and 300 people in the audience. And it's a great night, and one of the best days of my life. And the next day, you know, I get up and I go out and do some errands, and

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  I get, you know, I get accosted by six armed IRS agents that come out of a coffee shop, and, you know, and they arrest me and put shackles and handcuffs on, and throw me in the car.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  Was it like you imagine in the movies where they're wearing dark suits and dark sunglasses, and they're in a black SUV?

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. There was a, it was a gray, you know, Ford LTD or something. So it was more, absolutely, absolutely. And so, you know, and as it turns out, there'd been, you know, this one IRS agent who just took a real interest in me, and he asked the question to himself, unfortunately, that, you know, how does, how does this guy, you know, run across the Sahara Desert? How's he afford to do that? And, you know, and of course, I guess he'd never heard of Matt Damon, because, you know, I certainly, it would have taken about 10 minutes to figure out that I certainly didn't pay for it. And that in fact, I had been, you know, it was my idea, but once the production company came and got involved, you know, it was all them. And in fact, I was paid a stipend, and, you know, whatever,

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  however many, however much money to actually do the run itself, just to have living expenses.

• 1:47:18Rich Roll?

  But this guy, he had a bug up his ass, for some reason.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  He did. He went after me.

• 1:47:21Rich Roll?

  Maybe he saw the movie with a girlfriend who decided she liked you, or...

• 1:47:26Speaker 01

  Maybe I took his parking space, you know, at the Harris Teeter, and, and, you know, I mean, I really, I'll never, I will never know. But ultimately... You know, I was charged with essentially with overstating my income on a home loan application. And that that is, it's exactly, you know, anybody listening is going to say, well, that's what? That's not possible. And yes, it is. And that's what it was. And the details don't matter right this moment. And I, you know, I had a seven day trial and I was found guilty and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison in Beckley, West Virginia. And, you know, and I went there to, uh, to serve my time. And so.

• 1:48:08Rich Roll?

  There's a, uh, there's a, a pretty robust pro New York Times profile about you and the story that I think is pretty fair to you, right? We, you would say?

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:18Rich Roll?

  So I'll put a link up to that article in the show notes for people that are listening.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  And here's how that happened. You know, Joe No Sarath in New York Times, very well-known op ed writer, wrote an article that said, nobody is in prison for the subprime mortgage scandal.

• 1:48:35Rich Roll?

  Except Charlie.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  And my father wrote him, my father wrote to him and said, I beg to differ. My son's in prison. That's exactly how it came about is my dad. And he, you know, again, he's, he's an incredible advocate. And, and so Joe, you know, wrote a story, wrote another story and, and, you know, just really shed a lot of light on it. And, you know, and I, and I, I can't help myself but to say this, things have evolved in the, in, in the last few years, you know, this is, don't, don't forget, this is 2010. So it's only a couple of years after 2008, after the quote unquote crash. And people to this day still would have a hard time, unless you've seen the big short

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  or whatever, would have a hard time kind of explaining what happened. But at that point, you know, I was the target of something that was very much in the public eye and, you know, the, the government was very much interested in trying to bring someone to account. And, you know, I ended up on the.

• 1:49:42Rich Roll?

  This is all your fault, Charlie.

• 1:49:43Speaker 01

  I was. And I was on the day, I'm sorry about that, all you guys out there.

• 1:49:46Rich Roll?

  Forget that guy, Countrywide, whatever his name is.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  So I was on the Daily Show, even, and Jon, you know, Jon Stewart, you know, held me out in this one piece as like the cause of the meltdown.

• 1:49:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  And, you know, whose fault is it? This guy's, you know, because I was the only guy.

• 1:50:03Rich Roll?

  I didn't see that.

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Rich Roll?

  Is that online?

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:05Rich Roll?

  Oh, I gotta find that.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you Google me and on Daily, and I mean, you'll, you'll find it. And it's, it's, it's very funny because it, it actually is a five minute segment that he called, like, you know, priorities. And he's talking about the priorities of, you know, of law enforcement or whatever. And, and I, I end up being singled out as like, you know, as the guy. But what I was gonna say is a few years later, there was another trial with some, some mortgage brokers and, and real estate people, like, not, not big time, but just people who were in the industry, who understood in the industry. And they, they did just some things that were shady. You know, there were straw buyers and there were, you know, some loan applications that were falsified and this and that.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

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

• 1:51:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  You know, if you had a pulse, you could get a loan. And they were, these guys were all found not guilty.

• 1:51:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  Even though they actually readily admitted to sort of the shenanigans that they were doing, but.

• 1:51:41Rich Roll?

  It was, yeah, the, the, the fact that income was never checked on and was a non-issue is the defining character.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  Dude, it was actively not checked on, like on, on my. Loan application, there had been a big black X that said, no income needed put on there by the mortgage broker. Like seriously, because what they do, and they called my employer at the time, who was Extreme Makeover Home Edition. You know, I was, I was working on that show. They called and the very first thing they say when they call is, please don't tell us the amount of income. All we want to verify is, does he work there? And the guy says, yeah, so they, so they actively avoid getting the information that would actually decide whether or not someone qualifies for a loan.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  And in my case, it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that my loan application was forged and signed by the mortgage broker. The initials were the mortgage broker's initials. And yet somehow I was still held accountable for that mortgage application.

