Against All Hope: Former NBA Star Chris Herren on Addiction, Sobriety & Service

This is one of the most powerful conversations on the subject of addiction and redemption I’ve been honored to host in the eleven-year history of this show. Left untreated, addiction decimates everything in its path. I’ve lived through it. I’ve borne witness to its wrath in countless others. And I’ve walked the wreckage it inevitably reaps. But my story pales in comparison to what Chris Herren has endured—and survived to now share in service of helping others. Lauded as one of the greatest basketball players of his generation before he even graduated high school, Chris graced the cover of Sports Illustrated during his freshman year playing point guard for Boston College. Ousted courtesy of his outsized partying led him west to Fresno State, where he flourished for a flash under legendary coach Jerry Tarkanian, leading to stints in the NBA with the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics. It didn’t last (it never does) so he took his game across the European and Asian circuits, a ticking time-bomb awaiting detonation. Basketball simply couldn’t compete with alcohol, cocaine, and heroin. So it wasn’t long before Chris’ nightmare turned him into into roadkill—an overdose he barely survived that would, inelegantly and eventually, lead to a rebirth and redemption. What has transpired in the 14 years since Chris got sober is a remarkable, phoenix-like journey of recovery and redemption that has transformed his life from utterly craven to one of extraordinary purpose, meaning, and selfless service as a leading voice on the topic of substance use prevention. Note: This conversation traverses difficult emotional terrain. If you are struggling, please raise your hand and reach out for help. You can find information about Alcoholics Anonymous (and meetings near you) at AA.org and Narcotics Anonymous at NA.org. You can also contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. If you are experiencing suicidal ideation, know you’re not alone. I encourage you to call the Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1(800) 273-TALK. If you are suffering from some form of addiction, this episode is a must-listen. Even if you’re not an addict, I encourage you to embrace this conversation as a means to better understand the affliction, as chances are you probably know someone in need of help. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Roka: ROKA. COM/RICHROLL Faherty Brand: FahertyBrand.com/RICHROLL AG1: drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL On: On.com/richroll Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually gonna make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then, it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  At 18 years old, I just did a photo shoot for Sports Illustrated. I'm one of the best basketball players in the country. I'm in my first month in college, finally, and I said, "I'll take a chance at dying." If you walk in my house, honest to God, you will not see one thing about basketball. I do not have one uniform, one picture, one article, but you'll go to my sink and there'll be my 15-year chip sitting there on the counter. Recovery is the greatest accomplishment in my life.

• 1:39Rich Roll?

  Today, we're gonna chart a rather indelicate course through the dark abyss that is addiction. It's an affliction that holds the potential to decimate everything in its path and leave you but a shell of a human. I've been there, but my story just pales in comparison to that of Chris Heron, one of the world's greatest basketball players, a point guard for both the Denver Nuggets and his home state, Boston Celtics, whose disease took him to just unspeakable lows before finally getting sober, followed by this extraordinary phoenix-like journey of recovery towards purpose, towards service, and redemption as this powerful and leading voice on the topic of substance use prevention.

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  Chris's story, which I first came across in the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary called Unguarded, is truly a testament to the power of transformation and the unwavering belief that no matter how far we may fall, we can always, always rise again. If you are suffering from some form of addiction, then this episode is a must-listen. But even if you're not, I encourage you to embrace this conversation as a means to better understand an affliction that baffles a lot of people, especially non-addicts, and which also likely touches somebody you know or somebody you love who needs help now. In closing, I want to say that we have additional resources on the topic of addiction and recovery listed in

• 3:09Rich Roll?

  this episode's show notes at richroll.com. So please refer to that. I think it'll be helpful. And with that being said, without further ado, this is a powerful one with me and Chris Heron.

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  It's great to meet you.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Great to meet you.

• 3:28Rich Roll?

  Thank you for coming out to do this. I've been looking forward to this for years. I know you just came from Alabama. You were speaking to the college football team there?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Alabama football. I've been going there for about 12 years.

• 3:41Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  And I was there Monday, then Texas, here, and finishing the week at Texas A&M.

• 3:48Rich Roll?

  Right. So what is the mix between like college athletes versus high schools? I mean, high school, high school kids is really your bread and butter in terms of...

• 3:57Speaker 01

  It's my favorite.

• 3:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. I think you've spoken to like 2 million kids or something like that?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  2 million kids, probably like 200 high schools a year.

• 4:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  And now middle schools.

• 4:06Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  You know, I first started telling my story, middle schools wouldn't have me. And then a decade later, they know, they know that it's, it's... It's the appropriate time to for them to listen.

• 4:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, that's a big kind of pivot or evolution in how you approach young people. Right. This idea of not just sharing your story, but also this notion of the first day. Like, what does it look like in the early stages of this? Because it's very difficult for a young person, for anybody, but particularly a young person, to put themselves in the shoes of the person at the very end of an addiction story, but much more relatable to get their heads wrapped around what it's like in the very beginning.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  After about six years of telling my story, I said, I'm kind of playing into the narrative of, you know, finishing my story with how horrible my life was. So I pivoted. I did a thing called Note to Self for The Today Show. And they said, you have to write a note to your younger self. And I've done two books. I was like, this is easy. 500 words, you'll fly in and film me. And it took me about a month.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Tapping back into that little boy was brutal.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Which then told me, try to have the kids identify with the little boy, not the heroin addict on the street.

• 5:38Rich Roll?

  Right. Like yourself, I was visited, I think it was maybe ninth grade, maybe eighth grade, when some guy came to my school and got up in front of everybody and told his, you know, his alcoholic adventures. And I remember not being able to relate to it at all. I thought it was sort of interesting and fascinating. I still remember when that happened, but it didn't have any impact on me at all. I know you had a similar experience. And now you're standing in the shoes of the guy who's going to all the schools and trying to do that a little bit differently.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  You know, I felt like I was doing addiction a disservice, right? I think we focus so much on the worst day and we forget the first day. We're always painting this picture of how addiction ends rather than why it's beginning. So when I walked into schools, it was a very difficult decision for me to do. I was six, seven years into speaking, and I said, I'm gonna pivot.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  And my whole team was like, you can't pivot. So I pivoted. And as soon as I pivoted, the outreach from kids went up 300, 400%.

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's when I knew, you know, that the first day, the first day is what kind of sticks with the kids.

• 7:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  You know?

• 7:02Rich Roll?

  Because you're meeting them where they're at.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Self-esteem, self-worth, trauma, um, my childhood.

• 7:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  You know, and kids, kids would see me come in and say, well, he was a Boston Celtic. But I was listening to one of your shows and um, the guy said broken toy. Something about being a broken toy. And it rattled me. Because I was a, I was a broken toy. And that's what I wanted kids to see.

• 7:33Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Yeah, I think this is a, a, a newer kind of lens or approach to understand addiction. I mean, you and I both got sober and, and have maintained our sobriety within the, the traditional structure of, of 12-step. And I credit that program with saving my life and continuing to save my life. I'm still extremely active in that. So this is not in any way, uh, uh, you know, a disparagement on that. But I think there is a, a sort of trope in the rooms around not overthinking why you became an alcoholic. It's like you are because you are.

• 8:10Rich Roll?

  And, and the wisdom in that is that there's not a lot of actionable, uh, uh, advice in spending too much time in your head, trying to understand how you got there. We're going to focus on the tools and the steps to rebuild your life and create a better one for yourself. And I, and I get that, but I think now we're seeing with people like Gabor Maté and a lot of, you know, social science research coming out, the connection between early childhood, trauma, et cetera, that's contributing to these things. And I think it is important to understand that so that we can catch people earlier on and address these issues before they become out of control.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  And so I'm, I am a 12-step guy through and through.

• 8:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  You know, I truly am. If it wasn't for them, if it wasn't for the 12 steps, um, I wouldn't be the dad I am, the husband. You know, it completely, completely changed me. It's just. There's other, there's other avenues. You know, for years, we shut those avenues down. And now there's other avenues.

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  Right, supplementing what we already know works, right? Well, let's get into it. I want to do, you know, an old school, like what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. So, you know, paint the picture in Fall River as a young kid. What was going on?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  My brother was a star. My father was a politician. And I was up and coming. And I grew up in a tough town. Blue collar. I mean, it was very normal for kids my age to be walking into the Sons of Italy or the Portuguese American Club and having beers.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  That was the culture. And the culture caught up with me. You know, I went to B C and I was introduced to cocaine. And not everybody can understand this, but cocaine became like my therapy. Like cocaine was my truth serum.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  What is it about that drug that unlocks that?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  It allowed me to cry and just spill everything I needed to spill. So I kind of fell in love with the vulnerability of cocaine. And it ran wild, right? It just, it followed me everywhere I went.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Came out to Fresno, couldn't shake it. Went to treatment, came back from treatment, got married in college, had a baby in college. That allowed me to step away from the life for a little while.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  But I fell back into it. And, you know, I was just starting my...

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Korea professionally. And I was introduced to OxyContin. And that was it.

• 11:03Rich Roll?

  That was it, yeah. So we find the drugs that work for us. And part of the first day, you know, kind of idea is understanding that, you know, they, they work. You know, you don't become an addict because it doesn't work out of the gate. It's, it's, it's serving, it's filling some need, right? And as a kid in Fall River, kind of rough and tumble, blue collar town. You become this superstar, high point scorer, 2,000 points in high school. And it's a town in which basketball looms large. It's a Friday Night Lights sort of scenario, right? Where everyone's turning up for the basketball games and you're the hometown hero. And as a young person, I mean, starting around like age 14,

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  you're suddenly in a position where you're shouldering all this pressure. And all the hopes and expectations of this town.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  I was playing in front of four or 5,000 people in high school.

• 11:57Rich Roll?

  That's crazy.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So that 14 year old boy running through the locker room came out to 4,000 people.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  And you have this comfort, you're in your zone when you're on the court and you're able to do what you do so well. And yet after the game, when you're in your buddy's basement, you feel like you gotta get loaded just so you can hang out with your friends. Like that disconnect.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't even know if I was comfortable on the court. I might've been, you know, in hindsight, I think of how I felt. I was kind of in flight, you know, like I wanted to, I wanted to get it over with.

• 12:36Rich Roll?

  You wanted the games to be over with.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to get to the end. I wanted the result before I had the result. I wanted the points before I had the points. And I wanted to run. So I wouldn't even consider myself ever being comfortable on a basketball court.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Wow. Yeah, you said that, that you don't have a lot of love for basketball. Was it a situation in which you, at one time you did? Or was it always like a duty or?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  You know, it's like Friday Night Lights and, and, and the thousands of people in the gym screaming. Most of my time was spent on 102 Phillips Street. Like my childhood home. And every shot I took, every dribble was, was to be better.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Than my brother, better than my father. It was just this, this shadow, it's, it's hard to explain, but it was just this shadow that I could never, ever escape it. So the love of basketball was gone. I never loved it. I loved soccer, I loved baseball, but I just never loved the game of basketball. Because it was just this impending doom that I was gonna fail.

