Rising From Rock Bottom: David Manheim On Addiction, Recovery, Loss & Dopey

David Manheim is the creator of the Dopey Podcast and a central figure in This American Life’s episode on addiction. This conversation explores the intersection of addiction, recovery, and David’s unconventional approach to healing, which emphasizes raw storytelling and humor. We discuss David’s journey from heroin addict to podcaster, the birth of “Dopey Nation,” the impact of losing his co-host to an overdose, and how vulnerability can lead to profound transformation. He shares insights on addiction treatment and the power of community in recovery. David’s honesty is inspiring. And his conversation is powerful. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Waking Up: Get a FREE month, plus $30 OFF 👉wakingup.com/RICHROLL Eight Sleep: Use code RICHROLL to get $350 OFF Pod 4 Ultra 👉eightsleep.com/richroll On: Enter RichRoll10 at the checkout to get 10% OFF your first order 👉on.com/richroll Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp: Listeners get 10% off their first month 👉 BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL Meal Planner: For customized plant-based recipes 👉meals.richroll.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

  I was on heroin and methadone and benzos for 12 or 13 years. I was 41, I had a subletted apartment, a waiter job, and a daughter 50 miles away, and a woman that didn't want to see me, but I wasn't getting sober. Sobriety was nowhere near me. You're not sick and tired of being sick and tired until you are. I really learned that putting in effort resulted in something good. And when I got sober, it all changed. If you put your recovery first, everything else falls into place. Really, what it requires more than anything is the addict or the alcoholic doing something. What are you willing to do?

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to another round of What It Was Like, What Happened, and What It's Like Now, featuring David Manheim and his hair-raising dispatches from the front lines of heroin junkiedom, all the way to fringe cult figure status as the sober host of Dopey, his recovery-themed podcast, and its legion of rabid Dopey Nation fans, who together are hoisting recovery out of the dank church basement and serving it up with a dark humor like a, quote, "chemically suicidal jackass", end quote, which are David's words, not mine. It's all coming up quick, but first.

• 1:35Rich Roll?

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• 2:20Rich Roll?

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• 2:42Rich Roll?

  Okay. David is a guy who is just refreshingly honest. He's vulnerable and he's, he's pretty hilarious. So let us now trudge the road to happy destiny together. Enjoy.

• 2:59Rich Roll?

  So dude, you did it. You win. I don't know if I won, but I did do it. You did do it. I feel okay. How do you feel about it? I feel good. I'm happy to be here with you today, but there's a funny backstory because your, your hustle game is just absolutely insane. And I remember when you were kind of going after Marc Maron for a while and you just relentlessly pursued him until he finally relented. And I remember listening to that episode of WTF and we were already acquainted at that point. This goes back many years. But then I started to realize like, oh, he's doing it to me now. No. And I, and I kind of purposely kind of kept you at bay for a little bit. And I was like, let's see where this is headed. I want to see how committed you are. And sure enough, man,

• 3:43Rich Roll?

  you did not relent. It took a long time, but we're here today. And I didn't overdo it where you see things from me and you're like, this fucking guy.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  With Maren, though, it was a really interesting thing because I've been in recovery for a little while and you know how people talk about like god moments and stuff? I didn't have any. Like, I didn't have any god moments and I was waiting tables at Katz's Deli. I have to serve matzo ball soup to like five people and I, and my, maybe I'm going too fast, but I want to tell this story.

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this is the Maren backstory, right?

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, this is the Maren backstory. And I thought Chris had just died, my partner had just died. And

• 4:21Rich Roll?

  Your podcast partner.

• 4:22Speaker 00

  My podcast partner, not my life partner. My life partner is still alive, thank God. And I thought the show was gonna be done. And I had booked David Schiff, who wrote Beautiful Boy, and the movie had just come out. And I got a text. He's like, "I'm not doing your show for six months." And I was like, "Fucking hell." And I served the soup and I go outside and I'm like, "I think the show is over. I don't know what I'm gonna do." And who comes walking down Ludlow Street? Mark Maren. And I had never met him. You know, I tweeted at him, but I had never really gone after him. And I invited him to breakfast at Katz's the next morning and he came to Katz's and he agreed to come on the show.

• 4:59Rich Roll?

  So that was like, what, 2017 or something like that?

• 5:03Speaker 00

  That was 2018, in the fall, I think. Right after Chris had done it.

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And what makes Maren special is that he's sort of the OG in the podcast space as somebody who would talk about recovery and addiction, dating way back, like before you or I started. We've been both in this for quite a long time, but Mark precedes us. And he was really the first person to give an authentic voice to the recovery experience as somebody who is part of that community. And I remember discovering his podcast, you know, very early on also, like, long before I knew anybody else who was even listening to podcasts, and found so much kind of comfort and joy and comedy and just a sense of connection with the vulnerability and the honesty that he would demonstrate in not just the interviews,

• 5:53Rich Roll?

  but in these incredible introductions that to this day he still does.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Totally. He's just a pillar of truth telling and being himself. And that's what drew me to him. And he had a TV show where he was like relapsing in the third season of his TV show, even though he was sober fucking a million years. And I was like, I love that. And when I ran into him, he knew who I was because I had annoyed him on Twitter. And he didn't need to be generous with me. And he just was. And he acts like he's not generous, but he is.

• 6:23Rich Roll?

  He still complains about you from time to time.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know.

• 6:26Rich Roll?

  And then I think he shared, it wasn't that long ago, like he connected with you in New York, or you guys seem like you're kind of in touch.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, we are in touch. Margaret Cho ran into him at some comedy thing and they shot a video where Maren made fun of me in the video. Like, he loves to make fun of me and he likes to complain about me, but that's like-

• 6:44Rich Roll?

  But he did have you on.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  He had me on and he's been ridiculously generous.

• 6:48Rich Roll?

  It's very cool.

• 6:49Speaker 00

  And it's very generous of you to have me.

• 6:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I'm hap- like I said, I'm happy to have you here today. But it is funny because you did put in a lot of work to get here today. And, you know, on the point of like your hustle game, clearly, like, nothing was gonna get in between you and your heroin fix. Like, if you demonstrated, you know, a small percentage of what you put in to just get here today, like, you're relentless. And I think that is a very, you know, that's a, that's a quality that many of us, you know, in the room share.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  Totally. And, and it's when we can apply it for something positive-

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Speaker 00

  -that we can see something good coming in, as opposed to-

• 7:26Rich Roll?

  We have to apply it in the wrong way quite a bit before we get there.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  I applied it in the wrong way a lot, for a long time. And I was, I was relentless in getting drugs and staying high. But I was also relentless before that, like, in doing other weird things. Like, it's just in my nature. And I think it's in your nature too.

• 7:46Rich Roll?

  To some extent. I think you've, you've taught me on that one, though, a little bit. I want to get into the whole backstory, but like, I want to spend a few minutes just up top, like, talking about Dopey, because I think it's a really special thing that you've created. You've been doing it, like I said, for a long time. I dabble in it, like, I pop in and out of it. But I think, you know, I was reflecting on, like, why is this show- Unique, you know, it has this kind of like lo-fi quality to it that makes you feel like you're a fly on the wall and that you're part of the conversation. And you, you have this ability to bring people on. I mean, now there's a lot more star power on the show, but in the early days, it was like you, your buddies, and a lot of like hard cases would come on, people who were

• 8:30Rich Roll?

  still in the midst of the struggle. And you would treat them with such compassion and, you know, with this like welcome energy that allowed the listener, many of which I assume are out there struggling themselves or in and out of the rooms or what have you, feel like there was a community. And I think it speaks to the power of like, look, there's a lot of shitty negative things about the internet and social media, but the fact that you could host a show like this and cast this wide net that expanded the aperture of what the recovery journey could be like and create, like it's the community that you've built, right? Like, that's the heart and soul of this whole enterprise.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  People say that to me, and the truth is that I didn't build a community, right? The community got built like outside of the show. I'm so grateful for it. And like, when you say that to me, I get filled with all this kind of emotion because we started the show as just a way, and it was me and my friend Chris, as just a way to kind of talk shit about addiction and talk shit about the worst stuff that we had done and have something to do. And all of a sudden, people related to what we were doing. And the show didn't really get legs until Chris died because the audience was so invested in him. Like, everyone loved Chris. He was like brilliant and funny and sensitive.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  And he was like a PhD candidate as a psychology student.

• 9:59Rich Roll?

  Right. He has a very different backstory than yours in the sense that, wasn't he from like a well-to-do family?

• 10:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  And kind of had that East Coast, you know, highfalutin, good college kind of pedigree?

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. And he, he was all of those things. But he was a horrible drug addict.

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Like, he was the worst drug addict ever. And we started the show, I had four months and he had a year and a half.

• 10:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you started the show and you only had four months of sobriety.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  And when people ask me, is dopey a big part of my sobriety? I always say no. But it definitely, like, is the whole thing. I had four months without it. You know what I mean? Like, and that's kind of like a scary thing also. Like, if I pulled the plug from the show, what is the impact of my recovery?

• 10:43Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  But I don't. The community, we laughed at the worst things that ever happened to us and needed to constantly remind each other and the listeners that we were actually in recovery. And from that, I think people were like, well, they seem to be having fun. And that's really what we wanted to do, is to show people that you can have fun and you can laugh, but you need to take your recovery seriously. But then the really scary thing started happening is that listeners started dying while we were doing the show.

• 11:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  And then my best friend died, this guy Todd, who was on the show, and then Chris died. People are still dying. Like, pillars of our community are still dying as we make the show.

• 11:23Rich Roll?

  That's, that just goes along with the package of being, you know, being in this world. The heartbreak, you know, you end up going to a lot of funerals.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  Especially with fentanyl, when you're dealing with a community of-

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  Well, it's so much worse now. Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  It's crazy.

• 11:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Really, it's the honesty and the vulnerability and, and the way that you guys could kind of laugh at, like, these horrible things that you've done.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 11:44Rich Roll?

  That makes people feel connected and like they're your friends. And I think whether that was a conscious or, or very intentional decision that you made at the time, I mean, it certainly works. And I think, thinking back on the origins of this show, in a much less direct way, I started this on some level because I wanted to share with civilians some flavor of what I was experiencing in the rooms, where people would do that very thing and get up in front of a group of people and talk about the most horrible shit and just own it with incredible honesty and vulnerability and everyone would laugh and there wasn't any judgment, there was just compassion and this sense of support. All for free, right?

• 12:26Rich Roll?

  As we all kind of work together to rebuild our lives. And I thought it was such an amazing and powerful thing. But it's behind these closed doors and it's only available for, you know, people who reach a certain state and are willing to walk through those doors. But what if you could provide some version of that for the everyday person? And even though I have all different kinds of people here, scientists and authors and whatever, I still try to engender the conversations with some aspect of that sensibility, because I think that's really the juice, the magic, that allows people to feel connected to something. It's the honesty, it's the vulnerability.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Right. And especially in this day and age where everyone's in their phone, everyone's kind of alone in their phone. And then they go to a show like your show, or they go to a show like Maren's show, or they go to a show like Dopey, and they're hanging out with people. And it's like, the connection between this microphone and their ears, it seems very distant when you sit in here, but when you have it in your ears, you're right there.

• 13:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  And it's like a beautiful thing.

• 13:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. There was a big inflection point with Dopey when Chris died and you thought you weren't gonna continue. And he was your co-host, right? And you make this decision to keep going. Like, talk about, like, because I feel like that was sort of, you know, a big moment in the whole Dopey Nation history.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  It was. I mean, up until that point, the show, we had a cult following, and we were only doing it for fun. Like, the stuff we talked about, like, nobody should listen to. When I wouldn't tell people I had a podcast. Like, I wouldn't tell friends I had a podcast. Because if you listened to Dopey before Chris died, it's a mess.

• 14:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  But it's really funny.

• 14:05Rich Roll?

  But that's like the beauty of it. We were talking earlier, it's like finding this, like, garage band, you know?