• 1:52:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  Fascinating.

• 1:52:53Rich Roll?

  And, and what happened was what happened, you know, millions of times over with homeowners.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, whether I've done it or not even was, you know, it's, it's a crazy thing to think about prosecuting people for a situation where there was no regulation. There was no due diligence. This was a time when, you know, and I don't want to be political here, but where the, the administration in power wanted to grow the economy. And the way they did it was by making sure that absolutely anyone could buy property with no checks and balances. So for a while this inflates properties, right?

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  The scene in The Big Short where there's the stripper who owns like five properties. Yeah.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  That's it. That's it. I was the stripper, so to speak.

• 1:53:39Rich Roll?

  And in the book, you have this, this, you know, beautiful kind of foreshadowing moment when you're, you're buying your first house and you're like, I don't think I can afford this. And the guy's like, don't worry, it'll work out.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:48Rich Roll?

  And you're, you're in on a, you're in on a house that's a little bit over your head. And I think that's something that a lot of.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Well, it's crazy and I don't want to belabor this because we're going to bore people, but no, like, how does it work in the, in the industry where magically the appraisal comes out for the exact amount? That you're going to need for the loan like how does that what so they don't talk to each other I mean basically the it's a wink wink na na thing where you know you just get

• 1:54:15Rich Roll?

  Has it changed?

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:54:16Rich Roll?

  It hasn't changed.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  No, I don't think it's changed. I mean, I think it probably got tighter for a while.

• 1:54:20Rich Roll?

  It has to be tighter now.

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  I'll never buy another house. I'll never be able to actually and you know, just like this Google conference, there was a lot of talk, you know, Jeb Bush came and spoke and there certainly was talk of politics because with these big companies in here, you know, whoever gets in there next and all of that. I mean, it's, it's important to them. And you know, the fact of the matter is it's, it's a, you know, I don't know. I didn't want to go there. Somebody's got to change things and, and I don't know that, you know, either of the people that, that are, that are going to do this now are going to be capable of that. But you know.

• 1:55:00Rich Roll?

  How are you, how are you making it work now financially?

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  Um, so the book was although you know, from I don't know, I have no idea about your deals with books, but you know, there, there's money, but it, it, you know, you make a deal with a publisher and that money comes over a very extended period of time.

• 1:55:21Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  So you know, you get a little bit now, you get a little bit, you know, when you turn in the manuscript, you get a little bit when there's, you know, a finished product on the shelves and then maybe you get a little bit when it goes into paperback.

• 1:55:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a year later.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Right. So it's a long process. It certainly wasn't, you know, like, you know.

• 1:55:38Rich Roll?

  And you take out the, what you're paying your agent and also what you're paying in taxes.

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. So when all that, when all said and done.

• 1:55:45Rich Roll?

  That number you were excited about?

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:46Rich Roll?

  You know, two years ago.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  That's a huge number. Right. Well, and so what I've been doing though is I mean, I still, I'll still fix, uh, hail damaged cars.

• 1:55:52Rich Roll?

  Are you still doing that?

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  You know, and I don't do it very often, but the beauty of it is, you know,

• 1:55:58Rich Roll?

  Thousand bucks a day.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  And because it wasn't just that I needed work, I now sucked at this work. Like, the, the job had far, the skill set has far surpassed me in the, in the years that I was away from it. New tools, new techniques, new lighting, you know, the car, because car metals, I don't want to go into all this because it would be tedious, but you know, metals on cars have changed. A lot of hoods and stuff are aluminum and it's fixes differently. Anyway, there's a lot of techniques that I had to relearn. And it's not really their job to hire me to come in there and, and make a mess of a car. I tried to fix. But anyway, I got to fix some dents, still do it whenever the opportunity comes up now.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  I, I will say I'm very happy that even, even being here at this conference, you know, I gave my talk yesterday and it went very well. And, and I have a great speaking agent again up in New York, who is the same one I had before all this mess happened. I mean, I got arrested and I had like six speaking gigs on the books. And of course, all those went away.

• 1:57:49Rich Roll?

  Went away. Did you have, did you have sponsorships too, like products?

• 1:57:52Speaker 01

  Sponsors went away, dollar sponsors and product sponsors went away immediately. I lost two board positions on nonprofits, you know, that I, you know, one that I helped found with, with water. And I mean, it was, it is a, there, you know, any- Anybody who believes that, you know, A, guilty until proven innocent. Wait, sorry. See, look at that. I said it backwards. No, actually, that's the way it is. Guilty until proven innocent. Actually, that is the way it is. You know, you are assumed to be guilty. And the other, the other travesty is, if you will, is now that I'm out, like, I don't get to vote. Right? And I, you know, I'm a middle aged white guy.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  And you think about all of the incredibly disenfranchised people of color out there who are inordinately in prison in huge numbers, you know, who are taken out of the system and don't get a voice. Again, and making a decision about who's gonna be their leader. You know, we're, we're supposed to be a place where you do your time. And, and it's forgiven, or, or it's if not forgiven, you get a second chance. And that is not how it works here. And it is why it's the only, I think it's one of only two bipartisan things going on in Congress, even though they'll screw it up, I'm sure.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Which is, you know, that everyone understands that mass incarceration is a waste of time and money and people. You know, we, we weren't supposed to, you know, prison and jails are supposed to be for people we're afraid of, not for just people we're mad at. You know, and that's actually a paraphrase from, from Jim Webb, a senator from Virginia. But, you know, when it comes to the other one, addiction is pretty much, you know, the other bipartisan thing. And there is movement in both of those areas because I'm not convinced it's for any actual, you know, good reasons other than it costs a shitload of money. And these people finally realized that, hey, we could be spending that money somewhere else. And

• 1:59:58Rich Roll?