• 13:54Rich Roll?

  But you didn't fail.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I didn't, but I believe some of that success came because of fear of failure.

• 14:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  And like you can get into it and try to figure it all out. You know what I mean?

• 14:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Uh, and trust me, I've done plenty of work to try to figure it out.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  But when I go back to that little kid in the driveway, like, I'm not out there because like I enjoy this. I'm not out there saying this is, this is fun. I'm out there for a reason and, you know, ten, eight, ten, twelve year olds shouldn't be out there for a reason.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, you should be having fun. And, and of course, you're too young to have any self-awareness around any of that. You're just operating reactively to this environment and you're growing up in, you know, this blue collar town that, that, you know, mill town, right? That's kind of having hard times. That's why basketball was so important. It was this source of pride for this, for this community. Um, and very much a, a, a work hard, play harder situation. You play the games, then you're in your buddy's basement and you're partying harder than you played on the court.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  I played the games to get to the basement. Like that was, that, that, that's where the peace was for me. Like, let's get the games over with so I could finally get down into the basement. And, um, that started at a young age. You know, that it was like refuge down there, like I can escape everything.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Four Rivers is a tough town. It's tough people. I, I believe, um, it played in to my future with drugs and alcohol, but I also believe because of it, it brought me out of it.

• 15:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  And, and that toughness.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  But as a little boy, forever wasn't a safe place for me mentally, emotionally.

• 15:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have the specter of your older brother and the expectations that come with that hanging over you. You've got an alcoholic dad, a divorce.

• 15:57Rich Roll?

  Not an awesome, healthy situation for a young person to grow up in. But it feels like you had some guidance and some mentors around you, but you were impenetrable?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say I was impenetrable, right? But what I would say is my parents tried hard. You know, their life was falling apart. It wasn't that they've ever intentionally put me in a wrong direction, right? They knew exactly where I should be on the road I should be traveling on, but they just couldn't get me to it. And then Bill Reynolds walked into my life and, you know, he said, I want to write a book about you. It's similar to Friday Night Lights. I'm gonna call it Forever Dreams and I'm gonna follow you for one season. And I'd never been around someone like that before. He went to Brown. He was just unbelievably therapeutic for me, calm.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  And he, it's kind of crazy. Like, he almost showed me how fucked up I am. Can I swear on here?

• 17:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  All right, sorry. But do you know what I'm saying? Like, he almost showed me, like, you are...

• 17:15Speaker 01

  You're not a 17-year-old kid. You're not a 15-year-old kid. Like, we need to help you. Like, he started trying to help me. I never heard of that word. And at 15, 16 years old, he wanted to help me, and which allowed me to kind of look in. And that's when things started to get tough.

• 17:38Rich Roll?

  Why did that make it tough? I would think this outsider comes in, he's able to see things a little bit more clearly than... Somebody who just grew up in that town. He pulls you aside.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  He saw the truth.

• 17:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But on some level, to say to you, listen, man, you got this huge future. You're unbelievably talented. You have this gift. And I'm watching you piss it away. You're on a crash course with disaster. You need to figure this out.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I didn't know how.

• 18:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  I didn't, like, that's the truth of it, right? Like, he wanted me to figure it out. And, you know, I, Bill Reynolds, I was with him a couple hours a day. Maximum. You know, I was, I wasn't with him like my parents or, you know, an adult figure in my life. He popped in for practice. And he started just introducing me to, like, it sounds crazy, but he's the first person I ever saw eat a salad.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm not kidding you. I never saw anybody in my life.

• 18:44Rich Roll?

  This posh guy from Brown.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  I'm 15 years old and I've never seen anyone eat a salad. And he orders a salad and a Diet Coke. And I'm like.

• 18:54Rich Roll?

  Who is this fucking guy?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. You call him, you say I'm fucked up.

• 18:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God. Are you, do you have recollection or a memory of like the first time you got drunk? Like, you know, you hear, you know, in the rooms, that vividness of, of that first experience and feeling like, oh, this is what's missing in my life. Like, this is the thing that is gonna.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  I drank Cold Duck champagne in my basement. I think I was in sixth grade, sixth or seventh grade. It might have been for my, like, my 13, my, my, my birthday party in my basement.

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  There was a bottle of warm Cold Duck. And me and my buddies cracked it and started drinking it. And it just gave me this ability to be something else, like to experience something else. You know, not be so rigid and uptight and, and worried and concerned. Like, I could just kind of loosen up. And that was, I would say that's my first experience with alcohol.

• 19:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. But you still never. Felt super comfortable even on the court when you were doing your thing?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Listen, the truth is, I don't feel super comfortable today. That's the truth. Like, I mean, there's a lot of work that has been done and needs to be done. And I just didn't have the vehicle to do the work back then. My mom and dad didn't have the bandwidth in their world to help me through it. Right? So I just kind of white knuckled it and plowed through it at that age.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  And to a certain extent, I kept doing that for years.

• 20:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, in the Unguarded documentary, they make a pretty solid point of looking the other way as long as you were winning, right? Like, when everything's going great, you're able to get away with a lot more than you probably would have otherwise because there was so much success happening.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  So I think Farver to a certain extent gets a bad rap with that. There were so many people in that area that wanted nothing but good for me, right?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  It was an internal issue, right? That they tried very hard to point me in the right direction.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  People looked away in my life, yeah. I don't even...

• 21:17Speaker 01

  I feel sad for the people who looked away from me because they just extended this world for me. You know? Like, I wasn't... I guess what I'm trying to say is, I wasn't looking at people saying like, "You're a sucker. You're a sucker for looking away."

• 21:38Speaker 01

  It was an extension for me. Like, I can still go down this road further, you know?

• 21:46Rich Roll?

  So, high school was pretty much booze, pot, some psychedelics, whatever was around. But things kicked up into another gear when you get to Boston College, right? You say no to Duke, you end up at Boston College, stay local, local hero boy, playing in the backyard. You, uh... Early in your freshman year, you come back to your dorm room, a couple of girls in your room, some lines of coke lined up in front of you, and you're faced with a choice.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  I am a big choice. And growing up as a Boston Celtic, a kid in that area, Len Bias was pretty fresh in my head at that time.

• 22:27Rich Roll?

  That was, was that 1980?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  No, it was 1987, maybe?

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, it was that much later, yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  I think.

• 22:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  1986.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  But I

• 22:43Speaker 01

  I saw this pile of cocaine on my desk and I was like, fuck Lenny Bias. And like, he just did it once and he died. It just, it kinda shows you how sad that situation is, right? Like, I literally believe that

• 23:00Speaker 01

  there's a very good chance that I'm gonna die if I just do this one time. And I still did it. You know what I mean? I think of how sad that is.

• 23:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  That at 18 years old, I just did a photo shoot for Sports Illustrated. A book has been written about me. I'm one of the best basketball players in the country. And I'm in my first month in college, finally. Out of forever, out of my home. And

• 23:29Speaker 01

  I said, I'll take a chance at dying.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  It's kinda wild. You know? But, that chance

• 23:38Speaker 01

  in this and I'm very careful how I say this, but it was

• 23:45Speaker 01

  it was a sort of freedom for me. And people who have done cocaine and certain people that do cocaine, it happens to them. It was my, it was my truth serum. It allowed me to just lay back, open myself up and say, come on in. I'm gonna introduce you to the real me. You know? And that's, that's what I, that's what I was addicted to.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  Well, there is something therapeutic about that. And I think it's important when we talk about

• 24:14Rich Roll?

  substance use. I know you don't like the word abuse. That addicts find their way to the substances that actually fulfill a certain need. It's an unhealthy avenue. But there's something about that that's working for them that they discover. And as somebody who grew up in a community where maybe wearing your emotions on your sleeve, you know, it's probably not, probably not a lot of that, right? It was a, it was a way to feel those emotions and express them.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Oddly, it made me feel normal. You know, it just, it, it, it gave me this sense of peace. It slowed my world down, allowed me to sit on a couch and just say, I'm afraid. Like I, you have no idea, like I'm in Sports Illustrated, but I'm petrified of what's next. And, you know, you'd wake up the next morning and say, did I really tell the truth? You know, did I really sit down and, and, and open myself up that way? And again, that's, that's the thing about cocaine that I loved.

• 25:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, um, and then it becomes a way of life.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  It is.

• 25:31Rich Roll?

  It works until it doesn't.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  It was a funny drug, right? Like I, I was never, opiates are a different game. Like cocaine for me was more like 48 hours and two weeks off.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  You know, it was never an everyday thing.

• 25:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  It just, it reintroduced themselves all the time, you know, and, and. So it allows you to think like, I'm not, I'm not a drug addict because I haven't done it for a month. You know, but it will be 72 hours later and the shades are drawn and I'm sitting in my house and I'm, you know, listening to people stock their cars, go to work, get their book bags for school. And I want to die.

• 26:17Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  You know, very, it was a very depressing drug for me coming down.

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. So you, you have this kind of magical debut at Boston College, but it doesn't last very long. You end up failing a couple of drug tests. Big news story. Um, the hometown hero has been taken down a peg. Uh, and for somebody who's harboring so much fear to have that like writ large, you know, in the newspapers and media figures talking about you in a less than compassionate way. I can imagine only amplified that sense of fear and doom that was already inside you.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  You know, in 1994, right? Like there wasn't many athletes featured as drug addicts, right? And that's, that was the headline, that we got this problem child. This waste of talent, drug addict, who threw everything away 50 miles from his home. I think the most difficult thing for me at that time was my mom. You know, my dad struggled with alcohol.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  I just didn't want to let her down.

• 27:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and she passed away before you got sober, right?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  She did.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  She never saw me sober.

• 27:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  It was her dying wish, you know? I never gave it to her.

• 27:40Rich Roll?

  When you think back about that 18-year-old kid, what is it that you want to say to him?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Hug him. I'm not going to say anything. I'm hugging him. I'm going to hold him. I'm going to hold him real close, real tight.

• 27:57Rich Roll?

  And if you had to diagnose what was going on with him, the source of his pain and his trauma that led him to make those decisions and walk the path that he did, how do you make sense of that?

• 28:11Speaker 01

  At 18 years old, you couldn't.

• 28:13Rich Roll?

  No, but you looking back now

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  and understanding yourself with all the work that you've done on yourself.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I'd pull him out of the game. You know, I'd take him away from basketball.

• 28:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  It's dark. It's deep. And

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I had no tools.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  So again, and it's probably, even 15 years sober, it's probably wrong to say, but I don't know what I'd say to him. I would just, I'd hug him.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  And I'd walk through it with him.

• 28:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't have, that kid just didn't have any kind of healthy mentorship in his life, somebody who could see the kid behind the basketball glory.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  You know, I'm careful with that because my brother was a steady, like as far as my life in basketball, my dad, um, the only thing about my dad was his drinking got in the way.