• 14:10Speaker 00

  It's total punk rock city. Like, the first 50 episodes, we didn't have mics. We didn't have mics. We talked into the MacBook Pro. Because I said to Chris, if we had gotten mics, we would never do the show. It would be like those people that bought skis and never went out skiing.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  Because you feel like you would be filtering? Because there would be a formality to it?

• 14:29Speaker 00

  No, because me and him were such fuck-ups that the second we commit...

• 14:33Rich Roll?

  Too complicated.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Or the second we even have an expectation, the expectation is is trashed.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  He was like, we should get gear, blah, blah, blah. I was like, no. I was like, we're not going to get anything. Let's do 50 and then we'll think about it. And then at 50, he was like, I'm buying a mic. And he bought this shitty fucking.

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  Like a snowball.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It can go mono or like uni or whatever to set the room tone on the mic.

• 14:58Rich Roll?

  It's barely better than the MacBook.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  It wasn't better, but it was like an intention. And then we got Dr. Drew to come on the show. And Chris, when he was using, was treated by Dr. Drew. So Chris was like really excited and I was like, fuck it. I'm going to this. I went to B and H and I bought like a four track and set up gear for that one. And after that, we kind of had gear.

• 15:18Rich Roll?

  Right. There's a great article, a spin article about Dopey. I don't know when that article was written, but it's from the perspective of of the author, who was a fan of the show. And he talks about how pissed off he would be at the audio, the audio quality of the show. But then it's that thing when it becomes fancy and you have Jamie Lee Curtis on and you have, you know, Danny Trejo on, it's like there's then there's like a nostalgia for like those early days when.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  It's funny though. It's Jamie Lee Curtis was on on the phone. I recorded it with a mic next to the phone like this, total garbage. It was horrible. The show sound was horrible until the fans got so angry at me. They did a GoFundMe. They sent me 1,300 bucks so I would buy a Rodecaster and like, nice mics and stuff.

• 16:09Rich Roll?

  How long ago was that? It wasn't that long ago. I mean, at this point, dude, like, where's the poverty consciousness coming in? Like, you've been doing this show for a long time. It deserves a little professional veneer.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Now I'm down. Like, all of a sudden, I'm like down to up. Like, I don't, I can't live with a bad interview. I can't live with bad sound. Like, I'm with you. I'm ready for this. I'm going to put this in my dad's apartment. That's my move.

• 16:29Rich Roll?

  Right on.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  That's my big move. I was telling Jason. We're going to start doing something in my childhood bedroom. And we're going to turn it into the Rich Roll Show in there.

• 16:39Rich Roll?

  And you're in New York City, man. Everybody comes through there.

• 16:42Speaker 00

  I know.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  You can get off the Zoom and get people to come to a cool bedroom.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  I'm not doing Zooms. I'm done. I'm done with Zooms. And we had to do Zoom. It was COVID. And at the time. We did Riverside. I was like, man, Rich Roll knows what he's doing. He's not gonna do Zoom. He's gonna do Riverside.

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  Riverside's better.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Riverside's better than Zoom, but all of it is disconnected.

• 17:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  And it was some point in there, I was like, I only wanna do in person. But with Chris's death, I wasn't prepared for it. We had gone to see, you know Artie Lange?

• 17:11Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  On the Howard Stern Show. Like, that was my first Dopey Hustle. And that was from episode two or something to when we got him on, which I think was episode 140 or something. And I stalked him like a freak. I went, he would do a live podcast in the garment district of Manhattan. I would go from Katz's with a bag of sandwiches and dopey hats and shit. And I would always give him a sandwich and I'd be like, when are you gonna come on the show? And he was high. He didn't know when he was gonna come on the show. And I pushed him and I pushed him. And with Artie, Artie, I think is sober for two years now. And I think he's doing really well.

• 17:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask. I wasn't sure whether he's gotten it together at this point or not.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  I think he's put a bunch of time together, but I think he's been very cautious and stayed out of the public eye. But he was like, the whole inspiration for Dopey came from Artie. Artie on the Stern Show, when he would tell stories, I was like, that's a show. And we could do that show, cuz we have stories like that. So Chris's death happened right after we went to Hoboken to interview Artie Lange. And me and Chris took a bus from Port Authority and we went to Artie's. And the two of them were still using and I didn't know it. And then me and Chris took a ferry home across the Hudson River. And then he left and that was the last time I saw him alive.

• 18:32Rich Roll?

  Last time you saw Chris. I didn't realize that was right on the heels of Artie. Were they using during the podcast? Like, did they scurry away and use?

• 18:40Speaker 00

  Artie scurried away.

• 18:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  And Chris was just like, totally lying through his teeth. And in that period, my wife had gotten pregnant with our second daughter, we were buying a house, I was trying to stop waiting tables at Katz's. I didn't realize what was going on with Chris. I'm very naive in my sobriety about what other people are doing. I kinda take people at their word. I don't think the worst of people. I just thought Chris was like, growing up and losing interest in the show, but it turned out he was relapsing.

• 19:11Rich Roll?

  It was fentanyl laced something?

• 19:14Speaker 00

  No, I think he just went and got fentanyl.

• 19:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, it was fentanyl. Wow.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Cuz it's something he had always said on the show. Was how we missed out on fentanyl. It was something we had talked about and we would laugh about. But then, at the same time, we would be like grateful that we never did fentanyl. And meanwhile, for his relapse, he was like, I want to do fentanyl.

• 19:34Rich Roll?

  So brutal, man. But to the point of not knowing if somebody's using or not. I think a lot of people don't realize that a really good drug addict, at least an opioid addict, a heroin addict, there's a lot of people that figure out a way to use heroin for a very long time unbeknownst to the people around them. It's not always like the gutter case of the totally strung out person. There's a lot, you know, like, I've been around people who, I found out later, were just blazing on heroin and had no idea.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, when I was using, I was finely tuned at knowing who was using. When I was using, I could spot somebody in a room, I could find somebody at a party.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  Right, but that's like a gaydar thing.

• 20:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:19Rich Roll?

  Because you're on the hustle.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Exactly. Total junkiedar, gaydar, judar, whatever. A hundred percent. When I got sober, I just believed, I wanted to believe everybody was doing okay, especially Chris, though.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  Well, there is that thing when you've put together a little bit of time and you forget that there's a whole world of people that are out there still doing it. You're like, didn't we all give it up?

• 20:41Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. That's a hundred percent. It's hard to believe that anybody's using when I'm not, which is the stupidest thing in the world.

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  But that's a very alcoholic thing, like I'm the center of the universe. Like, I quit, so everybody quit, right?

• 20:53Speaker 00

  Of course. I can't even believe there's still drugs.

• 20:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, unbelievable, right? Well, let's take it back. I want to do a little, you know, what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. I mean, your drunk log is pretty long, so we don't have to hit everything.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very long.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  But you grew up in New York City.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  I grew up in New York City in Chelsea, and my parents were both public school teachers. And I went to a really, really special, public, gifted school. I got in when I was four, and I stayed in from when I was four till I was seventeen.

• 21:25Rich Roll?

  Stuyvesant?

• 21:25Speaker 00

  No, Hunter.

• 21:26Rich Roll?

  Hunter?

• 21:27Speaker 00

  And it's like where Lin-Manuel Miranda went and like, whatever. It's like, it was probably the best school in Manhattan, maybe it still is.

• 21:34Rich Roll?

  Is that, it's pretty far uptown?

• 21:36Speaker 00

  It's on the Upper East Side.

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  Upper East Side.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  It's on 94th and Madison, 94th between Park and Madison. And I was asked to leave probably every year from 7th grade till 12th grade. And I was like, I don't think I'm gonna go. I think I'm gonna stay here.

• 21:48Rich Roll?

  Why were you asked to leave?

• 21:50Speaker 00

  I think I didn't show the academic aptitude that was necessary to thrive in such an environment. I was probably a C+, B-, student. I was totally ADD, totally all over the place. I didn't excel academically, I excelled socially, and I didn't do drugs. Like, I was just like, I had friends, and I think my addiction first really manifested, like, with crazy codependency. Like, amongst my friends. And I didn't find myself using until I wasn't with them. And then, I wasn't with them one time, I was like a waiter in a summer camp, and I drank blackout.

• 22:28Rich Roll?

  You gotta be around people all the time.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  I'm one of those people, yes.

• 22:31Rich Roll?

  Extrovert.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  Natural extrovert.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  And I think I'm a codependent. You know, I think I rely on needing to feel safe. Not with anybody, like, with my people. And then, when I wasn't with my people is when I found drugs.

• 22:45Rich Roll?

  Right. But, popular kid could navigate through different types of social circles.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:52Rich Roll?

  Be a little bit of a chameleon.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 22:54Rich Roll?

  Little class clown.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  Aspect to it.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Total class clown, but my school was so nerdy that I didn't have to, like, chameleon too hard.

• 23:03Rich Roll?

  The bar was low.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  The bar was very low. It was a pretty easy, easy bunch to be a chameleon in.

• 23:07Rich Roll?

  So where do drugs and alcohol enter in?

• 23:10Speaker 00

  I probably, I drank, like, one time, and I drank, I was a waiter at a summer camp. And it was like, the first time I ever felt depressed was there, because I was so, I felt everything you hear about in a meeting now. I felt alone, isolated, totally uncomfortable in my skin. Which is something I hadn't felt, because I was in this nestled school from 4 till then, where I was totally safe. And I was at the summer camp, and I was a waiter, I was horrible at waiting tables. And I was only friends with the European kitchen staff. And the last night of the summer, they had a party. And I think I drank, like, 20 screwdrivers or something crazy. And I blacked out, and I was, like, vomiting and...

• 23:52Speaker 00

  And I, that was the first time that I realized like I needed to get out of my head. And I didn't really stick with it because I felt like, you know how people say they're allergic to alcohol? I think I was actually physically allergic to alcohol. Like my mom couldn't drink. When I drank, I would only get sick. But what I found a few years later was weed and I found it in college. I was a musician, I played in a band and when I smoked pot, I was like, this is how I want to feel. Like I was born to be a stoner, I think.

• 24:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And how long does that work before it leads you, uh, it leads you astray?

• 24:26Speaker 00

  I mean, I smoked weed every day from when I was 18 till I was 41, unless I was locked away. Weed was like my total culture, religion, whatever. And then whatever came my way, I would do. I would do psychedelics, uh, I would do pills, I would do coke. But none of it was such an impediment. I, I like managed to get through college in four years. I played in bands. I, I was interested in like, I was an art history student and I was really interested in it. I didn't excel, but I wasn't failing. When I left college, I wound up becoming, uh, I worked in television.

• 25:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  And it was when I started to work in TV that I felt kind of this pressure. In college though, I remember a musician came to visit me and my roommate and had heroin and he was a heroin addict. And I tried it that day and I got way too high and I threw up and I was like, this is too much, this is too much for me. And I didn't do it again for years. And then when I graduated and I was working in TV, I had an apartment in Chelsea. Like I grew up in public housing in Chelsea and my mom put me on a list when I was 11 to get an apartment. And I got it when I was 22. It's 300 bucks on 24th and 8th, like big studio.

• 25:41Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  And a buddy of mine came to live with me. And I was traveling for the TV company and I went to Michigan State to find kids to be on a talk show for this company. And when I came home, there were all these kids from my college buying coke with my friend from this delivery service. And I said to the guy, almost like I can't even believe that this is what happened. I was like, dude, you're going to make all this money in my apartment? What are you going to give us for it? And he takes two bags of heroin, throws it on the coffee table. Me and my friend Todd did them that night. Got way too high and then the next morning I felt better than I ever felt and I was like, holy shit, this is how I want to feel.

• 26:21Rich Roll?

  Cause you were still high.

• 26:22Speaker 00

  Still high.