  Is that part of what fueled the icebreaker run across the United States? I mean, sort of this, like, I can't vote. Like, what can I do? How can I influence culture? How can I address some of these ills that I've, you know, seen as a result of my experience?

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  And the icebreaker was, it might be my favorite project that I've ever done.

• 2:00:17Rich Roll?

  So just describe it.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so I basically came up with this idea with a friend of mine in Wilmington, Chris Martin, not the singer.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  And we decided we wanted to do this, uh, he's had depression issues his whole life and I'm a recovering addict and we wanted to do this, this run for mental health and I, I convinced him that I knew the right people and it was, you know, I chose six people because I did the numbers and I thought it would be a good number where everybody could run about a marathon a day and not be totally just crashed. So, I mean, Catric Corbett, you know, obviously,

• 2:00:53Rich Roll?

  David Clark.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  David Clark, um, Sophie Kuscherba was the young person on the team and not all that well-known, but a nice following and then of course Pam Rickard.

• 2:01:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, tell me a little bit about Pam. She's interesting.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Fantastic. She is, she is one of, what's funny is she's so nice and, and so enthusiastic about recovery that, and I've told her this, so this won't be news to her, that I actually, uh, you know, she's at the Heron Project now and I actually like, I eyeballed her sideways for a while thinking this has got to be some bullshit because she was just too damn happy, you know, and, and I've come, now that I've gotten to know her better, she's not always happy and she, what she does is very openly share her struggles, her highs and her lows and she's just wonderful on social media. She, she actually does social media the way you're supposed to do it, like, like realistically.

• 2:01:52Rich Roll?

  Like using it for good or just being transparent about.

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  Well, when you look on there, sometimes you say my day, my day sucks.

• 2:01:58Rich Roll?

  Right. Instead of just putting out like a version of yourself.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  A beautiful picture and you know, every, you know, we should all be thankful for what we got today. It's like, you know, piss off, you know, I don't feel like that every day.

• 2:02:09Rich Roll?

  A platonic like sort of inspirational quote.

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, but, so this team of people, we ran for six, um, there were six of us. So we ran for 24 hours a day for 24 straight days from.

• 2:02:22Rich Roll?

  24 hours a day. Yeah. Just like cross-country, no stopping.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  No stopping. Right. And so that ended up averaging about a marathon a day per person, you know, and you broke it up however you wanted, you know, I ran with, um, everybody pretty much. And so I. Parred everybody in twos and those two people would have basically eight hours to fill. And it was there, I didn't care if they ran one hour each and alternated or ran four hours and the other person ran for it. It was their job to fill that eight hours while the other forerunners would go ahead and sleep and eat and do laundry and all that.

• 2:03:00Rich Roll?

  And the goal of this was what?

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

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

• 2:03:44Rich Roll?

  Recovering addict, longtime sober, like 22 years or something like that.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:49Rich Roll?

  Vegan or vegetarian, I think.

• 2:03:50Speaker 01

  She's vegan, absolutely, and works at Whole Foods.

• 2:03:53Rich Roll?

  She's like, she's like her, she's living in her own universe. Like, she's, she is a trip.

• 2:03:58Speaker 01

  Her dog Truman has like 3,000 followers on Facebook. So, you know, I mean, it's a fascinating story. So, and look, I'm not, you know, I'm not stupid. I chose people who had big followings. But also I chose people who I knew would trust me. Like I told David, Katra and Pam, I need you guys on this run. You know, Chris and Sophie were, were greener when it comes to taking on something big. But these other, you know, these folks, I knew that they would. Show up every day. They would understand that it was going to suck at times.

• 2:04:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  We'd have lousy food. You'd get no sleep. You'd have to run in the rain. You'd have to like, there was, you know, this, whenever it was your turn, luck of the draw, it was your turn. And if you had to run through a city, then you had to run through that. If you had to run through a cow pasture, then that was your turn.

• 2:04:50Rich Roll?

  Right. But maybe even more importantly, all of them have an experience and something to say about mental illness and recovery.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  And it was about mental illness, not about addiction. And I wanted that because I, you know, there's PTSD. So we had a couple of members of the crew. Actually Chuck Dale, who was on my crew in the Sahara, he was on the crew on this, you know, we're still close friends. And, and I wanted there to be people that had PTSD and depression and were manic depressive and were, you know, whatever it might be, because those issues are big issues. Hell, general anxiety disorder is a huge thing in, in this country. And I wanted people to be able to relate to us and not just to addiction talk. But here's the thing that was, that I could not have predicted and that was the best thing that

• 2:05:43Speaker 01

  came out of it. We started by all of us using our social media networks, inviting people like to the icebreaker page. And frankly, it amounted to like, not much. So we had, you know, maybe hundreds of people that were, that liked our page. And I felt badly in a way for sponsors and whatever, because Chris Martin had gone out there and gotten, he really got this whole thing paid for. He got enough money to fund the run across from treatment centers primarily. And, you know, he had some connections and whatever. But, but he, you know, he did that. And then it was my job to like, help build these social media things, right?