• 29:22Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Uh, my mom was phenomenal, but at 18, they were going through a divorce. So I got kind of pushed to the side.

• 29:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  So for the next six months, I sat on my mother's couch terribly depressed and Jerry Tarkanian called me and he said, I'm a fan of second chances. I'll never forget that line. I'm a fan of second chances. And I needed that.

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  He seems like he was an amazing guy and really believed in you, really cared about you a lot and invested a lot.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 29:59Rich Roll?

  To his own risk.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, with you.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  We were, both of our backs were up against the wall a little bit, right? He was fresh out of Vegas. He was going home to Fresno. I needed to get out of New England, 3,000 miles away. I figured, I truly believe, and you hear it all the time in the rooms, that me moving from Massachusetts to California was the solution.

• 30:22Rich Roll?

  Right, the geographic.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, obviously it chases you.

• 30:26Rich Roll?

  Right, but in Unguarded, you have, you talk about, you get, you get there and you're like, what am I doing here? I don't belong here. You're calling your.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I'm at Jack in the Box.

• 30:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're, you're like, there's the payphone.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:40Rich Roll?

  You know, where I was telling her, I can't, I'm not going to make it here, you know?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Well, she was the person that I could be truthful with, right? She, she knew that boy. You know, not many people got to know me in seventh grade.

• 30:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you met your wife in seventh grade.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So she was one of the few people in my life that I could go to the Jack in the Box, pick up the phone and say, I'm crumbling. I'm crumbling in Fresno, California. I've never heard of it. It's 120 degrees. I need to get out of here. But the truth is, I had nowhere to go, right? So it was Fresno or bust.

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  You make a good go of it for a while there. It seems like it was a relatively healthy environment with Jerry's mentorship and belief in you and a certain team cohesion there. And you had a good run for a minute.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  I think it started off rocky. I was in a Black Angus parking lot and surrounded by the SWAT team. I got into a fight in the bar. It started off rocky. From an athletic standpoint, it was great. We're playing in front of 13,000 people, sell an arena, it's live. Fresno was a lot like Fall River in a bigger sense. It was a very blue collar town. And I think they respected the way I played the game. And I think they respected where I had come from. And I became the long shot, the underdog. And I played that way.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  When people say, Chris, you were talented, I was emotional. That's what drove me. Not talent, emotion drove me. When I could kick it into another gear, it was all emotion and fear. So that's where I believe I excelled. But part of me on the basketball court in Fresno knew at some point, you're going to try to tap into this and it's not going to be there.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, was it the first game where you come back and you're playing in Boston for Fresno?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  And Boston fans, not exactly forgiving, right? They're booing you.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:59Rich Roll?

  Here's this kid, he's back here. And you just crush it, right? So when you say, like what you're saying is, when the stakes are super high and you could tap into that emotional state and just play out of your mind.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I look at it as, honestly, humbly, I look at it as lucky. Like I made my first shot, which allowed me, my esteem, to feel comfortable out there. I was paralyzed with fear walking into that arena. I just got my ass kicked to University of Oregon. Now, mind you, I get kicked out of B.C., I sit out a year, I'm trying to get my drug problem under control, I'm going to A.A., I'm working with my assistant coach, and...

• 33:45Speaker 01

  busted my ass to to to get back and I step on University of Oregon's basketball court and they destroy me.

• 33:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  They took everything from me that game and from Eugene, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts. I contemplated quitting. Like, I can't do this. I can't, I can't embarrass my family. I can't embarrass myself. Um, I'm not a division one basketball player. I'm so far from that McDonald's All American. Um, just transfer, go to a division two school and play at that level. So, so for six hours on a plane, I cried like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this. And I didn't sleep. You know, I'm in the hotel and we're practicing and my family's coming.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  So there, there was an immense amount of pressure on me.

• 34:39Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  And I didn't do well with that. You know, I, I, I didn't, I didn't do, I had, I had to create it in a sense.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 34:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, I get it. I get it. But I'm, I'm imagining just this, this young kid who's just so burdened by expectation and an outsized sense of responsibility. Like it's life or death for you. Like if I don't play well in this game, then

• 35:08Speaker 01

  It was life or death.

• 35:09Rich Roll?

  This whole town is gonna, yeah, turn on me or, you know what I mean?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  And I, and I felt that about me. You know, like it was life or death for me.

• 35:17Rich Roll?

  No wonder you didn't have joy for basketball.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:20Rich Roll?

  How could you?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I didn't, I think I, and that's my, that's what I was saying. I think I excelled at being incredibly fearful. Like that drove the fire to rip your throat out on a basketball court.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  Right, but

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Not that I could like dribble really good and shoot on, like it was more of that intensity that was living within me that allowed me to thrive.

• 35:46Rich Roll?

  Sure. But fuel, as a fuel source, fear isn't gonna, isn't gonna bode well long term. And if you're harboring that much fear all the time, it's only, it's, you're ticking time bomb in terms of when you're gonna use against, again, because you can't walk around with that level of discomfort being an addict without picking up at some point.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  And I knew it was, I knew.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  That this whole gig was gonna end. I just didn't know when. Like, you gotta think about it. At eighteen years old, I went on this journey to be a professional basketball player. But at eighteen years old, I knew at some point, I'm gonna self-destruct. So every time I walked into a gym, every time I played in a game, I knew at some point, it's not gonna be the person across from me who beats me. It's gonna be me.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And that's-

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  And is it gonna be tonight?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  It's a horrible way to live.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  Meaning, they're gonna find out.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. They're gonna expose me.

• 36:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and you, you know, the amount of like, energy that you have to output to maintain this double life, so no one, no one really knows what's going on with you is, is exhausting. So, fear, exhaustion, um, panic, doom, all of that. And like, nineteen, twenty?

• 37:05Speaker 01

  I loved it. Like, I'd be screaming on ESPN, the cameras, I'd be, I'd be an absolute maniac out there. After the game, I'd jump up onto the scorer's table and get the fans fired up, and they loved it. But there was just something about that nineteen, twenty-year-old, that as I'm celebrating, I know deep down inside that this is not gonna, it's not gonna be long, yeah, it's not gonna last forever.

• 37:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and it didn't. You're right about that.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:34Rich Roll?

  Uh, you, you, you break Jerry's heart a couple times, uh, you know, and it kind of, you, you're, you're sort of, it's weird, it's like this X. Like, on the one hand, your, your career's continuing to go up. Like, you get drafted, you're playing for Denver, then you play for the Celtics, um, but at the same time, your problem's getting worse and worse and worse, right? So it's this, this weird confluence.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  It is weird. And at, honestly, I can say, at that time, if I look back on it, there were times I was the healthiest I've ever been. You know, like at Fresno, walking into a trailer for an AA meeting and, you know, opening up the big book and smoking cigarettes and hugging people, like, I felt phenomenal, right? So there were periods of time where I had some pretty strong sobriety at nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years old. Um, and then I went to Denver, and, you know, it was well documented, documented that I went to rehab. And, um- You know, Rolling Stone did a big piece and Fox did a reality show.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  So everybody kind of knew, um, kind of my legend. And I walked into that locker room and the guys in there immediately embraced me and said, "You're a second round pick, you know, you're 33rd, you've got two years guaranteed. We're gonna make it 10 years."

• 38:59Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And as men who suffered through substance use with family members in the past, we will, I will not sit back and watch you suffer. So we're gonna do everything in our power for you to take advantage of this opportunity. And they did. Antonio McDyce, George McCloud, Chauncey Billups, Popeye Jones. They knew my history and they were like, "It's not gonna happen here." So they, they babysat.

• 39:28Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  For a season. And, um, I wasn't perfect by any stretch, right? But I was better. I was much better. And that's why when I came back the following year and I got traded.

• 39:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  It broke me.

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  Do you think if you hadn't gotten traded to the Celtics and you stayed in Denver, that ultimately you would have been able to figure it out?

• 39:53Speaker 01

  You know what I found out in the NBA, to be truthful, um, my emotion didn't work anymore. Then it was real talent. Then it was real size. You know, that fiery, tough, you know, blue collar kid on the basketball court, like, that wasn't giving me an edge.

• 40:13Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  In the NBA. So whether I self-destructed or not, I don't think in hindsight, looking back, I would have had this, this long, successful NBA career. Because I was, I was at my limit.

• 40:27Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  You know, when you're...

• 40:30Speaker 01

  When Shaquille O'Neal tries to block your shot and you feel like there's a tree over you.

• 40:36Rich Roll?

  Doesn't matter how angry you are.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  No, yeah, that's not gonna help.

• 40:39Rich Roll?

  But you gotta find some kind of other gear, right? That's a little more sustainable if you're gonna operate at the highest of the elite level.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  And that gear required discipline. It required sobriety. And I couldn't, I didn't have it.

• 40:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  You know, if I was gonna make this work, I'm gonna get sober. And I'm gonna lock in. And I'm gonna show up every day to put the work in. I didn't have that ability. So I knew, I knew I was gonna lose it.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  And that's why,

• 41:12Speaker 01

  that's why I kind of enjoyed going to Europe. You know, I was running away again. You know, I, I won't fail in front of, I'm gonna head to Europe and fail on my own.

• 41:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're getting paid well, you can do this thing you know how to do. But the stakes are a lot lower. And no one in the US is paying attention. And you can fuck around and you're so far away from home, it's not gonna make the headlines in the Boston Globe.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  I'll never forget it. I have a horrible story and I don't even know what's appropriate to be on here.

• 41:46Rich Roll?

  No, tell it.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  So,

• 41:49Speaker 01

  my wife wanted me to get help, obviously. And there was this pain management clinic in Boston that puts a pellet inside of you. Right, so, sadly, I can't even describe it because I went up there and it was $750. And we didn't have $750. So I walk into this office and my wife is sitting there and she's so happy that I'm gonna get this opiate blocker implanted in me, that I,

• 42:21Speaker 01

  I walked in the back to meet with the doctor and I had a razor blade and gauze pads in my pocket. So I met with him for about fifteen minutes and I said, you know something, sir, I'm gonna pass on the pellet. May I use your bathroom? I walked into the bathroom, I sliced my stomach open. I put gauze pads, tape. And I walked out and my wife saw it and she was like, way to go babe.

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  And there was no pellet, the seven hundred and fifty dollars.

• 42:48Rich Roll?

  Addicts are crafty, man.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but saying that is I, I took an immense drug habit, you know, um, intense drug habit to Italy with me. You know, I was, and, and part of me, if I could, like, those are people that I never made amends to. The Italians, the teams that I played for.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Because they didn't get what they scouted. You know, I got off that plane and I was taking thousands, sixteen hundred milligrams of oxys a day.

• 43:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  That's the athlete that you just acquired.

• 43:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  So.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so, so, uh, opioids, OxyContin, enter the picture.

• 43:35Rich Roll?