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 00

  That night I was probably too high, the next morning I was perfectly high and I was like, this is, and I'm such a neurotic Jew from New York City that I was like, this is how I want to feel. It's more than weed. It made me feel the way you read about heroin making somebody feel. And I knew I had to keep it at bay, but I started succeeding in my little TV career and I wound up getting like an on-air gig and that turned into a producer gig and that turned into a contract. And when I signed the contract, even though I knew that millionaires couldn't handle heroin addiction, I thought I could. And I remember in my head, I was like, I can do it every day. And that's when it started. And my TV career ended like nine months later.

• 27:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, very quickly, yeah. Well, a couple of things, I mean, first of all, that like, almost, you know, I don't know, William Burroughs-esque like feeling of being at home when you find the thing that works for you, like you finally have wrapped yourself in that warm blanket and all the problems that you didn't even know that you had suddenly vanish and you're like, this is the solution to everything. This is what I've been looking for all along. And the insanity and ego of thinking, yes, I know heroin's like bad, like everybody says, don't do heroin, but thinking, I'm going to get the best of this, I'm going to make it work for me.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  You know how like, especially for some reason in the 90s, like, I don't give a fuck was a big phrase? I don't give a fuck. And I really gave a fuck about everything. And when I did heroin, it was the first time I felt like I could own that I didn't give a fuck. And it wasn't a good quality to have, but I felt like I really needed it to not be so afraid. Like, I think I was such a fearful person that when I did it, it took the fear away from me.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  Well, that sounds somewhat related to the codependency. Like, if you're so invested in making sure that everyone likes you and that you're kind of, you know, being the person that they want you to be, that's a major energy drain, right? Like, you're carrying around that anxiety and pressure all the time. And something like heroin is gonna make that, you know, all go away, right? Where does that come from? I mean, what were your parents like?

• 28:31Speaker 00

  My parents were like overprotective Jewish, middle-class parents who taught in school. And my mom had an idea of what kind of person I was supposed to be, or how I was supposed to dress, or how I was supposed to look. I bristled at it very hard. You know, like, it wasn't comfortable to me.

• 28:50Rich Roll?

  But you did it anyway?

• 28:51Speaker 00

  No, I didn't. I would do one out of 10 things she would ask. I would pretend I did the other things. I would say yes to everything, do what I wanted. I remember there was a classic moment with me and my sister and my parents in the elevator. And my sister was defiant. You know, she wouldn't do anything my mom asked. And I said, "Lori, why don't you just do what she says? Just tell her yes, and then do what you want." And that was my total existence. And when heroin came along, I was like, "I can just be done with everything." You know, I can just, like, I don't need to worry about anything. And, of course, it's like you trade all of your problems for this one problem, which is gonna be way worse than anything you ever thought.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. I mean, you go on a journey with this drug.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did. I lost the job first. You know, I wound up going to detox and I had... Because I was making a lot of money, but I couldn't afford... And I was paying nothing in rent, but I couldn't afford to keep up with them.

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, 300 bucks in rent, and you couldn't make the rent payment.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  No, I couldn't do it.

• 29:51Rich Roll?

  And you're making, what, like, 100 grand a year or something?

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, basically. Yeah, and I was, like, in my early 20s. And I couldn't. I, like, all the money was going there.

• 29:59Rich Roll?

  But this wasn't MTV. That was earlier, right? Like, you had a thing with MTV for a while that started in high school, didn't it?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, we were interns in my high school. In 11th grade, you graduate, and in your 12th grade, you do an internship. And me and one of my best friends were interns at MTV. And that's probably where the hustle really started. I hustled to get me and him on air. And we would go to the-

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  When you were in high school?

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I would go, like, we'd sit in Kurt Loder's office. And we would beg every producer to put us on. And I was like, I was exactly the way I am now then. And I got us on, and it was really fun. But I wound up at MTV again. Like, the great bottom was at MTV2. First, it was the Lorne Michaels subsidiary Burly Bear. And that's when I became a junkie. And I realized I couldn't keep up with anything.

• 30:49Rich Roll?

  They finally shitcanned you there?

• 30:50Speaker 00

  They only shitcanned me because I went to detox, and I didn't tell them. I just told them I was sick. It was a big moment in my life where I could tell them, or I could tell my parents. And I don't know why I chose to tell my parents. If I had told them, they would have had to-

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  They would have, yeah, they wouldn't have been able to fire you.

• 31:06Speaker 00

  No.

• 31:06Rich Roll?

  They would have had to support you.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  I know.

• 31:08Rich Roll?

  Went to treatment. So they let you go, and then you went and ended up back at MTV?

• 31:12Speaker 00

  No, they let me go. And then I was just toiling around. And I had a friend who believed in me, and he hasn't spoken to me since. But he believed in me. He was the creator of MTV Unplugged, this brilliant producer named Alex Colletti. And he recorded the coolest shit ever. And he hired me to make a show. And it was the late 90s, maybe it was 2001. It was MTV Presents Handpicked, MTV2 Handpicked. And like, it was Coldplay's first record, and John Mayer, and Norah Jones. And I was directing Jason Schwartzman as the host. And I was fucking wasted on heroin the whole time. It was like a movie in my head. I was like, shooting up in the bathroom on the 51st floor.

• 31:53Rich Roll?

  In their offices on Broadway?

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I wound up finishing the show. Show was horrible. The show I made for them was horrible. They didn't fire me, they just hired me to do the one show. So they never hired me again. And when I was leaving- I stole every promotional CD off every desk and I ran to St. Mark's Place and sold them on. Bought heroin and that was the end of my TV career.

• 32:16Rich Roll?

  Is any of this shit like on YouTube? Can you find this stuff?

• 32:19Speaker 00

  No. I mean, MTV Handpicked Volume 2, I think you can find, but I'm not in it. You can just see Jason Schwartzman hosting a show.

• 32:25Rich Roll?

  What about the stuff you did in high school for MTV?

• 32:28Speaker 00

  We have some of it. Like, my friend has it on VHS. And then at Burley Bear, like, I interviewed a ton of rock stars and, like, I interviewed KRS-One. I interviewed Ween. I interviewed Bob. We're all of it. I'm high on heroin and I have all that. It's a disaster.

• 32:57Rich Roll?

  These were reps that you're putting in to be a podcaster someday. I mean, you have this internal, like, showman thing, right? Like, you always wanted to be talking to people in some form of media context.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  It's weird because everybody has, like, a dream or a calling. And for some reason, when I was in high school, my calling was to be a talk show host. And it's like, I don't feel proud of it. I remember I walked into the kitchen and my mom would listen to, like, AM radio in New York City. And there was a show called Rambling with Gambling with John Gambling. And I was like, he sounds very relaxed. He sounds like he's got a really nice job. And I was like, I kind of want to do that. And then I got really into Regis Philbin, like, because he seemed so relaxed and like he was having fun. And then I started listening to Howard Stern and I was like, I want to do that.

• 33:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  And I didn't know how.

• 33:45Rich Roll?

  Howard's the North Star for you.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  That was another hustle. When I was in, in, Jesus Christ, September 22nd, 1999, I lied my way onto the Stern Show.

• 33:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did? I don't know this story.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Okay. The stupid show I was making for Burley Bear, I wanted it to get attention. And I was a huge Howard fan. It was, and I think Artie had just started on the show. And I figured, how do you get on the Howard Stern Show? I could have my girlfriend, who was very attractive, get naked for him. I could get naked and wear a sandwich board that said, "Howard is the greatest." Or I could come up with a lie that would stroke Howard's ego. And I was a big liar. So I figured I would come up with a lie that would stroke Howard's ego, which was... Our show was a college cable show. We were only on college campuses. So I told Howard that we were taking a poll to see who the entertainer of the millennium was. And that he won the poll.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  And everybody that he beat on the poll were the people he hated most. It was like Jay Leno and he didn't like Adam Sandler. It was like anybody that I knew he hated, I had him beat.

• 34:49Rich Roll?

  There was a lot of thought that went into this.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  It was a lot of thought.

• 34:52Rich Roll?

  Well, you're like blazing it out of your mind.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  Out of my mind. In fact, that night, I was with the girlfriend. We had done ecstasy. Then we did coke. Then we did heroin. I stayed up all night. And I walked from Chelsea to K-Rock to present Howard with the shuffle entertainer of the millennium award. And I got a trophy, like I got a trophy company to make the trophy. I was such a fucking hustly kid, I wouldn't even pay for the trophy. I told the trophy store I'd mentioned the name of the store on the Stern Show and that's how I got the trophy.

• 35:23Rich Roll?

  You told them you were already booked?

• 35:25Speaker 00

  I was booked.

• 35:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, you were?

• 35:26Speaker 00

  By the time.

• 35:26Rich Roll?

  How did you even get it to Howard, though?

• 35:29Speaker 00

  When I was a kid, I was a P A. Like when I was in that era before I started producing, I was a production assistant. And I worked for the E Show. My boss recorded the Stern Show creative meetings. And I was like, can I come? I'll be your assistant. I won't, you don't have to pay me. And I would go and help run the sound for the Stern Show creative meetings. And I met one of the producers, I think Jason Kaplan. And I, or maybe it was Casey Armstrong, and I wrote him that Howard won this award. And that Burly Bear had millions of viewers, which it did. And Howard loved getting awards and he loved getting awards on the air. And I knew that and that's why he had me on.

• 36:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  And he accepted the award on the air and I have the recording of this and he thanks me, right? I had a video of it too. I lost the video. He thanks me. He starts thanking his agent. He's like, he was getting an Emmy or an Oscar. He's thanking everybody. And then Robin looks at me and looks at Howard and she goes, he's high. What are you doing? And then Howard's like, I'm gonna beat you over the head with the award. Get the fuck out of here.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  Oh, he kicked you out?

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Well.

• 36:33Rich Roll?

  Like jokingly?

• 36:34Speaker 00

  Jokingly kicked me out, but it was a great moment.

• 36:37Rich Roll?

  Unbelievable, man. Well, I'm wondering like on what level.

• 36:42Rich Roll?

  This all like fuels the addict within you because you're able to like have this hustle game and get in these doors and make shit happen at the same, you know, and at the same time, you're using like a fiend, but as long as you can like get in to see Howard Stern or whatever, like you're telling yourself, I'm sure like, I don't have a problem. Like this is working just fine for me.

• 37:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think in the beginning, I mean, heroin almost gives you energy in the beginning. You almost have more ability to get stuff done for a very short time. And I think when I was accomplishing goals and I was exactly where I wanted to be and I controlled literally to the second how I was feeling with chemicals, I was like, this is really working. And going on the Stern show, I was like, I'm really great. Even though inside I was like, I'm not really great, you know? And I think it drove me. And then it's like, you know, they talk about like an emotional hangover. I think after it all started failing, I was like, I was so close to being where I wanted to be and

• 37:45Speaker 00

  I didn't get there. But I still was regulating how I felt with chemistry. And I didn't, I just couldn't face real life.

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  And I stayed with it for, I was on heroin and methadone and benzos for 12 or 13 years.

• 38:05Rich Roll?

  How many detoxes and rehab stints that you have? Like I, I lost track. I lost count. There's so many ins and outs in your story.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  I didn't do many real rehabs, but I did every free detox in New York and in Los Angeles. Like I wound up doing a rehab in Florida. I lost the apartment in Manhattan. My parents would not let me keep, then my parents, it was like a really fancy rehab in Florida and they gave us a scholarship, right? Like they gave me a scholarship to like get half price or something. And it was a horrible situation. It was like one of these old school, they'll break you down and build you back up, but they forget to build you back up kind of thing.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 38:45Speaker 00

  And while I was there, they told my parents, don't pay the $300 to keep the low income housing.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, so you lost your sweet.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  My birthright.

• 38:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  I lost my birthright and I was so upset and I was so like blaming them. It's like, you fucked me. How could you take this away from me? Why couldn't you pay $300 a month? And I was like, I'm gonna move to California. I had friends out here. So I moved to LA from Florida after doing like 10 months in a sober living, using in the sober living, but just smoking weed, thinking I could manage, like just smoking weed. But in my heart, I knew I still wanted to do heroin and I still, I wasn't getting sober. Sobriety was nowhere near me.