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  It didn't happen. It just didn't happen. And so I told everyone, don't freak out. Like, here's what's going to happen if this goes well. We just have to run and we just have to share our message, you know, whatever they are. And I want everybody to post every day as often as you're comfortable doing it. And just don't make them self promotional. Just say, talk about your own story. Talk about addiction. Talk about depression, PTSD, whatever it is. And man, I mean, within, you know, within a few days, we had, we were in the thousands of likes. And then all of a sudden, we were way beyond that. And it wasn't just that. People were writing messages about how this had, you know, literally, we

• 2:07:10Speaker 01

  had a couple of people who were, who at least said they were going to commit suicide. And they saw us, you know, they saw this thing online and they started following. And because it engaged people for 24 days, you know, it gave them something to like follow.

• 2:07:25Rich Roll?

  Right. And along the way, you're stopping at schools and talking to kids and things like that.

• 2:07:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we finally started picking up some media. CNN picked us up and, and in different places. And I think it's probably a one off. I don't think we'll do it again. It might pop up again. But, you know, I still talk about Icebreaker. There's still a page on Facebook and we try to post some information so that people who are trying to figure out, okay, if I need some answers, if I need some treatment, if I need whatever, then, you know, here's what we need to do. Here's a place you can go.

• 2:07:58Rich Roll?

  Right. Did it culminate in DC? Like, was there some kind of formal, like, you know, on the hill kind of thing?

• 2:08:03Speaker 01

  MHA is Mental Health America. And it was their national conference in DC. And that's where we finished. And Chris Heron came.

• 2:08:11Rich Roll?

  Uh, Chris Heron, cool. Yeah. Tell people who he is.

• 2:08:14Speaker 01

  So Chris Heron played, he played for the Boston Celtics. He was an NBA basketball player and he nearly died of a heroin overdose. And he played several years in the NBA and.

• 2:08:23Rich Roll?

  And he's created like this foundation, right?

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's called the Aaron Project.

• 2:08:27Rich Roll?

  Talking to kids, yeah.

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  Aaron, and he now.

• 2:08:28Rich Roll?

  I gotta get this guy on the podcast.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  You do, yeah, I'll, I'll, I make it happen, you know, and he would, he would love to because he is, he is, he has a great story himself, but he now, he literally on most days, he has two speaking gigs. He's doing like 250 gigs a year at this point. And all he does is travel and tell his story to kids and having that NBA cachet is really, is really nice, but you know, he, but he tells an honest story and he does it with a Boston accent, which is really cool. So, you know, but he, he's just, he's a good guy. He's a, he's a good man and, and that's where Pam Rickard works and, and the other people that are in that, in that group are very dedicated to addiction recovery and their

• 2:09:15Speaker 01

  mission really is to get people, you know, across the threshold, through the door into treatment and, and that is their mandate.

• 2:09:25Rich Roll?

  You said earlier that you were very conscious of, in writing your book, of not giving advice to any people and, and you accomplished that. I mean, it's, it's right out of recovery. You're sharing your experience, right? Everything is, this is what I've experienced. You extrapolate or interpolate as you wish.

• 2:09:46Rich Roll?

  But what is your aspiration, your hope for somebody who picks this up and reads it? Like what is it? What's the core message that you're trying to convey?

• 2:09:54Speaker 01

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

• 2:10:34Speaker 01

  the people out there can't tell that, but you like treatment, when I finally went to treatment, it really screwed up my drinking and drug addicts. Yeah, it took all the fun out of it. Because before then, very often I sat there, right? I sat there on my bed going, oh my God, what am I going to do? How do I get out of this? And then after that, I knew how to get out of it. And I just chose not to. And so I could no longer, yeah, I could no longer be ignorant. And so It makes it so lonely and despairing. It's, it is. I'm lucky that I survived it because I didn't, I didn't want to face it. I didn't want to deal with what I knew was there. And I was too afraid to let go of the drugs though, because that was the relief that I still needed.

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  Of course. From what? Who the hell knows? Solution, right? The drugs are the solution to the problem, not the problem. And so I think what I also want people to get out of, out of the addiction part of it is that, you know, yeah, you do need to go then replace it with something, you know, some people choose to go to two meetings a day for the rest of their lives. Other people, you know, use addiction recovery and I still believe in the power of, you know, going to meetings and remaining, remaining grounded in the fact that if you choose to ignore that part of your life, you know, you could very well end up there again. Yeah.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Or maybe even worse, you could just be miserable and not use drugs or alcohol, but just be, and that's my big danger. You know, I'm, when I don't go to a meeting for a while, I'm just an ass, you know, I snap at people and I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm the worst of who I am under those circumstances. And so I need the relief of having relatability with other addicts. And I need running. You know, running was my, running saved my life, but then it actually gave me a life.

• 2:12:28Rich Roll?

  You need running, but you also need everything else that comes with sobriety in 12-step, right? You need, you need surrender. You need a higher power. You need that call to purpose.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  I need community.

• 2:12:42Rich Roll?

  The service and all of that, right?

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  I need community.

• 2:12:44Rich Roll?