  What, when was that? It was shortly before you started with the Celtics? And then that quickly ramps up into a sixteen hundred milligram a day habit of oxy. While you're playing for the Celtics, there's a crazy story where you're warming up for a game and you go out shortly before, you're dope sick, you go out to the parking lot to score so that you could just play the game. And you end up having a pretty good game. Which is like, you had this unreal ability to play high or stay up all night, party your ass off and just be an absolute wreck and then like four hours later, take the court and, and crush it. Which is.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  I did so at a younger age, right?

• 44:19Rich Roll?

  Like when I got. That, that doesn't, that's not gonna.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  It's not, it wasn't gonna last to me.

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  In high school, right?

• 44:24Speaker 01

  But, um.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  1600 milligrams of OxyContin a day and I'm sitting in my locker room and I'm like, I'm not feeling good. Like the early withdrawal symptoms are coming on. I'm kinda like I got a runny nose, I'm sneezing. And uh, starting to get a little achy and I call my drug dealer and I said, "Listen, I'm playing. I need you up here before." Right? I'll leave him some tickets, I'll meet you after the game, I'll give you a couple of thousand dollars and I'll get what I need. But I need you now. And he punched it and he drove and, and I kept running off the floor. No, and like, think of that moment, like I'm starting and my family, they're so proud of me and...

• 45:05Rich Roll?

  And this is the dream, growing up in Massachusetts, to play for the Celtics?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  I guess so. Right? I mean, if you think about it, I guess so. I mean, was it really? Apparently, you know? I don't know. I mean, if you really look back at it, was that my dream? Maybe my dream was to like, paint. And like, play music, you know?

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  I just never was exposed to anything else but that. But my point is, I was um, I ran outside the arena with like eight minutes to go. And the place was packed. And I run, I leave the locker room, go left, another left, down the stairs, through the players parking lot. And he's waiting for me. I pay him, he gives them to me, I throw them into my mouth, I run back to the arena and they introduce me shortly after. And that's normal. Like, there's people who will watch this show, you know, and say, "Oh, that's, I get that."

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  And there's people who watch it will say, "What a sick bastard." You know? But...

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think a lot of that has to do with not understanding that you need that just to be normal. Without it, there's no way you're gonna be able to play.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I, I hate-

• 46:26Rich Roll?

  It's not about like, being in some peak state of being high.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Of performance, yeah.

• 46:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're just trying to get to a baseline.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  You know, I, I think- It's always, it was in the beginning, it was a really hard question to answer. Like, did you ever play high? And every part of me wanted to say no. But the truth is, I wouldn't have been able to play unless I was under influence. With, in the world of opiates. You know, like, I didn't do cocaine before the game because it was gonna make me perform at a higher level. I did opiates so I could be normal. And perform at a normal level. And that's the chase, right? I think, you know, even as a professional athlete, what you start to fall into, right? I'm strung out on oxys.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And I am, I would try to like, get myself away from it. And get in the gym, just as whether it's sprints, runs, shots. My body didn't feel right on them. I mean, without them.

• 47:30Rich Roll?

  Without them, yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  So I knew that I was gonna have to step away from the game of basketball for about six months to kind of rewire my brain and my body, to the muscle memory, to be able to perform at that level without them. So I just chased. It was just, it was just a constant chase.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  So, your time at the Celtics ends.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:52Rich Roll?

  You go overseas, you play in all these countries. Poland, Turkey, China, Italy.

• 47:59Rich Roll?

  You bring like, a big bag of oxy with you, right? Did you travel internationally with that?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:05Rich Roll?

  Did it ship to you, or how did you actually?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  So, I brought some to Italy with me, I believe, yeah. So I brought, I brought, it was probably like, 300 oxys with me. And I was like, I'm gonna manage this. And then the next country I went to was Turkey. And I was like, there's no way I'm bringing to Turkey, right?

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah. If you're of a certain age, you saw a certain movie that terrified you.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 48:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  So I'm like, I'll figure it out when I get there. And I went on that flight without. I fought in my hotel room, my father came with me. He witnessed my withdrawals. You know, I would wake up and the bed would be sideways. That's how active my legs were kicking. And I started...

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Really trying to hustle some heroin, you know, some opiates. And couldn't find any. So for like a month, I'm sick. So I call a guy at home and I said, I just wired you 5,000. Send me a bunch of oxies. And he sent them. And the plan in a newspaper, you can't feel them FedEx. So I get a phone call from my team that says, here's a package down at the local shop. But they, for some reason, they want you to come here to pick it up.

• 49:37Rich Roll?

  Oh, man. It's a sting.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  It's total sting.

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  Wow. In Istanbul?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  I went for it. I didn't care about this thing. Like, there was $5,000 worth of OxyContin in that package. So I go there. And as I'm sitting there at the counter signing IDs with some of my, like, the team personnel outside with me, I'm like, these guys are about to witness Midnight Express. Like, I'm about to get locked up in Turkey. And the guy comes around the corner and he has the package wrapped in tape. And I'm like, fuck, it's it. Should I run? Should I say it's not mine? I grabbed it. So I turn around.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  And as I'm walking out of there, I'm like, how come nobody's tackling me? I get in the backseat of the car. I start opening up. When I get to where they were supposed to be, someone in the airport beat me to it. Got rid of all the pills and wrote me a little note. Basically like, get your shit together, man. This is, this is sad.

• 50:48Rich Roll?

  Like a customs officer who knew who you were.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Intervened.

• 50:52Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. That was Turkey.

• 50:55Rich Roll?

  You can't make that shit up.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  No. What you can't make up is the fact that I went. You know, like, that's, that's.

• 51:00Rich Roll?

  Well, that's, I mean, that's addiction in a nutshell. And I think that's what people who don't have familiarity with this disease don't understand. Like, it's going to drive you to just make insane decisions because nothing else matters.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  I'm on that drive over, right, to the FedEx in Turkey. And I'm like, I have a child. I have a wife.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  But there's a chance I'm gonna feel better. And there's a chance I'm gonna go to prison. And I went for it.

• 51:32Rich Roll?

  Hmm. That's wild.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  And for many people, maybe that would have been wake up call enough.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 51:40Rich Roll?

  Not for this guy, though.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  No. No, it wasn't. And sadly, right, like I say, I tell these stories with great pain and embarrassment. You know what I mean? Like, I never... I don't get any enjoyment or... It's painful to say, because I know on the other end of this, like, my son, who's 25, and my daughter, who's 22, they're gonna go on and they're gonna watch this interview.

• 52:04Rich Roll?

  But they know these stories.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  They do.

• 52:05Rich Roll?

  And they know you, and they know the way that you've showed up over the last 14 years.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  But it doesn't mean they want to always hear them.

• 52:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? Like, I sign, I... That's... When I did Unguarded,

• 52:18Speaker 01

  our world changed.

• 52:20Rich Roll?

  That was a big deal. I mean, that documentary is so powerful and unbelievable.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  I had no idea, honestly. And it didn't even happen by accident. Like, John Hawk could tell you, most of the footage, the hours they spent with me, was me teaching kids how to play basketball in a gym. At the tail end of them wrapping up filming, I got a couple of speaking events. And he followed me. And he said, like, this is the documentary.

• 52:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  I'm gonna tell it, you're gonna tell it in your story.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  And that's where Unguarded came from. It was not supposed to be me telling my story. And, you know, I had no idea 15 years ago, 14 years ago, how powerful that would be.

• 53:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  The mission was to, for outreach, right? Someone just say, hey, I want help. Like, if someone can hear my story and say, I want to stop my recovery process, that was really my mission at its core. And I would walk into these schools and I would tell this story of my life. And they would message me on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and say, I'm so happy for you. God bless you. Hope you stay sober for your kids.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  I had 3,000 kids in that gym and nobody told me their story.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  So I'm like, how am I not interacting with the like, why can't I get to them? Um, so I pivoted and did the first day and, and you know, I don't. I mean, it was said long before I said it, right? But I think we put way too much energy and effort in the, the worst day and we forget the first day. You know, everybody wants to say how bad it got, not the reason it began.

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  It makes you look in.

• 54:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  You know, when you think about it, you're a parent, right? You, you, your son, your daughter, there's parents out there that their kid walks in shitfaced, cockeyed, you know, like drunk. First question is, where'd you get it? How'd you get it? How much did you drink? Who'd you do it with? What time did you finish?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Never why?

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Parents don't ask why.

• 54:40Rich Roll?

  Right, it's fear and punishment, basically. Um, but the why is everything.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  Hmm, I think so. I think that, that allows us to kind of open it.

• 54:50Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  I'm like, dad, maybe my self-esteem isn't as good as you think it is.

• 54:55Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Why did you feel like you needed to do that?

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  To be with your friends?

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:01Rich Roll?

  And the first day idea is this notion of meeting kids where they're at by sharing what it was like for you at the beginning, not necessarily the end, because no high school kid can imagine that that's how their life is going to turn out. But relating to them why it was that you made those decisions early on?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  And then being curious about their lives. And it's also a very compassionate way of communicating with young people because you're treating them like sentient beings as opposed to judging them or coming at them from this, you know, holier than thou, you shouldn't do this, if you do this, this is going to happen. Like, it just doesn't work.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  It didn't work for me, right? But I became that.

• 55:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  That's why I pivoted. Like, I mean, I, we started off this interview, len bias was the first thing I said. And that wasn't enough.

• 55:57Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Midnight Express in a Turkish prison wasn't enough.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  So that's not enough.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Hmm. So what, what can I do? I can try to.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Reverse, go backwards, get that boy under the bed, on the bed, pull him out of the bed and sit with him.

• 56:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  And try to make peace with him.

• 56:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  You know, like, I had a therapist who said to me, how great would it be to spend time with that little kid? You know, like, how great would it feel to like, get to know him? You've stored him away for so long. Like, we need to bring him out.

• 56:40Rich Roll?

  And what would you, what would you say to that little Chris now?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  I'm a, I'm a super emotional, I'm like a big, I'm like a big baby, right? I would, I would cry on his shoulder, man, I'd hug him. Like, people say that to me all the time. What would you say to your younger self? I don't, I don't know if I'd be able to speak. I would just hug and hug and hold and hug. I think that's what, that would be my, my approach with, with the younger version of me.

• 57:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I've seen you do that with other high school kids, too. At the end of these talks that you give, these presentations, you embrace these young people and you just hold them. And you say, you're not alone.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  We're huggers.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  You don't even need to say anything more than that.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:26Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:27Rich Roll?

  They feel heard, they feel seen, they feel understood.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  The recovery community is a bunch of huggers.

• 57:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Right? And hugs feel good, you know, and, and to walk up to, to a kid who's struggling and give them a hug and hold them and, and tell them that I hear them. That's why I do what I do.

• 57:54Rich Roll?

  I want to get through the rest of the story. I want to hear, you know, kind of how it all, how it all falls apart and, and ends up. So you're in, you're in Turkey, you're in China. I hear the heroin in China is pretty good. You're spending all your money.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  I'm smiling.

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  Somehow.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  How sick am I?

• 58:14Rich Roll?