• 39:25Rich Roll?

  What years were you in LA?

• 39:27Speaker 00

  I was in LA from 2001 to 2008.

• 39:31Rich Roll?

  You were here for a while.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  A long time and I remember.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  But never found your way into the rooms during that period of time?

• 39:37Speaker 00

  I probably went three times.

• 39:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  And I felt totally alienated because I wanted to stay high. And I wound up getting on methadone out here. I had a girlfriend support me, take care of me. I was very much like, we had two cats and I was like the third cat.

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  It's amazing how tolerant your girlfriend was. I mean, you put her through the wringer, just in and out, relapse, relapse, lies, just all kinds of insanity. And she keeps giving you chance after chance.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, she really, I mean, like, we.

• 40:09Rich Roll?

  Are you that charming?

• 40:11Speaker 00

  I don't know. I probably, I think, I think with her I was. I think also in that situation, it was like, that was a thing that really propelled my addiction because she was my best friend's girlfriend. And we wound up hooking up. And I was like, I couldn't handle the guilt of having done that. So rather than just walking away from it, I was like, no, you need to be with me now. We wound up inflicting my friend with so much pain. And then I kind of went underground in my head, like I couldn't talk to anybody. I was so ashamed of that.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  The guilt and the shame just fuels more using.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  And that was a real moment of, of real shame. Because that friend I had been friends with since I was four. You know, one of my very, very best friends and I'm friends with him again now. It took 10 years for that to heal. We didn't heal our relationship until after my mother died and he got married. And it's like, I, he's still, like, I told the story about this on Marc Maron. And my friend was like, how could you tell that story like that? He listened to it on Maren and he felt so angry at me for the way I told the story. So I'm trying to tell it in a more, you know, because he was, he was one of the best people I've ever known. He's like my brother and I caused him so much pain and it was such a betrayal. And I think that caused me and the woman to be like, we better make this work because we've caused so much damage.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  The stakes are high.

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:31Rich Roll?

  So how did you finally make that amends and repair that relationship?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Effort, you know what I mean? Like that relationship is incredibly important to me. I met him when I was literally four and we were just close as family, as brothers. And, and he wouldn't talk to me, but he knew that I was so strung out that he knew I had an excuse for having made, like me and her had hooked up when I was using. And he knew that I wasn't in my right mind, but he was still so angry at me that every time I reached out, he would definitely keep me at arm's length. He didn't invite me to his wedding. He didn't want to have anything to do with me. But when my mom died, I think he, he knew that it was time for him to try to show me some kindness. And then he saw me putting the pieces back together.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Whenever he's in town, I see him and I, we talk here and there. And like, that relationship is just like one of my lifelong relationships that I really value and he knows that.

• 42:31Rich Roll?

  You mentioned that early on heroin gave you this like energy boost, which I think is surprising for a lot of people to hear. I never did heroin, so I can't speak to any kind of personal experience with that. But I know a lot of recovering heroin addicts who would share the same, including fentanyl addicts. Like there's a reason why, like it works for a while, right? I went to, I went to treatment, I went to rehab with a bunch of doctors, a bunch of anesthesiologists and they were. Mad fentanyl addicts, right? Because they have access to it in the OR and they would have these ornate ridiculous schemes to like siphon it off after procedures and create like a stash.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  But they would talk about how it was like the ultimate productivity drug. It allowed them to like work insanely long shifts and like feel like they were like on their game until eventually, obviously, it turns on you.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  It's a counterintuitive thing. You don't think that's gonna happen, but you get this, you get a rush. I'm not an organized person, but in, when I was doing opiates in the beginning, I found myself cleaning my house. I found myself making sure everything was where it should be. It gave me this weird energy that even coke didn't, coke like made me scattered. It didn't make me feel focused and opiates for some reason did that. That's crazy, though, that anesthesiologists would, would do that. And that people weren't dying then because they knew exactly the dose.

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they know exactly what dose to take. But the treatment center that I went to had a lot of doctors and a lot of pilots. Like it was a diversionary like place to go. So when people would, in their profession, would get in trouble, they would send them here. So I ended up, yeah, I was like there for a hundred days and got to know like all these doctors and pilots. And like, those are the two people that you completely give all control over to, that you have to trust the most. And when you spend time learning about, you know, there was a guy who was like a neurosurgeon, like operating on people's brains. And his favorite thing was to like inject himself with morphine and smoke a big cigar before, before.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  It's very reassuring.

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or the pilot, like, you know, we all saw Flight, right? Like, it's very disconcerting.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  I got on the plane recently and I'm like flying to Florida and the guy next to me is like, give me two double Tito's. And I was like, okay. It was like nine in the morning. I was like, okay. And he's just fucking drinking vodka, drinking vodka. And then like maybe an hour into the flight, I was like, what do you do? He's like, I'm a pilot. I was like, what?

• 45:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, no.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  It was a mess. It's like, it's very disconcerting. It's amazing that more bad stuff doesn't happen.

• 45:10Rich Roll?

  It is true, right?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:12Rich Roll?

  And there is a weird thing about airports and airplanes where all the rules around like social conformity go out the window, like people are just drinking at all hours and without any kind of better judgment about that, it just seems like, oh, you go into an airport and now you're in some weird time warp or anything.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  It's like Las Vegas.

• 45:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Every airport is Las Vegas.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  I know, I know. But I'm wondering, like that idea that it gave you energy and cocaine didn't work for you, obviously, we all find the drug that works for us. Like, we've both been around this whole world for a long time. Like, what is the difference? For somebody who's like, listening to this or watching this, who isn't an addict or an alcoholic themselves, maybe they have a family member or friend or somebody who's struggling, like, what's the difference between like, a heavy drinker and an alcoholic? Or somebody who can have a good time here and there and the drug addict?

• 46:06Speaker 00

  That's a great question. And don't you think the answer is, the only person that knows the difference is them?

• 46:11Rich Roll?

  It's a self-diagnosed disease.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  But that's real. You know what I mean? Like, how many people have you known that you know need help, that you've wanted to help, that is beyond your help?

• 46:22Rich Roll?

  You can't help somebody who doesn't want help. It's all about willingness.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  You can't even help somebody that does want help.

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  You can't instill that level of willingness in another human being. It's like a weird inception, but honestly, that person has to just reach that point where they're ready to raise their hand. And until then, it is that thing of, of powerlessness that's so brutal. And that's why, look, all the people that have died, who've called into your show, or, you know, Ben, guests on your show, and Chris, and all the like, Todd, obviously, these are people who you love and were super close to and would have done anything to prevent what happened to them. And they're doing a show about addiction and recovery and creating this community

• 47:09Rich Roll?

  that makes people feel like they're part of something, and that's a huge piece in the sobriety puzzle, and yet it still wasn't enough.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had no willingness to do anything until I did. Like, it was not on my horizon to do anything positive for myself until I actually got sober. And with the death, like, I had been using, like I said, for a long time. Nobody died. Nobody died when I was using. I didn't, I didn't know anybody that died. I mean, I was mostly using alone, or I'd get, like, some weird guy that I would meet at the methadone clinic and we'd score together or something. I didn't have people dying around me, ever, until we started doing the show. And I think I learned the most about life waiting tables at Katz's. I think I was such an overgrown baby until I waited tables at Katz's that, um, that

• 48:01Speaker 00

  was really the impetus for me to change. It's really interesting, actually. How so? Well, I was in Los Angeles, like, a total succubus on this woman, like, totally doing nothing, not working for years. I didn't work. Maybe every job I had, I lost quickly. I would have seizures often because I was so addicted to benzos that if I didn't have benzos, I had probably eight grand mal seizures in, like, five years, you know? It was crazy. And it was in 2007, I want to say, and, and I was on 150mg of methadone. And it was, like, 2007, and I got a phone call from my mother, and she told me she contracted leukemia and that she thought she was gonna die. I live in Echo Park.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  I like, I'm eating ice cream sandwiches and Entenmann's cakes all day, and I'm like, "I can't have my mom die while I'm doing this much nothing. I need to go home. I need to get back to the East Coast." So I started kicking methadone. I kicked methadone for a year or something. It was a blind taper where I had them just lower my dose every week for a year. And then me and that woman moved to Burlington, Vermont, because my parents had a house in upstate New York. And I was too scared to go back to New York City because I was ashamed. I was ashamed to turn up and be such a failure, like, where would I be able to pay the rent? What would I do? And I moved to Burlington with that woman, and I was off of heroin, and I was off of methadone, and I was off of benzos.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  And I had really made a commitment that I was never gonna do them again. I was still smoking weed. And I realized that summer that I couldn't be with the woman anymore, that I was too broken, that I had put her through too much hell, and the whole thing was so painful. So I called my mom and I was like, can I come home? And I hadn't lived in my parents' house since I was in high school. Like, once I left high school, I never went back. And my mom was like, well, you need to get a job. And our cousin owned Katz's Deli. And I said, do you think Freddie would hire me? And she goes, well, why don't you call him? So I called my cousin Freddie, and I said, can I come work at Katz's again? I had worked in summers in college. And he was like, sure. And me and the girlfriend broke up. And I couldn't live in my parents' house.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  I just couldn't. I moved into my friend's mom's apartment on the Upper West Side. And I got a job at Katz's, working the night shift, you know, in the afternoons. The weekends, it would be from 3:00 in the afternoon to 3:00 in the morning. And it was the worst-

• 50:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's gotta be the best, for people watching, that's gotta be the best time.

• 50:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, but for somebody who doesn't like working, it's the worst. You know, I had not, I had not worked forever. I remember I'd go out to eat with my girlfriend, and I'd see people serving, and I'd be like, I could never do that. Like, I could never humble myself and serve people. And like, I didn't like working. I was like a lazy, entitled, drug addict. And I didn't want to do anything. And I showed up at Katz's, and I start working on the back counter. And the back counter is you sell Snapples, you stock Snapples, you weigh meat, you sell meat, and you kind of do whatever you're told. And I remember it was like November that I got the job, and it was busy. And I was like, man, it's fucking busy.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  And I was working with this Jamaican guy, and he goes, boy, you don't know busy till it's Christmas time, or something, you know, and a better Jamaican accent than I can do. I was like, dude, I'm not gonna be here on Christmas. I'm gonna be out of this place in a week. And that was like, fucking 15 years ago, and I still work there. But a waiter, there was this, this very flamboyant waiter, and he would get his, his sandwiches cut from this very aggressive meat cutter. And they got into some kind of fight, and the waiter said something about the meat cutter's mother, and the meat cutter stabbed the waiter in the ear with a fork, and they both got fired. And one of the waitresses says, David, you want to do Tuesdays? I was like, okay.

• 51:50Rich Roll?

  That's how you moved up, after a stabbing?

• 51:52Speaker 00

  After the stabbing, I got a waiter job at Katz's.

• 51:55Rich Roll?

  Only in New York. Explain to people what Katz's is, because if you don't know, I mean Katz's is absolutely iconic. When you say New York deli, like, there's New York delis and then there's Katz's. Like, it is the gold standard. It's like the New York deli to end all New York delis.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  It's a 135-year-old deli. It's the oldest deli in the world. It's the most iconic deli in the world. I would say it's the best deli in the world, but what they do there is nothing changes. They hand-cut all the sandwiches. There's no machine slicing. Everything is tried and true. And it got very famous because it was featured in the movie When Harry Met Sally, and Sally fakes an orgasm in Katz's, and that was kind of the beginning. But then, as New York kind of developed and changed, and Katz's stayed the same, people were really interested in that. Because if you walk in there, you're like walking into history.

• 52:45Rich Roll?

  It's a time warp to go in there.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  100%.

• 52:47Rich Roll?

  I spent a lot of time there, late night. Like, we would go and troll the Lower East Side bars or whatever, and then you just end up at Katz's at like 3:00 in the morning.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  It's big. It feels like no other place in the world, because it's very open, and you feel like you're in a museum where you eat, but it's also like chaotic.

• 53:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  It's so wild.