  So here's, here's, uh, yeah, you need community. And I think, tell me if this happens to you. Like, I get a lot of emails from people who, people that are struggling with drugs and alcohol. And they're like, what do I do? What should I do? Like, I'm, I started eating vegan and I'm running. And, and there's a misinterpretation, that's my fault, of the message that I'm putting out there. Maybe I'm not being clear, that if you go vegan and start running, that this is going to solve your drugs and alcohol problem, which completely mystifies me, because it's not what I'm attempting to put out there. Uh, you know, for me, it's, it's a spiritual program. It's a spiritual solution. And in your book, you try everything to no avail

• 2:13:27Rich Roll?

  until you come to that place of understanding that that is what it's going to take. Like, you explored every avenue and looked under every cushion on every couch.

• 2:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:36Rich Roll?

  To try to avoid that inevitability, right? Like, running in itself, I think, running, you're very clear that, like, running is a huge part of your sober equation, but it's not running that is keeping you sober.

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  No, it's not. And man, I mean, you said it beautifully. And the spirituality, you know, you asked a moment ago about what I'd want, you know, a, an addict out there who might be listening and trying to figure out how to get in. Don't be afraid of spirituality. Like, it's a, it is a...

• 2:14:04Rich Roll?

  That's what freaks people out.

• 2:14:06Speaker 01

  It's everybody's choice on how you want to do that. And I am not a religious person in any traditional sense. And, and I do battle with myself, I mean, not in a huge way, with finding, uh, you know, a happy place. And with, with being a little zen here and there. And then, you know, and then I, you know, and then I, I curse because I stubbed my toe, or I mean, whatever it might be.

• 2:14:30Rich Roll?

  So what does it look like for you?

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what it looks like for me is meetings as often as I can, which these days probably means if I'm in town at home, a couple of day, a couple of days a week, if I can. If I'm traveling, I might go a couple of weeks without, you know, without any meeting. But so that handles the relatability part. The spirituality part is, for me, it's taken on a, it manifests actually during running. I call it kind of my running meditation or my running prayer, you know, and I like to run and, and think, and that sounds like such a weird and obvious thing, but I, I like to,

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  I like to set myself up to think and I will take a, a topic or a behavior or something. And I will try to not solve it because frankly, they're not, it's not like a solvable thing, but I'll try during my run to focus on that thing as if I were, you know, as if I was trying to like move a pencil across the table, you know, like I focus so hard on it that I want it to, to change or morph or to mean more to me.

• 2:15:44Rich Roll?

  That's so, I do the exact opposite.

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:15:47Rich Roll?

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

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  Then it's like, ah.

• 2:16:06Rich Roll?

  Hour and a half in, you're like, that's what it is.

• 2:16:08Speaker 01

  Well, it's like trying to remember the name that you can't remember.

• 2:16:10Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Yeah. The only way to do it is to like, forget about it and it will come to you.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  Well, and you know what? Again, the, the ways that it is so poignant for me is in my relationships and in particular, my relationship with my wife, because she's this, she's this beautiful person who doesn't like to argue, who, you know, she's just, she's so emotionally mature compared to me. And so my way, when I get, you know, antsy or I haven't been to a meeting or I'm just, you know, crank, my, my habit is to not necessarily pick a fight, but to, but to pick in general and to pick on small things. And I'm trying to, you know.

• 2:16:52Rich Roll?

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 2:16:56Speaker 01

  And you know, and I want, so when I say I focus on something, what I try to do now is, is admit responsibility and I, if I just turn around and apologize to her, like if I say or do something, it doesn't mean that I shouldn't immediately if it's so self-evident that I, you know, that it needs to be apologized for right away. But very often what I need to do is like go to my room and think about it because, you know, because I don't, I need to actually think about it and mull it over and, and get over, you know, my rightness because I am that man. I'm that guy who.

• 2:17:32Rich Roll?

  You'd rather be right than happy.

• 2:17:34Speaker 01

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

• 2:18:16Speaker 01

  live nearly as, I can still get there, but it doesn't live nearly as close to the skin as it did.

• 2:18:21Rich Roll?

  And you attribute that to, to just dedication to continual sobriety?

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:18:28Rich Roll?

  Evolution and growth?

• 2:18:29Speaker 01

  That, and, and you know, strangely, again, prison, getting an inside view of the life of people who you, whom you can't get away from. I mean, that sounds funny. In normal life, if you encounter somebody that's uncomfortable to you, what do you do? You go somewhere else. And you don't, you know, you don't answer their call or you don't, you don't go back to that place where you encountered them. Well, that, that doesn't, that's not possible in prison. You know, you are stuck with these people and if you don't figure out how to get along with them, then you're not, you're going to have a really hard time. I'm in there. And so I had to set aside, you know, the comments that might be made to me,

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  or the hurt feelings that I might get, or whatever it might be, you know, and, and I had to learn to set those aside, not, not, not the least of which a little bit was for my safety, you know, I don't, I had no desire to get my ass kicked in there. So, you know, there was that part of it, but it was, I, I actually walked away from stuff that I would have so long ago, you know, had a real problem with, and I would have, you know, I would have made a big, big issue, and I learned not to do that.

• 2:19:45Rich Roll?

  Does that threaten your sense of self, your identity, like that part of you that's so driven to, you know, achieve and push the envelope in running? Is there that fear that, well, if you mellow, then

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:59Rich Roll?

  so goes, so goes that, that impulse that made you who you are as an athlete?