  Somehow, like.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  You said heroin in China is good and I, I'm smiling. Yes, heroin in China was, is extremely good.

• 58:22Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  I, I'll never forget it. I, I walked into a nightclub in China and I was like 45 days sober. And I asked this kid if he could get cocaine. Like, I got a little buzz on in a nightclub in China. And, uh, he said, "Ah, absolutely." And he walks out, comes back in, gives me a little bag. And I walk into the bathroom and I do the line of cocaine. And I know within 15 seconds that he just sold me heroin.

• 58:49Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  So I was off and running.

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  Was that your first heroin experience?

• 58:54Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 58:55Rich Roll?

  That was in Italy, trolling the train stations.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  The guy had it tied to his tooth. So, like, think of that, right? He jumps in my car and he starts doing this. And I'm like watching this string come up. And he's got a little baggie.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, he like swallowed it?

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Anchored it to his tooth.

• 59:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, my god. Wow. And, and, uh, and then he, does he shoot you up for the first time? That's how it works?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  And then I went away from shooting up. Right, then I, uh, cause I was completely a sniffer. And then sniffing wasn't enough.

• 59:29Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Um, and then I turned into, like, there were people that had to do it for me. And then I went to the, doing it myself.

• 59:39Rich Roll?

  Where does the whole house of cards collapse on top of itself?

• 59:45Speaker 01

  The house of cards collapse, um, multiple overdoses.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  The last time, I was 32. And, uh, I put Chris and Sammy on a school bus. And daddy is gonna walk up to the liquor store, get my pints of vodka. And I'm gonna stop at a little Cumberland Farms and I steal the ashtrays. Right? The cigarettes that were poked out were my cigarettes. So I would take a scoop of a bunch of strangers' cigarettes. And I would sit at my house and I would drink vodka and I smoke their cigarettes. And wait for my kids. And I get a phone call that day. "Come down. I'm gonna take care of you." I jumped in my car, drove.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  I had about a pint and a half of vodka in me, knowing I shouldn't. He pulled up on the side of me, he threw it through my window. I shot it and I immediately knew that I was overdosing.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  And the only thing I can remember is saying, the school bus.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  I cannot not be there when they get off the bus.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Like, I cannot have my kids live in that moment of fear, like, where's my dad? So I started driving and they found me like a mile away, crashed into a cemetery. And I woke up in the back of an ambulance and

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  I thought, okay, I'm going to the hospital.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna kill myself. Like, I'll go through the motions here, but once I get away from the police, I'm gonna kill myself because I don't want to do this to my family anymore. I'm thirty-two, Chris is nine, Sammy's seven, Heather's pregnant, like, I'm over this. And And basketball career is over. Yeah, basketball's long gone. We had nothing left. Food stamps, you know, no lights, some nights, no heat in the house. It was hard, like, we lived hard. And, and you're back in Fall River? No, I'm living in Portsmouth, Rhode Island at the time. My mom passed away and she left, she left me and my brother a home. And Heather and I were living in that with the kids. Yeah, but not a lot of good friends around anymore. I didn't want friends.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  You know, a buddy of mine

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  sent me a collage of my mugshots.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  And like, one day, they popped up on my phone, like, his, his, like, the collage of your mugshots. And one of my last mugshots,

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  I was so broken. Like, I didn't recognize myself, right, at all.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  But the first thing I thought of was Heather.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  She stayed with him.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Like that, she, she, she walked with me.

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  You know, whether it's birthday parties, in school, parent meetings, I walked with her. And she pulled me along like that. Like, that's what I thought of as soon as I saw the mugshot. Like, my poor wife.

• 1:03:08Rich Roll?

  This woman that you've been with since seventh grade.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Rich Roll?

  Who stood by you through all of the insanity.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:17Rich Roll?

  And there's two different ways of looking at that. You can look at that and say, what unbelievable fortitude.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:24Rich Roll?

  Uh, and, and belief, um, that she held in you and your ability to overcome this. And then, on the other hand, you can look at it and say, she was insane to stick around.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:38Rich Roll?

  I'm sure everyone in her life was telling her to run away many times.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Always, um.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  She wanted that little boy back, you know? She saw me probably at my most innocent,

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  phase of my life, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, you know, like, I was just, I was still in the driveway.

• 1:04:01Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I wasn't playing in front of 4,000 people. There were no lights on me yet.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  You know, she was someone I could talk on the phone all night to and fall asleep on the phone and, and talk to my, about my parents' divorce, right? So, she's been in it since the beginning, in, in the fight, you know, it was just a different type of fight.

• 1:04:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Um, but addiction, it causes people to get sick, and, and we were both very sick. As a family, we were both very, very sick. Um, you know?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  One year in active addiction,

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  like you close your eyes and it's 10 years later. And you just wake up, I woke up and I was 32, like, holy shit.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Time flew for all of us.

• 1:04:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you're meant, you're emotionally stunted.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Oh, big time.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  So it's like when you finally stop.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  I'm still emotionally stunted.

• 1:05:02Rich Roll?

  You have the maturity and emotional skills of the age of the person you were when you began. So you're looking at like a 14 year old.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  So where are we at now, like 19?

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're probably around, I give myself maybe like 20.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  I'm hoping, I hope in like 26, 27, maybe.

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  I'm getting there.

• 1:05:24Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:05:25Rich Roll?

  The prefrontal cortex is almost, yeah, it's almost, is almost online.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:31Rich Roll?

  Right? So, so the mug shots.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Rich Roll?

  The overdose, the crash into the cemetery. Is this where you end up in, in, in treatment courtesy of Chris Mullin?

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it is, but, but before that, and I, I was going, I'm walking out of the hospital and suicide is the plan. Like the handcuffs were taken off, I was discharged. And I'm walking out and I said, I'm gonna kill myself and a nurse intervened in my life. And she intervened by telling me that she saw me play basketball when I was a kid and she was friendly with my mother. And my mom had passed away. So her saying she knew my mom, I broke. And I'm like, I'm thinking about killing myself, but you know, my mom hugged me. And she, she brought me back into the hospital and created the opportunity of Chris Mullin to come in.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Chris Mullin might have never walked into my world if she didn't walk out of the hospital and chase me down. And she's a nurse, like you don't have to leave the emergency room and run down the street. That's not in her job.

• 1:06:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  So, her name is Diane Reed.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  It's because of her. Mulli and his wife Liz gave me the gift.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Mully calls me up and says, "I got a buddy named Murph, and Murph is gonna help you go to a treatment center." I never met Murph, right? Murph facilitates, navigates the treatment center for me. And um,

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  I checked into this center called Daytop in Reinbeck, New York, and Murph, talked to him a couple of times on the phone. Thanked him, "How you doing?", checking in, yada yada. So,

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  I go home and relapse. Murph stops calling me.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  They doubled down on my wife. Liz Mullen. Murph said, "You know what? We're gonna focus on Heather's well-being at this point", which I wasn't aware of. So, fast forward,

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  um, nine years sober, maybe? Eight years sober? And Mully's getting inducted into the Hall of Fame, and Murph is coming. I never met the man that put me in treatment. I hadn't met him. So, I was so incredibly emotional and ready to hug this dude. And he died that day. He never made it to Springfield, Mass. I never met the man, I've never hugged or met the man that saved my life. Murph.

• 1:08:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  So you just never know, like, be somebody's Murph. Murph didn't need the, to be out front. You know?

• 1:08:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  But he just did the work for me. He got me there.

• 1:08:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, and, and that lingering feeling like you don't have closure there because you couldn't, you couldn't give that guy a hug. And, and also knowing your mom, your mom didn't, you know, didn't survive to see you get sober.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I've hugged Murph. I've hugged him. I've hugged him extremely close and strong for the last 15 years, you know, like, without Murph, I wouldn't be here.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  My mom, that was her dying wish. She never saw her son sober. I wish, I'm so...

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  I love sitting down with people and saying like, "You have an opportunity for your mom and dad to see you sober", and I, I lost that.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  But I believe she sees it. You know, I believe my mom's kind of walked with me in this journey. I think I got the Murfs and Moms behind me.

• 1:09:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah. In that treatment center, where you lived for 11 months, you went out for a minute, came back. You, you, you basically find God in this tiny little kitchen. What's it called? The pot wash?

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Pot sink.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  Uh, you, you know, in Unguarded, there's a, there's a scene where you're standing there. It's this tiny little room with a bunch of sinks, right? And you're like, this is where I was from dawn to dusk every single day.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  It was my punishment for relapsing, right? So, so

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  it was behavioral modification. They can't really do it anymore. So it's, it's wearing signs, saying I'm a scumbag, announcing yourself as a loser. So really, um, that was, that was kind of the bulk of my punishment for relapsing when Drew was, when Heather gave birth to Drew. I went home, I relapsed, I failed terribly. And I went back completely broken and they said, get in the pot sink. So from 4:30 in the morning till 8 at night, you're going to wash dishes for this community. And there was 96 of us living in there. And, um, lunch,

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  breakfast, lunch, dinner, guys would walk by and just throw trays and dirty stuff through the window. And I had, I had hoses, sinks, and I would spray them down and I would get them in the dishwasher.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  I had no contact. So I couldn't lie to my wife. I couldn't promise my wife. I couldn't over, I couldn't do anything. It was just me in the pot sink. And that's when things started to turn for me a little bit because, you know, it's kind of like I let go.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  And I let her kind of come in. And the next time I talked to Heather, she was pulling up with a two-month-old infant and my two children, walking into Daytop to have a family meeting.

• 1:11:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this surrender, the letting go, the finally putting to bed, any idea that you're there to save your marriage or to be whatever, like letting go of all of that and just focusing on being present with what you're doing.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Just be still, right?

• 1:12:01Rich Roll?

  Allowing whatever is meant to happen, happen. I know that one of the counselors said something to you like, you know, the most compassionate, benevolent thing that you could do is to call your wife and tell her you're never coming home.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  And it went even a little deeper. He said, play dead for them. Like, why don't we fake your death, car accident, and let them go? Let your children emotionally, you know, get rid of you, in a sense. And I said that to myself countless nights. Like, I knew that there was a better man out there than me. I knew my wife deserved a better man than me. I knew my children should have had a better dad than me, provider. And, but when he said it, it kind of hit me. You know, like, I went to bed with that narrative.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  But him saying that out loud to me was probably extremely reckless therapeutically, but it's one that I'm extremely grateful for.

• 1:13:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I feel like among the, you know, countless relapses and many stabs that you had, that you had made into sobriety, nothing was really able to penetrate your core until your wife said, that's it, I'm done. And this guy said, pretend your family's dead, right? And that, that seemed to seep into you in a, in a, in a way that really changed you.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, really profound moments, right? Like Heather.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  The nurse.

• 1:13:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, the Mullins with Murph. And, you know, the counselor.

• 1:13:42Rich Roll?

  The Angels, the Eskimos.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  The Sherpers.

• 1:13:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  To get me up that.