• 53:06Rich Roll?

  And everybody who works there is a total character.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  Everybody that works there, it's old New York. And what old New York is, is first-generation immigrants that find jobs. And over the 135 years Katz's was open, it went from, you know, Eastern European Jews to like Romanians, to Russians, to Puerto Ricans. And now Dominicans are 97% of the employees at Katz's, and most of them live in public housing. And I found myself very connected to them and very attached to them. And they would fuck with me, and I would fuck with them. And I, I don't know, it grew into this relationship, and I found myself comfortable there. But I didn't like the work. It was too much work. And everything there is arcane. Like, there's no POS system, there's no nothing.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  You write everything down, you fight to get your food, you fight with the customers, and... I remember the first probably month I worked, every table I went to, I'd say to the table, "I hate this job. I'm not doing it again." And every time I would get to pick up-

• 54:10Rich Roll?

  You'd tell the customers that?

• 54:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would tell the customers. And then when I would get to pick up the food, I said, "I'm not doing this again. I quit. I'm not doing it." I remember we made unsweetened iced tea, right? And I couldn't figure out how to do it. Like, making unsweetened iced tea, it's like, if you add ice too soon, it gets cloudy. If you do it too late, it doesn't look right. And I was too afraid to make unsweetened iced tea. So when the customer would ask me for unsweetened iced tea, I'd be like, "We don't have it." And then somebody else, some other waiter, would walk past with a glass of unsweetened iced tea. And like, that's when I was like, "I gotta fucking get to work here." And I learned how to make unsweetened iced tea. And I learned every step I took in that place, if I worked a little harder, I would make more money.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  And it was the first time I really learned that putting in effort resulted in something good. And I waited tables there for 10 years.

• 54:59Rich Roll?

  Was there a moment where the switch flipped, or the tables turned on, your relationship with service? Because sobriety is about service, like dopey is a form of service. And when you're in a service industry, like with the customer, was there ever a sense of like, "Oh, now I'm embracing that aspect of that"? Or was it just another kind of like hustle that you fell in love?

• 55:24Speaker 00

  It was a hustle, and I loved, I loved earning money at it. I wasn't sober when I started.

• 55:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  When I got sober, it all changed.

• 55:34Rich Roll?

  You worked there for a long time after you were sober, too?

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I still work there. I just don't work there.

• 55:38Rich Roll?

  Oh, you're still there.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  I work for Katz's still.

• 55:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do?

• 55:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  Do you still live above Katz's?

• 55:43Speaker 00

  No. I live, I live on the island.

• 55:44Rich Roll?

  You did for a long time, though.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  No, I lived in the neighborhood.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did. Why did I think you lived like upstairs, like above the deli?

• 55:52Speaker 00

  I, I wanted to get a room in the basement, but they wouldn't, they wouldn't let me. But, uh, no, I, I lived in the neighborhood for, for years. But when I was working there, my mom died, and I kept using. I met this woman. I got her pregnant. And I kept using and we got together and my friend Todd, same Todd, was around and he showed up at our, we moved in together in Astoria. I was smoking weed and I hadn't done heroin in a long time. Todd showed up at our apartment with heroin, like wasn't a smart move. And I was feeling so much pressure, like I was this total ne'er do well now with this, I mean, me and the woman had dated for five months and now we're still together. But this woman, her name is Linda, she's very beautiful. We have two daughters. At

• 56:36Speaker 00

  the time, I was like, I can't do this. It's terrifying. All of my junkiness kicked in and I started using during the pregnancy. And I made sure not to use every day, but I was, it was right around the corner. We had the baby. I had heroin in my pocket when we had the baby. I had heroin and pills in my pocket when we did live birth classes. Every night I would be in the other room and I'd be shooting dope and she'd be in the other room like watching TV. And one night she came in to say goodnight to me and we were about to move from Astoria to the Lower East Side, actually. And I had a syringe in my lap and she walked in to see me to say goodnight. And I just thought

• 57:18Speaker 00

  she saw it, but she didn't see it. And I copped to it. And I said, oh my God. And she's like, what are you talking about? And I, and I told her that I was relapsing and I was shooting heroin again. And she called her dad and her dad said, he needs to leave her. I'm going to kick the shit out of him. And I left and she, she left with our baby and went back to Long Island. And that was like the darkest turn. I wound up living on the Lower East Side, using harder than I had ever used, literally walking into walls. I broke my nose walking into a wall. And that's when I went to treatment and that's when I met Chris. Cause I was such a disaster. I couldn't visit my daughter without my dad.

• 58:01Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  You know how like, people say you can't get sober for somebody else? Or it's not, it's not in your best interest to get sober for somebody else? And people say, "Oh, it's amazing, you got sober for your daughter." And I didn't. I got sober because when I would visit, I was such a child that I couldn't see my child without my dad. And again, the shame of that was the biggest shame I ever had. So I went to treatment, and that's when I met Chris.

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  I know, it's crazy. I jumped from Katz's to this.

• 58:37Rich Roll?

  No, no, no, it's good. It's good. Well, there's so much to your story.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  I know, I'm sorry.

• 58:42Rich Roll?

  If we just went from A to Z, it would be boring. So I kinda like jumping around like this.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  But correct me if I'm wrong, you weren't like struck sober with that experience, were you?

• 58:51Speaker 00

  No, I wasn't.

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  There's still a lot of in and out. It's fucking amazing that you're still with Linda.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  Oh, that's, it is. But we weren't.

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  I mean, you guys have gone through a lot.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  We went, we went.

• 59:04Rich Roll?

  She endured a lot of you, dude.

• 59:06Speaker 00

  Well, she's tough. Linda's tough. She's a social worker, she's a therapist, she's worked in treatment. And she got so angry when she found out I was using, she was like, "I'm leaving, we're done." And we were done for four and a half years.

• 59:22Rich Roll?

  For a long time, yeah.

• 59:22Speaker 00

  Four and a half years. For the first year, I got sober because I wanted, I didn't want to visit my daughter without my dad. So I got sober in a different fellowship, as they like to say. But I wasn't sober. I think I did the first two steps, you know? And I wanted to get the family back so bad. But, and then after my hair was 365 days clean, I started smoking weed again. And I'd have my daughter, and I was obsessed with getting my family back. It's the only thing I talked about at Katz's. I talked to every worker there about how I'd fucked up everything, and how all I wanted to do was get my family back. And Linda was not interested at all, at all.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  But then, our daughter Nora was in kindergarten, and we took a trip to Dutch coun- she was going to Dutch country, Linda and Nora, and she was like, "Do you wanna come with us?" And I was like, "Yeah." And she's like, "It's nothing, we're not getting back together. We're just going on this trip." And I had started taking benzos again, alright? And we went on this trip. And I knew that she would take a tiny little bit of Xanax if she was sleeping in a strange place to help her sleep, and I stole all the Xanax she had.

• 1:00:32Rich Roll?

  And this is after you finally were in a position where you could see your daughter without your dad?

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. But I had no program. I was just like, I had gotten to a point where I was like, I can finally be the stoner I was meant to be. That's what I thought.

• 1:00:46Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, that's the insanity.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. All of my dreams were, I was like, I was a waiter at Katz's, I was making more money than I had made as a producer at MTV, and I was living in a subletted apartment on the Lower East Side, and I was like, this is the best my life has ever been, and I was like, almost comfortable. But when we went on that trip, and she found out that I stole her Xanax, she's like, you're losing your custody. She's like, now you need to get another 365 days, drug-free. And I lost my mind, and I remember it very well, for whatever reason, it was my white light moment, and I'm writing her a letter, and I'm like, just let me smoke weed. Like, that was the email I wrote to her. I was like, listen, I can handle this, I can be one of these dads that smokes pot.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  And I'm typing this furiously in August, chain-smoking Marlboros, like, boo. And, like, you know, sweating, and it was like, and then I see my hands, and I'm like, what the hell am I doing? I was like, how can this be my great plea, let me smoke pot? Like, how could that be like what I want more than anything? I don't know what happened, I was like, I gotta try something else. And in the morning, I Googled AA meetings, and I went to an AA meeting, and there was some kid, celebrating 10 years, covered in tattoos, beautiful man, young man, he's probably 28, right? And I was like, this motherfucker has 10 years and he's 28. And I was like, I'm 41, and I'm like, totally like bereft and miserable.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  And after he told his story, this is how stupid I am.

• 1:02:21Rich Roll?

  Was it Michael Chernow?

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  It was, it was a Michael Chernow-esque character, hundred percent.

• 1:02:25Rich Roll?

  We just had him in here the other day. It was like, he immediately came to mind when you described this person.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  I've had him on Dopey. He's a very Michael Chernow-esque, but I'm such a jerk, I go up to the guy, and I was like, it's so annoying that you have 10 years and you're 28. And he goes, oh, he was really friendly, he goes, oh, how much time do you have? And I said, none. And he goes, well, did you use today? And I said, no. And he goes, well, this could be your first day. And I was like...

• 1:02:55Speaker 00

  Maybe it could be my first day.

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  Never occurred to me.

• 1:02:57Speaker 00

  It never occurred to me. And I went home and I called my best friend and I said, "Do you want to come over? I have a ton of weed." And he comes over, I give him all of my weed. And I was like, "It's gonna be my first day." And the next morning, there was a 7:30 a.m. morning, and I went to that meeting, and I talked about how I had fucked up my family and how I was so obsessed with getting my family back. And this old painter, this actually famous painter, said, "We'd love it if you came back tomorrow." And no one had ever said that to me at a meeting. And I was like, "Okay." You know, and it was 7:30 in the morning every day. And I went and I heard them read How It Works. You know, rarely have we seen someone thoroughly follow this path and not achieve these results.

• 1:03:38Speaker 00

  And I knew that the only shit I had done thoroughly was used. And it occurred to me, I was 41, if I was lucky, I'd live to 82, and it was half my life. And what if I tried to do this? What would my life be like? And that's, that's when I got on the path. That's how I did it. You know, I didn't go to treatment in the end, I just did that.

• 1:03:58Rich Roll?

  No, you finally reached that point and you made a decision and you had the willingness. But what was different about that? You know, what do you make of that? Like, was it a spiritual experience? Was it right, you were at the right place at the right time and did the right thing, right when everything lined up for you to be receptive?

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  I think it's like, you wanna say you're sick and tired of being sick and tired every time you get beaten, but you're not. You're not sick and tired of being sick and tired until you are. And you can't be willing until you are. And it was a spiritual moment. It was a total moment that I have no reason for why it was any different than any of the other times that I had failed, except I was receptive. I wanted to take suggestions and I wanted to do it differently. And it's so weird, like, every other time, I didn't want to. And that time, I was like, I was just done. I was just like, I was tired.

• 1:04:50Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  It's like, I don't talk about being ashamed. Like, I, I often pretend like I never was ashamed, but I was so ashamed with my friend Dave, and I was so ashamed with my daughter. And I think both of those things... Had reached a tipping point when I finally got sober. And it was wanting to be on the other side of that shame.

• 1:05:14Rich Roll?

  It's such a private hell to like marinate in that kind of shame. And you think there's no hope for ever resolving it. And you don't realize that liberation from that shame is on the other side of like shining a light on it and sharing it with another person.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  It takes a long time to even make sense of that. You know, at first, all you have to do is show up. You know, at first, you just have to show up and then you have to do what they say to do, which is talk to other people who are sober. Somebody in that meeting every day would say, if you go to meetings, if you call three other alcoholics, if you have a sponsor, if you work the steps, if after you've worked the steps, you sponsor people, your chances of relapsing are pretty much nil. And I was like, okay, that's the five things that I need to be doing. And I just decided that I was gonna be doing those things. And the thing I didn't mention was right before I got sober at Katz's, I wanted to create my talk show.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  So I created a show called The Last Jewish Waiter, which was supposed to be a talk show about a waiter who hates waiting tables and he wants to do a talk show while he waits them. And I did that and like, you know, it was like-

• 1:06:29Rich Roll?

  You did it while you were at Katz's doing the waiter job?