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I worry about it, but I don't worry about it too much because the, the benefits, you know, so far outweigh, you know, any of the negatives about that. And I, and I know, look, I know that I still am, um, you know, I'm still the decent runner, but the reasons that I run are, are certainly different. I never really ran to win per se, but who doesn't want to, you know, do well in a race? You know, if you're going to go do one, it's nicer to do well and feel good at the end than it is to not have that. But I, I do think, look, the book, and you've, you've now written too, you know, the book really helped me because I had no choice but

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  to sit down and analyze these things. And now I'm stuck with them, you know, they're right here, and they're written down. And now people get the chance to like, say, well, it says right here on page 139 that you said, you know, you said this.

• 2:21:00Rich Roll?

  Did you have that, one of the experiences I had when I was writing Finding Ultra, you know, when I was thick into it, is, you know, patterns and themes would emerge, like this is, when you do the step work, you kind of have this experience of like, oh my God, this is how I am. I could never see that before. But I started to realize like, oh, this is what's behind this thing, you know, and I, I started learning about myself through that exploration.

• 2:21:24Speaker 01

  Well, and so I prison was actually great for writing.

• 2:21:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  I mean, it sounds strange, but I had I I became disciplined in there because I wrote for three or four hours every day and very much like, you know, I think I was a good writer when I went in and I didn't come out like a great writer, but I came out a much more disciplined writer. Because I tend to write very floridly and what I actually did with this book was tone some of that down and try to tell a much more straightforward story without explaining myself and with also out without drawing conclusions. And those were hard things for me to do because I think I know answers. So if I'm going to tell you a story, I would tend to end that story with, and here's

• 2:22:10Speaker 01

  what you should think about it, you know, and you know, and maybe in my case, I might, I might say in here in the book, you know, I might have said in an early draft, I'll never tell. Um, I might have said, you know, how could this happen in America?

• 2:22:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:23Speaker 01

  Here's this story. Whereas what I had to learn how to do was actually just tell the, oh, yeah.

• 2:22:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:28Rich Roll?

  Who's like.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wrote, dude, I wrote 750 pages.

• 2:22:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:22:33Speaker 01

  For this 270 page book.

• 2:22:34Rich Roll?

  There's great little like kind of Easter egg nuggets though. Like there was one line in there. Hold on, I'm going to find it right now because I love this, but you were like, uh, what did you say? It was like, uh, oh, yeah. Based on no tangible evidence, I hope that a change of venue would straighten me up for a while. Like, it's just like, it's a very subtle little like based on no tangible, like you could just read that and miss it, but like, I'm like, that's such a hilarious like little thing to throw in there, you know what I mean? So the book is full of all kinds of little gems like that that I appreciate. And I think if you're in, if you're, if you're in recovery, you're, you're more able to kind of see those as they pop up.

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  But if you're not, it might, it might hit you like a boomerang later if you ever managed to get into recovery.

• 2:23:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:23:18Speaker 01

  So, but it was a, it was a cathartic experience writing the book. It was also gut wrenching because I sucked at putting my ass in the seat and writing, you know, I could go run 20 miles anytime and felt the great need to anytime I had. A deadline on a chapter because I I just, it was hard. It was hard and I decided to write it long form, if you will, because I I realized I wasn't capable of self editing. So if I was going to write the story of, you know, the Sahara or some some crazy escapade in Orlando. I couldn't write, I couldn't edit and write the short version of it.

• 2:24:00Speaker 01

  What I needed to do was dump everything that I could remember about it into story form. And let someone else, you know, if my wife was really the first line editor. And then, and then Meg Noonan was my, you know, my collaborator editor to, she would look at it and read it and then she'd send it back. And, you know, here was my favorite thing, like I told this great story about my grandfather, the track coach, right? So it's one of the first things we talked about today. And I wrote this beautiful three or four page, you know, what amounted to a tribute to my grandfather. She wrote me back and she said, oh, my God, Charlie, that was the most beautiful story ever, but like, no, it's not going to be in the book.

• 2:24:41Rich Roll?

  Kill your babies, you gotta cut it slowing it down.

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  She's like, it doesn't move the story forward. It's like, hey, yeah, it's beautiful, but it doesn't go anywhere.

• 2:24:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you gotta, the way you create, you know, the David is you gotta create the the piece of stone first. And I did the same thing. I overwrote everything because then I could give it to a third party and they could help me figure out what was important and what was not mission critical. But you have to come from that starting point.

• 2:25:04Speaker 01

  So I'll give you.

• 2:25:04Rich Roll?

  And go ahead.

• 2:25:05Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm sorry. I interrupted you, but the the the greatest compliment that I've gotten so far. And I've gotten it from several people and Joe Noceira at the Times was one of them. And he said, you know, I, he said, I expected you to tell some good stories, but I really didn't expect the book to be so well written.

• 2:25:24Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:25:25Rich Roll?

  And you know what? I'll tell you, I'll tell you the same thing. I didn't expect it to be so well written, you know? And it is really beautifully written and and and it's a page turner. You're like, what? You know, like, and then, like, and I know you, you know what I mean? But it was so engaging.

• 2:25:39Speaker 01

  That's the other gay compliment.