• 1:13:48Rich Roll?

  Everybody needs one.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  To get me up that mountain, absolutely.

• 1:13:51Rich Roll?

  And anybody can be that person for somebody else.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  And I'm really proud of that. Like, I, I,

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  I am so incredibly blessed that

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  in my recovery, I, I give it to others. In a sense, you know, like, it's, I'm here because of them. And I've always lived that way. From the, I went to bed at night dreaming of being Chris Mullin. That was my dream. Not Chris Mullin, the shooter. Chris Mullin, that man who picked up the phone and helped me and my family. I dreamt of that. Like, that was my, the game of basketball and millions of dollars was no longer my dream. My dream was just to be on the other end of that phone call. And

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  I think I've made that dream come true.

• 1:14:45Rich Roll?

  You 100% have. It's, it's one of the principles, our primary purpose is to stay sober and help another alcoholic achieve sobriety. But you have taken that to an entirely new level, my friend, because you are not only of unbelievable service to so many people. You've repaired your life, you've, you know, repaired all of your relationships with your family, et cetera. You're this incredible, incredibly present dad. And your entire life is about giving back, this gift that you've been given. And that's rare. I mean, service is part of what it means to be sober in this program.

• 1:15:27Rich Roll?

  But, um, but to really shoulder that responsibility and take it so seriously that you're, you know, delivering, I don't know, 200 speeches a year, like, you're constantly on the road. You have a self-awareness that your story resonates because of, you know, the extraordinary things that you've done with your life. And that gives you a rare opportunity to connect with all kinds of people. Because they're going to pay attention to you in a way that they might not to somebody else.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  And for some of those young kids, it's their first introduction to what a sober man looks like. You know, and what their stories sound like.

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Heron Project, you know, my foundation, that was the dream.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Heron Talks evolved into me traveling and telling my story.

• 1:16:15Rich Roll?

  And now you have a treatment, you have two treatment centers, right?

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  And I love it. I like, I keep it real raw that I'm not a clinician. I'm not, I'm the furthest thing from that. I don't pretend to be because I'm going to have a foundation around substance use. I have a wellness center. I'm just, I'm just how they say like a bozo on the bus, you know? And, but I get a front row seat. I watch families, husbands like me, fathers like me, walk in on day one. And then to sit in their year celebration and see their children like that's, not many people get that opportunity.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  You know, not many people, that's, that's what's so incredibly beautiful about Alcoholics Anonymous is, you know, the guy used, in old time, he used to tell me, wait till you see the miracle. And I, honest to God, in the beginning, I thought he was talking about me. I'm like, okay, one day I'm going to look in the mirror, I'm going to see the miracle.

• 1:17:18Rich Roll?

  So you believed in that from the get go?

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  No, not, what I believed in is that I was the miracle. Wrong. It was the newcomer that walked in at like 18 months and I witnessed it.

• 1:17:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  I witnessed their change.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Seeing the lights go on in somebody else.

• 1:17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  That was the miracle.

• 1:17:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you just got a big smile on your face. You're like, your, your whole facial expression just changed.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  And that's how I know it's for real. You know?

• 1:17:48Rich Roll?

  In all of the talks that you've given, all of the kids that you've spent time with, like, what have the kids taught you about how to communicate with young people and how to understand them? I mean, there's a lot of.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  Parents, I suspect, listening to this, who maybe have a kid who's having a hard time. Maybe it's substances, maybe it's not, maybe it's something else, but like, just being a teenager, no matter who you are and where you live, is fucking hard.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  Very.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  And I think a lot of parents, myself included, it's like, how do I understand this young person? How do I connect with them? How do I get on their level? And you're almost like a, like you're a, what do they call it? Like, not a soothsayer, like, you're like a whisper, like a teen whisperer on some level.

• 1:18:32Speaker 01

  I'm just, to me, I look at it as I'm a vehicle, right? Like, there's plenty of people that are gonna follow up on my message, that can deliver what they need, right? And that's why, with Heron Project, years ago, we hired clinicians, because I felt irresponsible walking into a school, telling my story, because there was nothing there on the back end. So now, we have the back end.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  So when I walk into a school and I tell my story, those kids reach out, those kids will be helped. You know, we will find, we will, we'll deliver for those kids. So I'm just a small, I'm just a small part of it, you know, like, and I like that. I like the fact that, you know, I'm in that school for an hour and a half, and I'm going, I'm, I'm gonna tell my story, and I'm gonna hopefully get, whether it's good or bad, get kids to walk out and tell a little bit of theirs.

• 1:19:29Rich Roll?

  Did you ever imagine that your life could have so much impact? Like, it's crazy, it's so far beyond anything that you could have ever achieved, even if your wildest dreams as a basketball player had come true. Like, what you're doing now is so much more meaningful and profound.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  It is, and I, but I, in full transparency, I gotta be careful with it. You know, like, I've run hard for the last 14 years. I've run really hard.

• 1:19:57Rich Roll?

  And getting up and sharing your story and talking to all these kids is not recovery. You can delude yourself into thinking, well, all I do is recovery all day long.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not even close.

• 1:20:05Rich Roll?

  It's actually...

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  It pulls you away from it.

• 1:20:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's working at cross purposes.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  And I'm very, I'm very open and honest, and I tell people in my center, that are current, currently living there, year 12 to 15 were the toughest years of my life.

• 1:20:20Rich Roll?

  Why?

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Because I drifted away. I drifted away from the core. I isolate, I put, I isolated myself, you know, covid, all of it. It just pulled me away from where I needed to be. And it was an extremely difficult three years. And when I celebrated 15 years the other day.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  Congrats, man.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, no doubt. I, uh.

• 1:20:50Rich Roll?

  That's right, August 1, right?

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I shared that, you know, that it was, 15 was a motherfucker to get there. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't easy.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  And

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  I had hip replacement surgery on June 8th, uh, July 8th. And, um,

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  after hip replacement, I lost Bill Reynolds. And I lost a man by, like, he's on my arm. I got it way before he passed away. I lost Chuck E. Moniz.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  I lost the two men in my life that were willing to tie themselves to me during the storm. Like, the two men who would, they would anchor to me in a heartbeat, no matter how high, how low, they were with me. And I came out of surgery and I, I was told that I lost them both, two days apart. And I'm laying in bed and I'm recovering from hip, from hip replacement. But I guess.

• 1:22:00Rich Roll?

  And you got access to drugs if you want it.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  I guess, yeah, but I guess the point is, is for me, where, what recovery allowed me to see is God kept me still. Like. Hip surgery, like, I was in, I was in his hands. I was still, I couldn't run.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  I couldn't do anything but face what I was facing. And, uh, you know, it's, it's a perspective, that recovery.

• 1:22:32Rich Roll?

  Has that allowed you to, to kind of reinvest in what you know works?

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:22:39Rich Roll?

  And get back?

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I went through that. Covid was rough, man. I really struggled with the Zoom thing and it's only recently that I've really tapped back into like my core group of guys.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Covid was like the exact opposite of what I need.

• 1:22:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, let me drag you out way into the woods and try to find your way out of here.

• 1:23:03Rich Roll?

  And my disease is telling me like, oh, isolation, I can do this. I actually like this. Yeah.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:09Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Why, I, I was living saying, how come they didn't have Covid when I was shooting heroin? You know what I mean? Like, I would kill for Covid back then.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, man. I think it was not great for the recovery community.

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  I'm not, you know, listen, 12 to 15 was a beast. 1 through 12, I walked right through it. 12 to 15 was, was a battle.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:23:36Rich Roll?

  How do you think about the languaging? We, you know, I'd mentioned earlier, like, you, you shy away from saying substance abuse. You like to call it substance use. And you're very conscious about word choice when it comes to how you talk about this condition.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  I am. I think it's necessary. I think it's, it's kind of softened the stigma that's, that is attached to it. I, um, I don't like the word rock bottom.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Why refer to probably your saddest moment in life as rock bottom? Um, I just think we have to be better.

• 1:24:12Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  I think we'd be-

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  Well, I think the, I think behind that, at least for me, is uh, is the fact that we already hate it. We already hate ourselves. We're already like our own-

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  So let's attach some tough-

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  Worst critic.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:24:25Rich Roll?

  So when, yeah, on top of that, you know, a headline in the Globe that says, you know-

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  What a shame.

• 1:24:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what a shame, or whatever. It's like, we're already ashamed of ourselves.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Terrible shame.

• 1:24:34Rich Roll?

  So you're just, you're just basically putting kerosene on that fire and, and amplifying the guilt and the shame and the fear and all of that. And a compassionate approach to treatment and recovery requires or, or could use a little bit more of, of empathetic languaging around it.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  I think so. You know, and I try very hard at it.

• 1:24:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  I think it's, it's necessary. I think, you know, again, I don't think they could have the headline, what a shame today.

• 1:25:02Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  I think if I found myself in a Dunkin' Donuts drive-thru overdosed with a needle, I don't think the newspaper would say, what a shame. And I think that shows you how far we've come in the last decade, two decades around substance use and addiction.

• 1:25:17Rich Roll?

  You're out talking to professional coaches and athletes. What is the state of the union in terms of, of kind of recovery awareness in the professional leagues or on the college teams so that there's some kind of safety net or something in place for the kid like you who shows up and has a problem?

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  The safety net is that they're bringing me in.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  But, but that's not enough.

• 1:25:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there, there needs to be-

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Do you know what I mean? Like, there's not, there's not, there's not a lot of, of alternative support, in a sense, when it comes to that type of stuff. Like, I go to schools, very wealthy, successful, Division One football programs, and I'll sit down with a coach who's been there for seven, eight years and he's never sent a kid to treatment.

• 1:26:08Rich Roll?

  How is that possible?

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  How is that possible? He's got 120, 18 to 22 year old kids. And you never sent one kid to treatment. And then there's other coaches. And without even getting into it, because I don't, I would, I would, I'd want permission. He's one of the best coaches to ever coach. And he's all about it. He's all about sending kids away. He's one of the best coaches that will ever step on a football field. And to me, that's his greatest achievement. That when his players are struggling, he sends them.

• 1:26:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah. If you were in charge, if you were running the NCAA or you were the commissioner of the NFL or whatever, what kind of programs would you try to create?

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Would just be a lot of awareness, right? A lot of like, I, I don't, I don't even think there's kids out there that understand what recovery is. You know, I think we show up to a college campus and it's like, here's the weight room. Here's the locker room. Here's the gym. But what about?

• 1:27:14Rich Roll?

  There's the frat house and there's the bar.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  What about my mental health? You know, how about when things get really low for me? Where do I go then? Who do, who's gonna kind of catch me when, when I'm, when I'm struggling? We don't do enough of that. You know, I think, I think we're getting better, but I think athletes have been looked at as racehorses. We got four years of this kid in college and we'll see what happens.

• 1:27:39Rich Roll?

  Right. And to even discuss or bring up the topic of, of mental health is to, is to kind of imply weakness. And you're not here to be weak. You're here to be strong. So if you're struggling, keep it to yourself and, you know, buck up.