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I did it at Katz's. And it got a little bit of attention and like New York Magazine wrote about it and like, like USA Today wrote about it. And Chris, who I met in treatment, was like, I wanna do something like that. And I was like, you don't do anything. You know, I was like yelling at him. But I remembered, he was a writer, you know, and he was a student and he had the best stories I ever heard. And I had another friend who years ago, when I was using, he was like, you know who would be fucking amazing is a podcast about drug stories. And I was like, what's a podcast? And it popped up in my head and right before I got sober, I started calling Chris, because Chris was a horrible drug addict and he was-

• 1:07:14Speaker 00

  Doing the steps and he was going to meetings and I started asking him like, what should I do? And he's like, giving me like the buy the book stuff to get well. And he's like, what can we do to be creative? And I was like, well, why don't we try a podcast? And he's like, what's a podcast? And I was like, I don't really know. But come to my house, it'll be like a radio show and we'll just start telling our worst drug stories. So maybe three, four months after I had gotten sober, he lived in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and he lived in a sober house and he would drive down to the Lower Side and we started telling the stories and that's when we started Dopey right then.

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  That's how it all began. Wow. And not for nothing, when you started the talk show at Katz's, Linda noticed that and was like, oh, he's actually trying to do something. Like that seemed like that was a significant moment in the repairing of your relationship.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was evidence that I was about something and not just about nothing.

• 1:08:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  You know, which was good. And it was evidence that I cared about what I was gonna do.

• 1:08:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  That idea when you come in that all you have to do is do these certain things and make sure that your head hits the pillow without drinking or using is such a salve when you come in broken and you realize that you're incapable of making a good decision and that you have the willingness to take direction, which requires, you know, a certain amount of humbling because every addict and alcoholic comes in and thinks like, what do I need to listen to you fucking idiots for? I got this under control, even if your life is a complete disaster. Like you have to be totally disabused of that delusion and you gotta get right sized and humble enough to take that direction. But what do you make of the fact that these simple things like take a commitment,

• 1:09:15Rich Roll?

  like call a newcomer, call your sponsor, like make a gratitude list? Like what does this have to do with me and drugs or alcohol? Like there is a leap of faith there and there is a space in which spirituality leaks in and starts to kind of...

• 1:09:34Rich Roll?

  Occupy some space in an otherwise like non-spiritual brain.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. It's really just, what are you willing to do? That was the question I heard over and over. And when I did it, I said, I'm willing to do anything, right? And I did whatever I was suggested to do because I was so beaten and I knew that I had lied and cheated and stolen my whole life. And I wanted to do something different because I didn't like my life. I was 41, I had a subletted apartment, a waiter job, and a daughter 50 miles away and a woman that didn't want to see me. And I was like, I want to like my life again. Like, I liked it when I was a kid. And it was really a profound thing. And years later, when I got, when I was into my recovery, somebody I heard at a meeting compared it to The Karate Kid.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  What does waxing cars have to do with karate?

• 1:10:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:25Speaker 00

  It's the same thing. And the best thing I ever heard about 12-step was that it's the greatest bait and switch that ever happened. Because you come in to not drink or not use drugs, and then you find this new way of life.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  But you didn't go in to find a new way of life.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  No, you just wanted to kick the drugs and alcohol. All you wanted to do is be able to

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Be okay.

• 1:10:46Rich Roll?

  Get okay. Yeah, get over that. That's good news and bad news, though.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:10:50Rich Roll?

  Because then you realize like, oh, there's a whole huge knot here that I have to untie if I want to ever feel comfortable in my own skin. And that's not an easy or quick process.

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  And it's endless. I mean, even just like my hustle of getting on your show, it's, there's a lot of my defects in there.

• 1:11:07Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:11:08Speaker 00

  You know, it's like defect as assets, assets as defect, and then shame or pride, depending on how I feel that day.

• 1:11:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think he texted me at one point like, you're not ever gonna answer any of my texts, are you? Like, I'm never gonna hear from you.

• 1:11:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Rich Roll?

  That worked, though, because then I was like, oh, man.

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:11:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so maybe that was the master. Yeah, like that was all intentional.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, listen, when you came on Dopey, we had a connection.

• 1:11:32Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  And we had a good talk.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  And, and I knew that you liked what I was doing. And like, as a manipulative drug addict, I wanted like to go on your show. So like, my instincts kicked in. And then also though, I knew that we had like a thing. I preyed on it, but I also like, I wasn't trying to like hurt anybody, but it's, you know what I mean?

• 1:11:52Rich Roll?

  But the other piece that gets left out here is that there was at, at one point, this was years ago, I think, I was like, okay, man.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Rich Roll?

  Come on, but like, come on with Amy Dresner.

• 1:12:01Speaker 00

  Oh, I know.

• 1:12:02Rich Roll?

  And we'll do like, I need more women in recovery. Like I've had a lot of dudes on, you know, and I, at the time I was thinking like, I need more women in recovery on, but this would be cool to have, because you guys know each other.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:14Rich Roll?

  I thought maybe that would be fun. I've never had like a threesome, you know, to talk recovery, and you were having none of it.

• 1:12:19Speaker 00

  I, I was so self-centered. I know. I was so-

• 1:12:22Rich Roll?

  So then I was like, alright, fuck that guy.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  What a fucking dick.

• 1:12:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  I know. I hear you.

• 1:12:25Rich Roll?

  That delayed this a couple of years.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  I hear you.

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 00

  I think that's fair. And I think that I'm a dick. Like, I should have done that. You know, and then I started texting you, I go on with Amy. Do you remember that? I was like, I'll go on with Amy. It's like, Amy will do it.

• 1:12:39Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 1:12:40Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  What do you say when people inevitably ask you, like, why do you think that you're a drug addict? Like, what is it, where does it come from? Like, what, you know, is it the trauma in your childhood? Like, where do you root this in? Like, how do you feel that question? I mean, I have a lot of opinions and thoughts on this, because I get asked this a lot, too.

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  I was asked that a lot in the beginning. You know what I mean? When I couldn't get better. I was asked that a lot. And I never had an answer. Like, and I kind of still don't. Like, I like to say I was, I was bitten by a radioactive junkie.

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  You know, AA is kind of about not asking that question.

• 1:13:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  Not that it's not a question you shouldn't ask, but the program really isn't about that. It's about what are you doing today and how are you moving forward? And the idea being that like, to ruminate in the past and to wonder why and to try to find the reason really isn't helping you in the current moment.

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  And when I could accept that, like, that was the greatest shift in me. It's like, I didn't have an answer, but I, my answer was, that's not important, what I'm doing now. Like, this work is what's important. I think the answer was, it was like, the great soup. You know what I mean? There's probably some, like, genetic component. A very controlling mother, a very high-pressure situation at school, where I wasn't achieving at the level, so there's a lot of impostor shit going on. A lot of, like, getting good attention for doing the wrong thing. I think it was like, a lot of different things.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so all your dopamine wiring got kind of fucked up.

• 1:14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, that's something with you. Like, you got so much dopamine doing good things. Like, that's been a great, like, constant. I, I had no practice.

• 1:14:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but there's a lot of similarities, even though our, our stories are different. Controlling mother, high expectations with the parents. Never felt like I could live up to those expectations, no matter what. A lot of people-pleasing, a lot of trying to make sure that I was meeting my mother's emotional needs, rather than the other way around. You know, there's a lot of stuff there. And I think what's interesting, the reason I'm asking this is that, you know, now, we're learning more about how the brain works. We're learning more about the mental health piece, the role that childhood trauma plays in addiction later in life, because of people like Gabor Maté, and all these social scientists who are looking into this.

• 1:14:57Rich Roll?

  And that's all great, but I guess the question I am always asking myself is, is this helpful? Is this part of healing? Or is this a distraction from the work that I just need to be doing now? Not that I, I don't, I don't know that I have an answer to that, but I don't know if you've thought about that.

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  I, I do think about it, and I, you know what I was thinking about doing is hypnotherapy. I'd like to uncover some stuff that I haven't been able to uncover, but I don't know that I ever will, and I don't know that it really matters. I am, of course, like, that's a question that I was asked every detox I ever went to, every treatment I ever went to, until they just told me that I was gonna die. You know, and the last place I went to treatment, they were like, "You're gonna die." You know, and that was a good strategy on their part, I thought.

• 1:15:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that people who are not addicts themselves... Tend to have a reductive take on what addiction is. And it's not their fault. They just don't have the experience that someone like you or I has that allows us to understand that it's more complicated, I think, than people realize. I'm sure there's a childhood trauma piece. I'm sure there's a genetic predisposition. But you can't just say, oh, these things lined up and it's, you know, A plus B equals C. And, you know, a study that always gets brought up that drives me crazy is that, maybe you've heard of it, that study with mice where they expose them to cocaine and they all become cocaine addicts, but as soon as they create a community, then the mice don't want to

• 1:16:28Rich Roll?

  use cocaine anymore.

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  Rat park.

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Hence, the solution to addiction is community or bonding to other human beings. And I'm like, yeah, but like, if that was it, like, the rooms would be empty. Like, this is not like a cure-all to this problem. It's much more complicated than that.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  It requires so many things. But really, what it requires more than anything is the addict or the alcoholic doing something. You know what I mean? Like, everything else, like, you can have a playground, you can have a gym, you can have a meeting, but if we don't go and do it, we're never gonna get the good results. And then how can we stack the good endorphins? Like, through exercise, through community, through fun things, through family, through all those good things. But I didn't want to do anything forever. Something changed, you know? Something changed. And I think of it like a great cosmic confluence that happened. And I think that's what happens in anybody that gets sober. Something changes and they're like, okay, I can do this now. And if there was an answer, like, exactly what you said.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  You know, like, there wouldn't be rooms like that are out there and all the rehabs wouldn't be full.

• 1:17:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's something mystifying about addiction and mystical about

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  Recovery.

• 1:17:38Rich Roll?

  Recovering from addiction. It's a spiritual program.

• 1:17:42Speaker 00

  Which is amazing.

• 1:17:43Rich Roll?

  It's also good news and bad news for a lot of people.

• 1:17:46Speaker 00

  It's great news when you're open to having a spiritual experience and you're willing to put some work into it, and it's bad when you're not.

• 1:17:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What is your relationship with spirituality?

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  I mean, I always wanted spirituality. Like, I was like a Beatle fan. You know, as a Beatle fan, you're like, they, I wanted to-

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have the picture of them with the Maharishi, like, right behind your Zoom setup.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  It's actually not, but it looks like it. It's them at a photo shoot for Sergeant Pepper, so they all kind of look like the Maharishi.

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I just assumed that was it. They all look like they were dressed when they were visiting.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  It was, it was right around then, and I was like, I want to be spiritual. I want to be like, an intellectual. I want to be cool like beatniks and Beatles and all that stuff. And I would take drugs and want to have a spiritual experience. And I think when you take psychedelics, it's impossible not to have some kind of a spiritual experience. But heroin is kind of, maybe in the beginning, you feel some kind of cosmic touch, and then in the end, you feel like nothing. What I was told was that 12-step program is a spiritual program, and you need to have a higher power. And I was raised, basically, an atheist Jew. My dad hates God, you know, hates God because of wars being fought about God. I liked the

• 1:19:03Speaker 00

  idea of God, but had no understanding. And, you know, all the great acronyms, you know, group of drunks, group of drug addicts. Somebody said, "Do you have the gift of desperation?" And I did. And he was like, "Well, you use that now." And I did. And then it was more like, I believed in love. I believed in, like, the magic of the universe. I know the ocean is bigger than me. Flowers bloom, fucking seasons change. And I was like, I got into that. And then my new sponsor was basically, "His God is love," and replace the word "God" with "love," and be open to that. And that's kind of my spiritual program. I pray and I meditate, and I try to use love as the spiritual higher power.

• 1:19:46Rich Roll?