• 2:25:40Rich Roll?

  And, you know, as of today, I mean, the book only came out a week ago. You have all five star reviews on Amazon and you pulled off the coup of getting this amazing review from Publishers Weekly, which is, first of all, like even getting Publishers Weekly to review your book is not a given. It's difficult. I didn't get that. And they gave you a fantastic review. They called, they said it was very, I don't know what the exact words are, but like cinematic, you know? So I was like, this is a movie. Like, has it, have the, are the rights, has it been optioned yet?

• 2:26:08Speaker 01

  There's been some talk. It hasn't been, but there has absolutely been some talk.

• 2:26:11Rich Roll?

  I mean, you can see, you know, the prison, you know, the, in the prison with the running and all of that. I mean, it's made for a movie.

• 2:26:18Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:26:19Rich Roll?

  So I'm sure, I'm sure that will happen.

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  I, I hope so. I mean, it would be, it would be fun, you know? I know, I, I don't know who would play me. I don't know who would want to, so.

• 2:26:29Rich Roll?

  Who would play you?

• 2:26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:31Rich Roll?

  I'll talk about that.

• 2:26:32Speaker 01

  I don't know, right? Yeah. So my audio, the audiobook came out too. And that's another funny story because I actually had to audition to play myself in the audiobook.

• 2:26:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, did you?

• 2:26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, because just because you can write a book doesn't mean you can actually read out loud.

• 2:26:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but who are we talking to here? How long have we been talking now? Two hours? We're, we're over two hours, right? So, yeah, come on.

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  It was fun. I enjoyed it.

• 2:26:53Rich Roll?

  You probably banged that thing out and, you know, no, no problem.

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  It took like five days of, of, of reading. It was an endurance event, but it was actually a lot of fun. I enjoyed it.

• 2:27:01Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Well, uh, I think we did it, dude.

• 2:27:04Speaker 01

  We did.

• 2:27:05Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  I feel good.

• 2:27:07Rich Roll?

  Was it good?

• 2:27:08Speaker 01

  It's like a therapy session mixed in with, uh, you know, sort of a rededication to my recovery and, and now we just need to cap it off with, with going for like a 20 miler.

• 2:27:18Rich Roll?

  I know, right?

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  Got your stuff with you?

• 2:27:20Rich Roll?

  Throughout the night? Should've run to the airport.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  I wish.

• 2:27:23Rich Roll?

  Um, no, this was great. And I think it, I think it dovetails nicely with our, our first conversation was really kind of the trajectory. It's, we go into all the prison stuff, I think in a lot more detail and the running and the bad water and all of that. So, so definitely go check that out if you haven't already. And, uh, this, I think, filled in the gaps pretty beautifully. And it's an honor and a privilege to be out here. I'm so glad that we made this happen and I'm really proud of you, man. I'm happy for your success. And you know, we talked a little bit earlier about your, you were mentioning, you know, second chances and how people don't like second chances. And I feel like you've, you know, you've, you know, you're not a cat with nine lives, but you're a survivor and you know, you got the second chance with sobriety and then you made the most out of, you know,

• 2:28:07Rich Roll?

  this third chance in the wake of your, you know, federal vacation. And it's beautiful to see you blossoming. And I think being at Google Zeitgeist is, is really, you know, a very symbolic, uh, um, you know, occurrence in your life to tell you that, you know, you're on the right track and things that are going to be okay. And you have a really powerful message, man. I hope you continue to share.

• 2:28:31Speaker 01

  I'm going to do my best. And it was, it was my honor to once again, you know, be here and, and it's evolution, you know, and I think that I, you know, you've also evolved incredibly since the last time I was on the show. And I congratulate you for that because it's, it's a, you know, you were, you were really good at, you've been really good at what you do for a long time. But this, the reason you have such a diverse, not only audience, but people that you talk to now, it's, it's because it's a, it's actually a total tribute to you and where you've taken this podcast in particular. It's not just a podcast anymore. I think it's a lot of people's like, you know, truly their, their

• 2:29:12Speaker 01

  therapy and their, you know, their learning and the success of your last book, you know, the cookbook was fantastic. My wife is in love with the book and she cooks out of it all the time. And, you know, it's amazing. So I appreciate being here again. And let's, you know, I don't know.

• 2:29:29Rich Roll?

  We should channel all this love energy into an event, man. I'd love to like, try to, it's time for me to get back into it in a way that I haven't been in a couple of years.

• 2:29:37Speaker 01

  I wasn't going to say anything to you here, but now that you mention it, no.

• 2:29:41Rich Roll?

  It's, uh, it's been too many years and I think I'm, I'm feeling the call and it's time for me to dip my toe back into it. And I'm looking for something that, that scares me a little bit and excites me because I think I need that in my life.

• 2:29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're, you're the man to do it. So.

• 2:29:55Rich Roll?

  So give me, give me a call.

• 2:29:57Speaker 01

  We'll figure it out. I got lots of bad ideas.

• 2:29:59Rich Roll?

  I know, you always got some crazy, you're pushing somebody up a mountain in a wheelchair or like running, I don't know what, you know, what is next? You have something right now?