• 1:27:56Speaker 01

  But most people show up with mental health.

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Doesn't. You know what I mean? What kid isn't gonna show up to college campus and have some type of trauma? Something that he's gonna need help with?

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  But we have to wait till rock bottom.

• 1:28:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or, or something happens, the cops get involved.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's when we react.

• 1:28:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:28:25Rich Roll?

  What's the advice that you give to the parent who comes to you and says, "My kid's got something going on. I don't know how to communicate with him or her.

• 1:28:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know how to get this kid to pay attention and understand that he's headed in the wrong direction." I'm sure you get that question a lot.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  Let a professional step in.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Let, let somebody step, like, for instance, my dad, like, I hate saying this, but he's drinking himself to death currently. My dad's dying from alcoholism and he lives 10 minutes from me.

• 1:29:03Rich Roll?

  And it's crazy because obviously he knows what you're doing and what you've done.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:29:07Rich Roll?

  And that just speaks to the insanity of the whole thing.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  I've never, listen, I've sent away through Heron Project, and I say this very humbly, like, thousands, I think 4,000 people in the last 10 years to treatment through Heron Project, through my foundation.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  I can't help my dad. It's too close. It's too raw. It's too intense. Like, I have to let others intervene and have a conversation with him.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  I can't do it. As much of, as, as, as, with everything I've been through, the experience I have, the, the wellness center, the foundation,

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  I'm still a boy talking to my dad.

• 1:29:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's really hard for parents also because you don't want to be codependent. You want to keep the channel of communication open, but you don't want to be a doormat either.

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  And, and it's very confusing.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of parents, they're afraid to share their vulnerability. You know, I think there's a lot of parents out there like I get, listen, I kids email me all the time after I go to their school and I think there's a lot of parents out there today acting like high school was the best time of their life and their daughter is completely lost and clueless because she's not living up to that expectation. Like, high school is real, really hard and it has been hard. And I think parents don't want to share those vulnerable moments. You know, and just an example, like, so Jordan, Shaq, Kobe, I played against them.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  There's a guy named Richie Mellon who bullied me in sixth grade. I can, I can tell you everything about Richie Mellon. What he wore to school some days, where he waited for me. I can't tell you anything about Michael Jordan.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  But I can tell you about Richie Mellon.

• 1:31:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. That says a lot.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  And I think there's, there's, there's a lot of parents out there that don't want to share those moments, those losses with their children. Which it could be an opportunity to identify.

• 1:31:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:31:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that kind of vulnerability is always rewarded and appreciated.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:31:32Rich Roll?

  There's so much talk about the opioid crisis and now increasing awareness around fentanyl and what's going on there. It's insane. But I don't think there's enough solid conversation around what's going on with marijuana and marijuana psychosis. It's almost as if marijuana has become so mainstream that there's this idea that it's benign at worst. And as somebody who's on the front lines with all of these kids, like, what, because I know what I'm hearing and seeing, like, what are you hearing on that front?

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  It's the scariest, it's the scariest thing I see in my center as a father, right? Like, I have a 22-year-old, a 15-year-old, and a 25-year-old.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  When a kid who shows up at my center with mom and dad holding their suitcases and he's in a psychosis, it is, it, it, it rocks me to my core. It hits me in places that I don't normally get hit. And I've never seen it. I've been in psychosis, crystal meth and cocaine, but the marijuana psychosis that I've witnessed with

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Kids and young adults is is one of the scariest things. You know marijuana and alcohol have gotten a hall pass. You know, like fentanyl has become the headlines. And the truth is 70% of this country currently of people in treatment are in treatment for alcohol.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  But nobody says it.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  You know, and now marijuana, like you said benign. They they framed it, they structured it, they marketed it, they sold it as benign.

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, in Los Angeles, there's billboards for dispensaries everywhere and the dispensaries look like Apple stores. So the messaging and the marketing particularly to young people is this is aspirational, right? This is nothing to be scared of or to have any kind of trepidation about. And I can just tell you as somebody living here who's a parent to young people, it's so unbelievably accessible. Alcohol is is far secondary to marijuana with young people.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  It has now taken over, right? It's it's like you said, it is alcohol secondary.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  It's I never thought that I would see the impact I've seen around marijuana. I was uneducated on it, right? I almost thought it was benign, right? It gave me the munchies and made me eat, you know, like little paranoia when I was a kid. Today's marijuana is different than.

• 1:34:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's because it's so potent now, I assume.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's potent and.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  It just breaks my heart from a again, and I'm very careful with this, right? Although I've dedicated my life around parts of recovery, I'm also in the room, right? And I'm one of. So I tend to stay away from that little expert seat and stay in the middle of the pack. And it hits me on a on a level that.

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  That I haven't been hit on in a long time when I see kids coming into my center with marijuana psychosis.

• 1:35:04Rich Roll?

  So what does that look like?

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  A little schizophrenia, um, outbursts, complete isolation and going inward. Um, it comes out in different forms, right? Um, but the scary thing is you don't know when it's gonna clear.

• 1:35:25Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  You know, like a doctor can't walk up to and say, "Your daughter's psychosis will be done in 12 days." You just don't know. You know, we've had young adults come into our center that stayed six to nine months and still struggled.

• 1:35:43Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  And then we've had, we've had young adults that came in and after a month you saw improvement. Just, you can't call it.

• 1:35:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is it, uh, that you're doing in your, in your centers and your treatment facilities, your wellness centers, um, that maybe is a little bit different than what one might find at a typical treatment center?

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  When I opened it six years ago, I said, "I'm gonna offer as much as I can." Right, so I didn't go to a center like mine. Um, there was kind of the narrative, like you gotta go to a place that's hard.

• 1:36:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  In order to get it, you know, and I didn't wanna live there. Um, so, very holistic. Nutrition, sleep, yoga, guided meditation, breath work, um, personal trainer. You get all of that at my center.

• 1:36:40Rich Roll?

  Right, like all, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not just cigarettes, you know, sitting around a circle.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:36:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  I couldn't live with myself.

• 1:36:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? Like, I couldn't be that guy. You can make a lot more money being that guy in the business.

• 1:36:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Like, if I just threw a bunch of big books and, and throw out cigarettes and, and said, "Come back, come back here in an hour," it'd be a lot different. Um, but people find peace in so many other places. And again, like...

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Why don't people track sleep in early recovery, right? Like, let's kind of gauge when you're going to be at your best the next day. You know, like, maybe you only slept four hours. Maybe that's not the best time to go sit down with your life coach, your therapist. Why don't you take a couple of hours, get some rest, and we'll revisit this later? You know what I mean? Like, we can be much more, um, dialed in.

• 1:37:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:37:35Rich Roll?

  I think there's so much room for improvement in this space.

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:37:40Rich Roll?

  I mean, I was lucky enough to go to a great treatment center, and I was there for 100 days and saved my life, and I just, you know, I can't say enough good things about it. But I know there's a lot of bullshit in this industry. You know, it's heartwarming to, you know, sit across from somebody who's doing it right and is thinking about how to really serve, because there's a lot of, I don't even want to call them treatment centers, like, uh, you know, so we're living houses, et cetera. They're like hedge fund guys, real estate plays, renting mansions.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 1:38:14Rich Roll?

  And they can, they can rent out those bedrooms for a multiple on whatever the, you know, whatever the mortgage is, and they're just churning cash. It has nothing to do with helping people get better.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  And that's someone else's story, right? Like, for me, I get, I go so far into it that I track the, obviously, the length of stay, male or female, average age. I track, I have data on which life coach in my center is best with young adults, women, men, you know, under, under 30, over 30. So if someone comes into my center and, and she's 45 years old and she's a mom, I'm putting in her, I'm putting her in a specific room with a woman who's like 42% with women her age.

• 1:39:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  You know? Like, I'm identifying that before. You know, you, you, you have a, a small window of time with this. You know, it's like 30 days, 60 days, 90, you don't have a lot, you don't have a lot of time. They're going through detox, they're going through withdrawal, they're, they're not sleeping at night, they're struggling with their nutrition, they don't have enough energy. So I wanted to kind of come in from every angle I possibly could at my center. And at the end of the day, it's, I'm very proud of it. But it's also the community that you create. Right? Like, that's what kind of keeps, keeps you sober.

• 1:39:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course, of course. Do you have any read on what distinguishes the person who makes it from the person who can't? Because this is the baffling question of all time, right? Like, I've been in rooms with people thinking that guy's never gonna make it. And that, that person becomes like just a pillar of sobriety and, you know, vice versa.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  I'll tell you this, time matters.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Like, success in long-term sobriety, the length of stay within your center is a complete, it can't be denied. You know, the amount of people who celebrated one year, two year, three year, four year, five years at my center that stayed 30 days or less is minimal.

• 1:40:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  The ones who stayed 90 days or more, I mean, we have a whole squad.

• 1:40:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can remember, I, I've never understood the 28-day, 30-day thing. I, I just don't think that you can, you can really make a change in that. I, when I was in treatment, at 30 days, I was barely awake.

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Who's the asshole that came up with it?

• 1:40:47Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I don't know where that came from.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  Five-day detox, 28-day program, 90-day outpatient program. Like, who came up with this? You know, like, there's people who were detoxing for a month and a half, and you're only giving them five days on your health insurance? Like, there's people that come to my center and 40 days into it, they're still struggling. You know, but they're not considered medically in detox at that time. And the truth is, at my center, we meet the real person on like day 25.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  Like, seriously, like, no bullshit.

• 1:41:20Rich Roll?

  I got four days.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  I'm like, I know three weeks of you.

• 1:41:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:23Speaker 01

  But we gotta throw that out. Now I know who you really are. Let's start over. You know, and introduce yourself.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  That's when people start trusting. You know, three, three weeks, three and a half weeks in, they start feeling a little better about themselves and they...

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  They trust and they're gonna start being open and transparent and vulnerable. And that's where the work begins.

• 1:41:43Rich Roll?

  Right, that's where it begins.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Yes, but 28 days, they're out four days later.

• 1:41:47Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, you know, we need a lot of reformation in terms of how insurance works with this, access to, you know, legitimate treatment in patient care, all of these things need to be modernized and updated to get what's actually happening.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm proud of it.

• 1:42:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you should be.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  I'm super proud of it and I'm a man in recovery and who spent a lot of his life, in the last 15 years of my life around recovery. And it's my greatest accomplishment, you know, Heron Wellness, Heron Project, Heron Talks. It's, I'm extremely proud the way we have all carried ourselves. Meaning the runners in Heron Project, the students who I spoke in front of and the people who trusted me at Heron Wellness. Like that's fucking big time. Like when a mom and dad, like I see a mom and dad coming in from, you know, Colorado

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  and I'm like, they're opening up their trunk and they're grabbing suitcases and they're coming to me?

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Like you just flew four hours to drop your daughter off at my place?