  What do you make of the explosion of interest in psychedelic therapies? Does that tease at the back of your brain? Like, here's the thing I'm missing. If I just do that ayahuasca trip, or whatever it is. You know, it seems to be such a mainstream thing now, and so many people are exploring this. It's something I never did.

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  And it's not for me. Like, I know that in my heart of hearts, like, this is not safe terrain for me to explore. But I also have to admit that it's been helpful to people that I know personally, and there seems to be all these, like, positive therapeutic, you know, applications for it. And I think at times, it fucks with my head a little bit.

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  What does it do?

• 1:20:34Rich Roll?

  Well, it tells me that the solution to my problem lies in a mind-altering substance.

• 1:20:39Speaker 00

  And then what happens in your head when you think about it like that?

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  Well, everything, my life will be great after I do this thing, right? Which is just the addict mind. So how do you parse the addict brain from the part of you that is a searcher and wants solutions?

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  You shared with me that you just went to India to have an audience with the Dalai Lama.

• 1:21:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  Right? Which sounds very psychedelic and spiritual to me.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  It was in its own right.

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  In itself.

• 1:21:05Rich Roll?

  Without any medications.

• 1:21:06Speaker 00

  Right. And I would imagine if I was in that situation...

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  But I'm super jet lagged now, and like, there was a lot of effort that went into that, if you could just do a thing in the comfort of your home or down the street.

• 1:21:18Speaker 00

  I think I feel very similarly to how you feel about it, which is that I love psychedelics. Like, I really love psychedelics. And I wound up taking ibogaine to try to get off heroin, and I had a profound psychedelic experience on the ibogaine. But I just know that my runway of using, it's like, if I do, I just feel like if I took...

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  You've cracked the seal, and it's just a little hop, skip, and a jump back to where you were.

• 1:21:47Speaker 00

  For me, it's very much related to weed. Like, if I do psychedelics, I'll want to smoke pot. And then I think about cigarettes. This is how unspiritual I am. If I'm tripping, I'll want to smoke cigarettes. Like, that's my first thought. The least psychedelic, the least spiritual kind of thing, and that's my go-to.

• 1:22:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  And of course, I want the nirvana of the psychedelic experience, but I don't think I can add any kind of mind-altering substance to me and get good results. I'd get bad results.

• 1:22:15Rich Roll?

  I think the problem for me lies in the idea that it is something outside of myself that's going to solve the problem. So rather than doing the work and looking inward, the idea that there's a shortcut, or I can short-circuit all of that inconvenience and just take this thing and put it inside me, and that will do it for me, instead of taking responsibility for that... Spiritual growth.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  I think it's fantastic that people can do it and get something great out of it. I think it's amazing. Like, I think it's great that it works for anybody. I worry about opiate addicts, I worry about fentanyl addicts, I worry about heroin addicts, who open themselves up to a psychedelic experience and it does short-circuit their addictive nature and then something happens and they die. Because those stories are out there. And I worry about them and I appreciate people who have good results. Like, there's been too much positive effect of my recovery to take that risk.

• 1:23:13Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:23:14Speaker 00

  I have two little kids. It's like, I'm not doing it.

• 1:23:15Rich Roll?

  That's well said. That's well said. I think we probably both know people who have gone into that and then they're kind of doing it a lot, right?

• 1:23:24Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 1:23:25Rich Roll?

  And it's called the work, right? So it's shrouded in positive verbiage. And I'm not sure that they're getting progressively more enlightened as a result of it. Maybe.

• 1:23:37Speaker 00

  I'm just not one-

• 1:23:38Rich Roll?

  But there are people, I do know people that have benefited positively in significant ways from it.

• 1:23:42Speaker 00

  Me too. And I think it's fantastic. Like, anything that gets a positive result with something as horrible as addiction, like, I'm all for it. I'm just cautious, especially when it's a mood or mind-altering substance to throw at an addict. I'm cautious with that.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  So Dopey's been going on for, like, what, eight years now?

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Rich Roll?

  Eight years?

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  Eight years and a little bit.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  What is the mission and has that mission changed?

• 1:24:06Speaker 00

  The mission is for Dopey to be Joe Rogan for junkies. No, I mean, the mission is like-

• 1:24:12Rich Roll?

  If you want to hear some crazy-ass stories, like, it's the show for you.

• 1:24:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I've been tapping back into, like, the hard cases, like you said. Like, we've been getting guests. I'm realizing-

• 1:24:23Rich Roll?

  Do you still have people call in, though? Like, the kind of hard cases that would call in and-

• 1:24:27Speaker 00

  They send in-

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  Share what's happening in their life, yeah.

• 1:24:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, they send in voicemails, they send in emails. I mean, like, Dopey Nation, like, Dopey Nation was a joke. Like, we started the show and Chris would say "toodles" at the end of the show. And I hated that Chris would say "toodles", so I would, like, play like a preacher and I'd be like, "Stay strong, Dopey Nation", like, as a joke. And then all of a sudden, Dopey Nation existed because I said that. And when Chris died- They started a Facebook group to mourn Chris together. And that's when Dopey Nation really started to get some juice. And on the show, we always asked for people to send in stories. So we kept up with different addicts and alcoholics and where they'd be at in their journey.

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  And there's been a lot of people that have gotten better just from listening to the show. And then there's a lot of people who died relapsing while being very much a part of Dopey Nation. So that is very much a part of the show. Like every show, we have at least two or three messages, emails, voicemails, stories from the Dopey Nation. And during COVID, Dopey Nation started Dopey Nation Zoom, and they do 25 Zoom meetings a week.

• 1:25:37Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

• 1:25:38Speaker 00

  Just them.

• 1:25:39Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's pretty cool.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 1:25:41Rich Roll?

  And you end every show?

• 1:25:43Speaker 00

  With Stay Strong, Dopey Nation and fucking toodles for Chris.

• 1:25:46Rich Roll?

  So you forgot that piece, which is like, yeah, that's the way you close it out.

• 1:25:50Speaker 00

  Have to.

• 1:25:50Rich Roll?

  In honor, in honor of Chris.

• 1:25:52Speaker 00

  I gave Chris shit about saying toodles every episode. And then after he died, people told me, like, he died out of nowhere. And he was living with this brilliant medical student, and she found him. And she was like a Harvard medical student, and she found him dead in her apartment. And that week, we did the show, and she called in to tell the story. And it was so raw. It's the biggest show we ever did, but it was also like one of the most painful things I ever did. And it's a trauma she lives with to this day. And everybody was like, are they gonna say toodles at the end? And I say fucking toodles for Chris. And it's like, everybody, it's like, it was this thing.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  And now everybody says toodles, or fucking toodles, or some Jamaican person said, "Me not say toodles." It's all like, it's built into the fabric of the show.

• 1:26:45Rich Roll?

  Is that mural on the garage door still there on the Lower East Side?

• 1:26:50Speaker 00

  No, it's not.

• 1:26:51Rich Roll?

  Do you remember I took a photo of it and sent it to you? Like, who painted, who painted that? It's a dopey mural.

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  It's a graffiti artist named Hektad, who does a lot of murals of hearts around the city. And I just had this belief, it's part of my hustle, that if we have a mural, we are, we are something. And that year, we did like five murals. Beautiful mural in St. Louis, Abyssbo, right? In California, like this, and it's still there in some like deserted park. Amazing mural. And we had two other murals in Manhattan. Like, one crazy story was-

• 1:27:23Rich Roll?

  Did you get him to do it? Or you just did it on his own?

• 1:27:25Speaker 00

  No, I paid him.

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  You commissioned him? Oh, you paid him? Alright, there you go.

• 1:27:28Speaker 00

  I paid him to do it. And I want murals. And in that year, like, we made it like, every year on Chris's birthday and Chris's death day, we celebrate Chris. And we do Christmas on the day that, uh, on his birthday. You know, C-H-R-I-S-M-I-S-S. And everybody in the community puts the Dopey logo over their eyes to show remembrance for Chris and addicts and-

• 1:27:52Rich Roll?

  And that's sort of the iconography of the show. You create this art where like it says Dopey across their eyes, the guests' eyes.

• 1:27:58Speaker 00

  Right, right. Well, it was. We kind of lost that.

• 1:28:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you don't do that anymore.

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  You know why? Because, uh, when I went on Maron, I had never said my last name. And Maron's like, "Are you a fucking idiot? You're trying to make a famous podcast and you don't say your last name?" He's like, "Just say your last name." And I was like, "Okay." And I just listened to him because I really do want to have a career of podcasting. So for that day, we all put the logo over our eyes. But that summer, we commissioned Dopey art. And somebody did a piece in North Carolina, and somebody did a piece in St. Louis, Abyssbo, and somebody did a piece in New Orleans and, and in New York. And then this crazy thing happened where I was walking down, it was during COVID, and I was walking down, uh, 7th Avenue, and I see this dude doing this mural.

• 1:28:43Speaker 00

  Years before, when I lived in, um, in that apartment that I lost, there was these drug dealers that lived across the hall. And they asked me if I would keep a safe of theirs in my apartment because they didn't want it there. And I was like, "Well, if you pay me in drugs, I'll keep it." And, um, they did. They kept a safe in my apartment. And I'm walking down 7th Avenue, and it's COVID, and I'm wearing a mask. And there's this muralist- Painting this beautiful mural. And I walk up to him and I was like, dude, uh, can I hire you to do a dopey mural? And he goes, yeah, I'd be interested. And then we just start talking. And I told him like, I do this podcast about addiction and recovery. And he's like, take your mask off. And I take the mask off and he goes, holy shit. And it was the dude, it was the drug dealer.

• 1:29:28Speaker 00

  And he goes, I thought, he goes, I thought you were dead. Because I split, I went to Florida. He went back to the apartment to get the safe. My dad was cleaning out my apartment. He walks in, my dad's crying. He's like cleaning up needles in my apartment. It's a disaster. I guess my dad asks him to help clean up the apartment, which is a weird story. And he starts helping my dad clean up the apartment. And then when my dad turns around, he grabs the safe and he runs out of there. But I just ran into him on the street. And he's done two, two dopey murals. And now he's sober. He was a crazy drug dealer. And now he's sober 10 years or something.

• 1:30:04Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was amazing.

• 1:30:06Rich Roll?

  That's a trip.

• 1:30:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was one of those things.

• 1:30:08Rich Roll?

  How did the This American Life thing happen?

• 1:30:11Speaker 00

  Oh, it's my hustle.

• 1:30:13Rich Roll?

  Still the hustle.

• 1:30:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've got problems, Rich. I've got problems. When we did The Last Jewish Waiter, when I was using heroin out here, I would drive my girlfriend to work and listen to This American Life. And I was like, this is the best show. Such a relaxing show. And I'd be high and I'd listen to it. And I'd be like, I want to be on This American Life. And when I did The Last Jewish Waiter.

• 1:30:31Rich Roll?

  Delusion of a heroin addict.

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course, whatever. And when I did The Last Jewish Waiter, I was like, this is a great This American Life story. And I wrote, and I sent in a proposal and I wrote it to them and they ignored me. And then when we started Dopey, I was like, this is a great This American Life piece. And I wrote them a letter. And I sent it to them. And this is where it gets sad and crazy. But after Chris died, I was like, that's the This American Life piece. And I wrote them about, about what happened and like the next day they called me. And the other funny thing about that was I was in the This American Life studio, recording probably for 13 hours, telling the story. And they didn't use a minute of it. I recorded for 13 hours and they only took stuff from the show. And it changed everything.

• 1:31:16Speaker 00

  Like when they did the story, I think our audience quadrupled.

• 1:31:20Rich Roll?

  Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's a pretty powerful lift that you're gonna get from a show like that.

• 1:31:26Speaker 00

  And they did such an amazing job. Like, that piece was so

• 1:31:30Rich Roll?

  They're the best.

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  intense and sad.

• 1:31:33Rich Roll?

  Tell me about the documentary. You sent me the trailer for this documentary that you're working on with Time.

• 1:31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Rich Roll?

  Time Magazine.

• 1:31:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Time Documentaries.

• 1:31:42Rich Roll?