• 2:30:07Speaker 01

  You know, I'm still very much looking at Dead Sea to Everest, which I've been talking about for years. And it's been re, you know, sort of reignited here. There's some interest in, you know, I want to go lowest to highest. What's a better metaphor for life than to, than to go from the lowest place on earth to the highest? And I still want to do it. And I'm also hoping, I've got a planned run across Cuba coming up in the spring with a, with another guy, with Pat Farmer, you know, Pat? He's a, he's, he's gone pole to pole and gone around the country. And anyway, he's a, he's an Australian that's, that's done a lot of stuff.

• 2:30:47Speaker 01

  But anyway, there's, I think it just shows the things I want to continue doing or the things that take me to places that I haven't been. And, you know, that's, you know, that's what I, that's what I hope to, oh, look, I know we've been on forever, but I'm going to, I'm going to leave you with this nugget. So here's what I want. I had a question recently about what, you know, what if I died on one of these expeditions? You know, what, what would happen to me? You know, what do I want to have done? I think that was the question, like, I think it was meant to be like buried or, or what I maybe would just would I be sorry?

• 2:31:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:21Speaker 01

  And I said, yeah, it would be, but, but here's what I said, here's what I said I want you to do. I said, I, I've like instructed my wife, you know, I want to be cremated and I want to be divided into, you know, a hundred equal vials, right? So I want these hundred vials and my wife will be in possession of it. And if, if you want one of these, you have to apply. And the re, the application is, and I want to, I want to fund it though. I want there to be enough money where this can happen. And when you apply, the only rules are you have to take me somewhere that I never got to go when I was alive. And dump me out. Yeah. So, you know.

• 2:31:58Rich Roll?

  That's a new one.

• 2:31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, I think there could be a book there. The problem is I, I wouldn't get to enjoy it all that much.

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  But you know, there's a lot of places left to go. And if there's any chance that I could actually enjoy it when they take me, you know, I'll, I'll take that. And I, I don't know.

• 2:32:16Rich Roll?

  That's, that's a very cool idea. Yeah. Cause then the person gets to go to a cool place too, right?

• 2:32:21Speaker 01

  That's the point. They, it's a place they've never been and they have to take me there to this place I've never been and they have to, you know, they have to enjoy it.

• 2:32:30Rich Roll?

  Except then you got the guy who's like, I paid this money for this and I get to get, I'm going to Kazakhstan. Like, come on, you know?

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  Piss on this guy.

• 2:32:37Rich Roll?

  Kazakhstan's probably beautiful.

• 2:32:39Speaker 01

  Probably be great. Well, I was gonna call it dumping Charlie, but then I was, I was afraid that would take me back to my dating days, you know? So it's very popular, but.

• 2:32:48Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 2:32:49Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:32:49Rich Roll?

  Well, the book is beautiful. Uh, definitely pick it up. Uh, Amazon, wherever you use a Rich Roll Amazon banner ad to pick up your copy of Running Man. Uh, it is a page turner. You can read the book in like, I don't know, a day. It's like in one sitting. It's really great. So congratulations. Thank you. And I love you, buddy.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  I love you too, dude.

• 2:33:10Rich Roll?

  So, uh, let's continue this conversation at a later date.

• 2:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well done.

• 2:33:16Rich Roll?

  All right, buddy. Peace.

• 2:33:22Rich Roll?

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

• 2:34:03Rich Roll?

  And my call to you is to reach out for help. I get a lot of emails. I can't always respond to everybody who reaches out to me. But when people reach out to me over an issue related to drugs and alcohol, I do my best to respond to each and every one of those inquiries. But generally, my response is the same, and that's that you've got to raise your hand. You've got to seek out help. You've got to take action in your own community, whether that is finding a 12-step meeting in your area, or seeking outside help through a therapist, or somebody like that, or just finding somebody that you can trust, that you can talk to, that you can be honest with.

• 2:34:45Rich Roll?

  I think the first step is recognizing the problem and finding somebody that you can communicate honestly and openly with about that. So, yeah, it's hard, but it can be done. And I know it might sound crazy, but the truth is, if you don't want to drink anymore, you don't have to. You do not have to pick up. All right. If you enjoyed today's show, please make a point of checking out the show notes at richroll.com on the episode page. Lots of links to learn more about Charlie and what he's up to. And I just wanted to thank you guys for tuning in today, for sharing the show with your friends and with your colleagues at work, et cetera, on social media.

• 2:35:29Rich Roll?

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

• 2:36:13Rich Roll?

  Would you like to receive a short, free, weekly email from me with just a few tips, tools, resources, things I've enjoyed and discovered over the last week? Then you can sign up at richroll.com. I send them out every Thursday. I've put out nine of these already, and I don't end up sharing any of this information on my blog or anywhere else. So if you want in on it, you just have to subscribe, and again, it's totally free. Don't forget to check out all the Plant Power schwag and merch you ever would want at richroll.com. I've got signed copies of Finding Ultra and The Plant Power Way. We've got t-shirts, tech tees, all kinds of cool stuff. I also want to thank everybody who has helped put on this show today.

• 2:36:57Rich Roll?

  Jason Camiolo, not only did he do the audio engineering and production, he was with me in person in Phoenix for this conversation with Charlie, so thanks, Jason. Sean Patterson for all your wizardry on graphics. Chris Swan for production assistance and work on the show notes and all kinds of miscellaneous things. And of course, theme music by Analemma. Thanks for all the support, you guys. I'll see you soon. Peace. Plants.