• 1:43:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're the guy on the payphone in front of Jack in the Box.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  That's fucking big time, man. That's big time, you know, and I never lost sight of that. I never lost sight of what a complete honor that I've been given by servicing.

• 1:43:17Rich Roll?

  Right, but I see somebody who relishes and embraces that responsibility, which is a huge responsibility in comparison to the responsibility when you were young, which was ego driven of like acquitting yourself on a basketball court because you lived in a town that, you know. Wanted you to do that. I mean, these are totally different things. That one, I mean, obviously you were young and you didn't have tools, et cetera. But that, all that did was create fear. And now you have this responsibility that's much greater and graver. Literally, people are putting their lives in your hands.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  And you're like fired up.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, fucking right. Well, I like, like I can't paint the picture or tell it any better. Like, there's a mom and a dad in the parking lot pulling out a suitcase to come live at my place. Like, what a fucking honor, man. Like, what a responsibility, what a duty, you know? And I'm extremely proud of that. Like, we've created something really special there. And, you know, we hope people stay long term. They become part of the community. And, uh, and we do everything, I do everything in my power to service them while they're there.

• 1:44:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:44:30Rich Roll?

  How does this work as a parent? You have three kids and none of them drink or use, right?

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  And never have.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:44:37Rich Roll?

  Which is wild.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Rich Roll?

  How did you accomplish that?

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think it's their accomplishment, you know? That's their, it's their story.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  You know, interesting is that

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  although they've never drank or used, I see some of my behavior in them. Right? And my

• 1:45:03Rich Roll?

  But that should make you even more impressed.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, some

• 1:45:07Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's parts of them, especially Christopher and Samantha. They were nine and seven. They saw nine and seven years of a horrible side of me. You know, very reactionary and aggressive and constantly in flight, pushing everybody away.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  And that comes out in them once in a while. And I was in the kitchen like a year ago. And my little guy reacted to something and I was like, fuck.

• 1:45:40Rich Roll?

  There it is.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  That's me.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  And he sat down and I walked up to him and I um I put my forehead on his forehead. And I said, sorry. And then I realized that's the first time I've said sorry to Christopher that way. I'm coming up on fifteen years sober at the time. And um I haven't made an amends like that. We cried like for thirty minutes. My wife, who is a crier, like she just sat back in the kitchen and watched us and was like, you know, what the hell is going on right now? We all that emotion guttural like came out of us. But I said, sorry.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  And it was, I think, what he needed and what I needed.

• 1:46:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:33Speaker 01

  You know, which is pretty fucking cool.

• 1:46:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so honesty, open communication, vulnerability, owning up to your your your mistakes as a parent. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  I mean, it's superpowers, really.

• 1:46:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Right? They've been able to witness for themselves what recovery's done. For my life, for their life, for our family, they've had a front row seat. And it scares me because they have not done drugs or gotten drunk. Cause I feel like I hope I didn't scare him away from it. You know? Like, and I say that like, I hope it was attraction, not promotion.

• 1:47:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  I hope they say, wow, dad sober, like, that's that's dope. Like, that's fucking cool.

• 1:47:36Rich Roll?

  But in honesty, it's probably a little of both.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:47:38Rich Roll?

  There's nothing wrong with that.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no doubt.

• 1:47:40Rich Roll?

  And you know, if at some point down the line, they dabble with it or whatever, the longer they wait, the better they, you know, the better chance they are of being, you know, like not having that kind of like addictive response because their brains are more developed.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Back to the brain, yeah. Twenty twenty five, twenty six years.

• 1:47:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you're kind of back to the X like.

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:02Rich Roll?

  You're you're at the same emotional age right now, so you guys should just be like a house on fire.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no shit.

• 1:48:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, man.

• 1:48:14Rich Roll?

  There's something so, you know, you had said earlier, like, I don't, like, you know, you still struggle with some regret and some guilt around your behavior and, and, you know, the graveness with which you take sobriety, but there is something about levity in the rooms that I think is beautiful. And it's just incredible to sit and witness somebody get up and tell their story and just own every aspect of it, every embarrassing, you know, sort of shame inducing, you know, corner of what they experienced and doing it in service to other people so that we feel less alone. And I think that takes a lot of courage and a lot of vulnerability.

• 1:48:59Rich Roll?

  And when I started this podcast, I mean, I've been so impacted by that, that I wanted to bring that sensibility to this for everyday people, because I believe storytelling is such a powerful connector. And I think we learn through stories. Like, you can say, "Don't do this, do this, and here are the reasons," or whatever, but when you're on the receiving end of an incredible story well told, that will take up residence in you and linger and remain with you and influence you in ways that, you know, you may not even imagine. And I think you're very gifted at that. And I know that, you know, kind of in more recent years, you're like, "I'm getting sick of telling my story," or whatever, "I'm bored of myself," or whatever.

• 1:49:44Rich Roll?

  But I think that you have to remember, like, there's a lot of people out there who haven't heard it yet.

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:49:49Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:49Rich Roll?

  And it is so powerful.

• 1:49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I walked in here today and I said, you know, like, I said, "How incredibly blessed is he to have the people come in and just open up to you?" You know, like, like you said, take up residency. Like, it's amazing, the people that you've met just doing this and the people that I've connected with in the past 15 years. My story...

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  Will always be hard. Like if I'm comfortable telling it, get me the fuck out of the room.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Like if I'm that guy, then, like, people ask me, am I nervous? I'm nervous 24/7, to be honest with you. I'm on the edge of my seat right now. I'll, I'm speaking tomorrow and I'll be pacing before I walk out in front of a small crowd. Right? If I'm not nervous, like, get me, take care of me.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Because I'm not as healthy as I, as I'm presenting to be.

• 1:50:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I would have thought you would have had more peace with it because you share it so much.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:50:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's still haunting you quite a bit.

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  It is, in a good way, though, right? Like, I, I think, and, and, and again,

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  15 years, like, it's the echoes, right? Like, I'm telling it and I'm worried about my children, you know, and the impact it has on them.

• 1:51:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  It was very, like, it was very hard in the beginning. Like, I would walk into a high school and speak and my son was in high school. I mean, the amount of little hate, little messages he gotten on Instagram because his daddy, the drug addict, was at this school. Like, it was painful. You know, we, we had some major moments as a family, like, is it worth it for us? You know, hurt people, hurt people.

• 1:51:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:38Speaker 01

  You know, and they, they went after my children.

• 1:51:41Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  For my story.

• 1:51:42Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so, there's been a, there's, there's been a lot of sacrifice on both ends.

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I would imagine it's a little different now because when you started speaking, you only had a couple of years of sobriety at that point, right? Like, you, you, you hit that hard early.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Most of my presentations are the first day. That's what, pretty, primarily, right? There's probably 220 a year and the majority is for first day. I probably tell my story 20 times a year.

• 1:52:13Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  Where it used to be the opposite.

• 1:52:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  You know, but again, at a certain point, I started feeling too scripted. You gotta start checking yourself.

• 1:52:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's not good.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:52:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  Like, am I too fucking, am I too scripted?

• 1:52:27Rich Roll?

  And then you're like, did it happen that way?

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:29Rich Roll?

  This is bullshit?

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  It's weird.

• 1:52:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. I've, I've had that experience, yeah. It's not, it's not a great feeling and that makes you not want to share your story.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:52:37Rich Roll?

  Or to really deconstruct the whole thing.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:52:40Rich Roll?

  Because you're like, I've said it so many times. Is that what happened? Or is it because I keep saying that, that I've convinced myself that that's the way that thing happened?

• 1:52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you say it so many times, it's tough to connect to.

• 1:52:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  Like, you keep going to it and you gotta latch on to it, right? So then you get into self-preservation and it's like, stay away from that because you're exhausted.

• 1:53:05Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  You know, like now you've, you've gone across the boundary of you, you're exhausting yourself. You're hurting yourself therapeutically by saying this stuff so much.

• 1:53:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  So you try to kind of get some separation in it and then it's, I mean, it's, it's.

• 1:53:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:22Speaker 01

  It's tough to manage.

• 1:53:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I feel you.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  But it's beautiful.

• 1:53:25Rich Roll?

  I mean, I can't imagine doing that much public speaking, you know? I can only do it a couple of times a year.

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:32Rich Roll?

  That's it. Um, well, we should round this out, but I, I want to end it.

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Um. Yeah.

• 1:53:37Rich Roll?

  With, uh, with a word about, a word towards the person who's out there who's still suffering.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:53:44Rich Roll?

  Um, maybe somebody's listening to this, they're confronting their own behavior for the first time. Maybe they're snapping out of their denial. Maybe they're wondering whether they have a problem or not and maybe need to look at it. What is, what is the message you want to leave people with before we end this thing?

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:54:06Speaker 01

  Again, you just, you gave me a snapshot of about fifteen different-

• 1:54:09Rich Roll?

  I know, sorry, I tend to do that.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Fifteen different people.

• 1:54:11Rich Roll?

  I always have like, I'm gonna ask this one question and then I complicate it.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  No, no. I, I, I think this, the freedom, you know, the freedom to look within, the, the, the freedom to take a chance on yourself, to, to find a different version of you.

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Again, recovery is the greatest accomplishment in my life. It has nothing to do with the Boston Celtics. If you walk in my house, honest to God, you will not, you'll walk through my home and you will not see one thing about basketball.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  I do not have one uniform, one picture, one ring, one article in my home. So anybody who walks into my home doesn't say like, oh, there's a basketball player who used to live here.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  But you'll go to my sink and there'll be my fifteen year chip sitting there on the, on the, on the counter, you know? You'll go to the coffee stand and they'll see, you know, something with recovery. You'll know that before you'll know basketball. And I'm just proud of it, right? I'm, I'm, I'm super proud of it and never in a million years did I think on June 4th, 2008, when I was walking out of that hospital, life is gonna get good.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Life is gonna get real good. And life got good.

• 1:55:33Rich Roll?

  There's always hope.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:55:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You did the work, man, you know?

• 1:55:39Rich Roll?

  I love it.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:55:40Rich Roll?

  You're a gift, dude. It's super inspiring to talk to you. I love hearing your story, but also really appreciate the humility that you bring to the whole experience.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:55:54Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and, and at times discomfort with sharing some of that stuff, you know? I could sense that. But I think it's really powerful and you're a beacon of hope for so many people and there's a lot of people suffering out there right now, you know? So we need more guys like you.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  I'm blessed to be a beacon, right?

• 1:56:10Rich Roll?

  You are.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:56:11Rich Roll?

  You are. And you wear it well. You look good, man.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  Thank you, brother.

• 1:56:15Rich Roll?

  At your service, if there's anything I can do to help you.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Awesome, same.

• 1:56:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man, I'd love to stay in touch, too.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  Love you.

• 1:56:20Rich Roll?

  Awesome. Cheers.

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:56:22Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:56:25Rich Roll?

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

• 1:57:10Rich Roll?

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

• 1:57:55Rich Roll?

  and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.