  Time Documentaries, but, you know, whatever, affiliated with Time. That trailer fucking rocks, dude.

• 1:31:48Speaker 00

  You liked the trailer?

• 1:31:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm ready to go to, like, watch this documentary.

• 1:31:53Speaker 00

  I know. It's funny, because like, the guy who runs Time Documentaries was a guy that went to my elementary school. He actually went to my high school, and he went to the same college that I went to. And now he lives in the same buildings that I got that apartment in, that I grew up in.

• 1:32:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:32:09Speaker 00

  He's a couple of years younger than me. He was running the Tribeca Film Festival. And when the This American Life piece happened, I was, I had just started doing catering for Katz's. And I was like, I want Katz's to cater the Tribeca Film Festival. So I went to go meet with him and talk about it. And he had known about The Last Jewish Waiter. And he's like, well, what are you working on now? And I was like, oh, I've been doing this podcast about drug addiction, and my partner just died. And This American Life actually just did this big piece about it. And he was like, oh, and he listened to it, and he was like, oh, well, do they have the film rights for it? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, how long do they have it for? And I said, a year or something? And I forgot about it. I didn't even think about it. And then like, a year or so goes by.

• 1:32:51Speaker 00

  And he calls me and he goes, I just took over documentaries at Time. And I was like, cool. You know, he's a very successful guy. I was like, cool. And he's like, uh, do you have any ideas for a documentary? And I had a friend who like, does documentaries about like, drug addiction and like, the guy who created acid and stuff. I was like, yeah, my friend wants to do a documentary about Albert Hoffman and creating acid and Bicycle Day. And he's like, no, you fucking idiot. I wanna do a documentary about dopey. And I was like, wow. I was like, really? Because me and Chris never shot video. You know what I mean? I was like, how can there be a movie? Like, I love the Oasis documentary, but the best thing about it is you see Oasis in it, playing songs and stuff. So I gave him, I gave him everything I had, and

• 1:33:36Speaker 00

  They made this amazing sizzle reel, you know, and I couldn't even believe how beautiful it is. And now they're looking for a director and they're gonna try to pitch it and hopefully something comes of it.

• 1:33:47Rich Roll?

  So still a long road. The documentary's not made.

• 1:33:49Speaker 00

  No. No, it's a long road, but the sizzle is really cool. That's how you, that finally broke the seal of you.

• 1:33:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that was the thing. I was like, this is legit. Now it's time. But I actually thought, after watching it, I was like, oh, well, the documentary is probably in post-production right now. Like, this is just a, you know, little trailer.

• 1:34:10Speaker 00

  Is this disappointing for you then?

• 1:34:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, we're canceling this. I'm not publishing this interview anymore.

• 1:34:15Speaker 00

  Until the movie comes out, right?

• 1:34:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We'll sit on it until then.

• 1:34:18Speaker 00

  That sounds like an excruciating time period.

• 1:34:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no. It should get made, though. It's a great, it is a great story.

• 1:34:24Speaker 00

  I think it will get made, and really what I was thinking was not to do a bait and switch with you, but I think it tells the story of how our show changed other people's perception of addiction. And I thought that went-

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  Well, that's the point that, yeah, sorry, I didn't want to step on your words, but like, that's kind of like how I opened this, with this idea of the best part of what the internet can do for us. And I think we have seen an explosion in awareness because of what you're doing and others are doing to change people's sort of preset ideas of what addiction and recovery is.

• 1:35:00Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. And I feel like, people are like, oh, it's so amazing you make this show to help people. And it's like, I don't make this show to help people. I make this show because I want to be famous and I like making a show. It just so happens that it's a good show and it helps people. Like, me and Chris used to make that joke all the time. If we tried to make a show that helped people, nobody would get help and the show would suck. But if we make a good show, maybe the side effect is that somebody actually gets something out of it. And that's, that's the show.

• 1:35:32Rich Roll?

  And you still love it. You love doing it.

• 1:35:34Speaker 00

  I love doing it.

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Speaker 00

  I really do. I love every bit of it. I love me. I mean, don't you love sitting down and meeting people?

• 1:35:40Rich Roll?

  No, it's great. It's the greatest gig in the world.

• 1:35:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:43Rich Roll?

  I can't even believe I get to do it. I keep waiting for them to haul me out of here.

• 1:35:46Speaker 00

  The coolest thing is it's yours. Like, I don't be like, no, I don't have a boss.

• 1:35:50Rich Roll?

  But that doesn't prevent me from thinking somebody's still gonna haul me out of here.

• 1:35:54Speaker 00

  I know exactly what you mean.

• 1:35:55Rich Roll?

  You know, the imposter syndrome. And just the insane ridiculousness of how my life has changed, you know, from when I first got sober to now. Like, it is only made sense of through some appreciation of mysticism and spirituality, because it has nothing to do with me or logic or rationality in any way, shape, or form.

• 1:36:22Speaker 00

  I think the closer you can get to that, the better off you are. Because like, I try to live with higher power and spiritual stuff, but I'm so driven with this weird propulsion that I get confused about what really is happening. You know what I mean? And when you try to live on self-propulsion, you can be disappointed constantly because you're not doing it enough or well enough. And you get all this, these ideas that I'm not good enough. But if I can separate myself from it and know it's this other thing, it's not about me.

• 1:36:52Rich Roll?

  Are you good at doing that?

• 1:36:53Speaker 00

  No, I'm terrible.

• 1:36:53Rich Roll?

  I'm not very good at it either.

• 1:36:55Speaker 00

  Terrible.

• 1:36:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But left to my own devices, I will pivot back to self-will and then I get petty and competitive and caught up in the wrong things and lose sight of what's important, which is just, you know, the great privilege of being able to do this thing and having gratitude for it.

• 1:37:14Speaker 00

  But I love to hear you say that. You can slip into those things.

• 1:37:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, of course.

• 1:37:18Speaker 00

  Well, I feel much better than you. Thank you.

• 1:37:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I want to end this with just some thoughts on, on...

• 1:37:25Rich Roll?

  The nature of addiction and perhaps something you could share about the road to recovery for the person who's still out there right now, or the person who's listening or watching, who has someone they care about, who's out there suffering.

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  The person who has somebody that they care about, I had somebody call me the other day, right? There was a guy who came on the show when Chris was alive, and he was on methadone, he was a waiter at Nobu, and I was a waiter at Katz's, and he came and he told this story about stealing a thousand Vicodins from a pharmacy. He was a great, amazing guest. And he wound up relapsing so hard, and we got him a scholarship to one of our sponsors, Oral Recovery, and he did like a year there, and he relapsed again, and he got a year again, and he relapsed again, and now he's just relapsing. And his mother called me last week, and I had been in touch with him for eight years, like he came on the first year. And his mother said, "Well, what can I do for him?" And I said, "Lady, you can't do

• 1:38:22Speaker 00

  anything." I said, "What you need to do is take care of yourself, and you need to go to Al-Anon, and you need to try to be of service to somebody else, because you can't help him, but you can help yourself. And if you help somebody else, you're gonna feel better." And it's hard to understand this, because she loves her son so much, but she needs to take care of herself, just like he needs to take care of himself. What you tell the family is you need to take care of yourself, and hope that they do okay. And what you need to tell the addict who's suffering is, "What are you willing to do?" And we can't answer that question.

• 1:38:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's such an unsatisfying answer.

• 1:39:01Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:39:02Rich Roll?

  You know? The tough part, especially with loved ones, family members, is you can tell that to somebody, but then they say, "I hear that, but at the same time, if this person goes out and this happens, and I didn't do anything, I'll never forgive myself, so I have to keep trying."

• 1:39:19Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, that's the thing I said. She said, "Do I have to turn my back on him?" And I said, "No, I don't think you have to turn your back on him, because I really think that he's gonna die, this guy. I talk to him all the time, and I don't, and he's like..." If he makes it, it'll be a miracle. He's one of these guys that has been on the show so many times that I feel like he's predestined to die, like it's like there's been so many of them. And I'm telling him, I'm like, dude, you're gonna die unless you do something different. And I said to her, don't turn your back on him because will you be able to live with turning your back on him? He's from Michigan, you know? She lives in Michigan, he lives here. He's in sober living here right now. He's trying to get it together, but I'd say, don't turn your back on him because you

• 1:40:04Speaker 00

  won't be able to live with it if he dies. But take care of yourself.

• 1:40:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Speaker 00

  It's like the greatest thing I've ever heard about recovery is if you put your recovery first, everything else falls into place. And that goes for her too, with her codependency. She needs to put her recovery first, he needs to put his recovery first. And I know it's an unsatisfying answer, it sucks.

• 1:40:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what's so brutal about it. But I've also gotten out of the prediction business because I've seen people who I just thought, there's no way this person is gonna get it and they are gonna die and I can see the path to that is clear as day. And then they end up figuring it out and then completely revolutionizing their lives and going on to being these productive, amazing people. And then you have people who you think, man, that guy's doing the work, like look at him or her go, like they're doing this stuff, they're calling, they're, they're so active and they're, and then dead, you know? Go out, relapse, it was all a ruse.

• 1:41:00Speaker 00

  Like Chris.

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  It was a show, yeah, like, but, and none of us knew. And, you know, our laser, you know, focus is finely attuned to like bullshit, you know? You can see it a mile away and yet still, there's somebody who is better than you at hiding the truth.

• 1:41:17Speaker 00

  I think with that guy that I was talking about, I'm saying this because I want him to prove me wrong. I want him to do well, like, and I don't, I also don't wanna be struck stupid again at this person who's so close to me in the show dying, like I'm trying to like. Be ready for it, but I want him to prove me wrong. He's so talented and so smart and kind. And like you want, I want everybody to live. I want everyone to get well and then help the next addict. That's of course.

• 1:41:45Rich Roll?

  What is your recovery like day to day, day in, day out look like now?

• 1:41:51Speaker 00

  I mean, I pray every morning. I say thank you when I go to bed. I do that. I go to meetings probably between two and four days a week. I run a meeting on Fridays. I do like a zoom on Wednesdays. I have a sponsee. I have two sponsees actually right now. One of them though, has like 33 years. He came to me like he was dry. He was dry for like 29 years or something. And he's like getting a divorce or something. And he had just showed up at the rooms and he's like, he's like getting phone numbers. And I was like, well, this is my phone number, but I know you're never going to call me because nobody ever calls me that I give my phone number to. And he called me and he was like, will you be my sponsor? And he had 29 years and I had like five. And I was like, yes.

• 1:42:34Speaker 00

  And I'm a master at sponsoring people with way more time than me. Cause they get to keep their shit together. And I took them through the steps and it was amazing. But I've never taken anybody through the steps that had less time than me. So that's annoying.

• 1:42:47Rich Roll?

  Well, time's a weird thing, right? Your sobriety is really about your level of engagement with your own recovery than it is about the amount of time. Like time can work against you because it can make you, and I've, I experienced this time and time again. It makes me lazy.

• 1:43:01Speaker 00

  Complacent.

• 1:43:01Rich Roll?

  My foot comes off the gas and then the character defects start to percolate up to the surface again. And I have to get knocked around a little bit to get re-engaged.

• 1:43:12Speaker 00

  But when you put your recovery first, everything else is better.

• 1:43:14Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:43:15Speaker 00

  It's like, I'm sure it's like, like I'm trying to get in some kind of better physical shape and I've, I've been doing this app from couch to 5K. Cause I'm supposed to be doing like this 5K in Vermont. Every time I run, it hurts. But I feel so much better the rest of the day and it's shocking to me. And I'm, I think about you and I think about fit people and I'm like, I'm resentful, but at the same time, my day is so much better after I do it. And it's the same thing with recovery.

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  It's exactly the same thing. You were sharing about that before the podcast and I said, well, your recovery hasn't been linear. So why should your fitness journey be, you know, be linear in that regard? Like the fact that you're even doing that is great, man.

• 1:43:57Speaker 00

  Well, I'm gonna be 50, I'm gonna be 50 in June.

• 1:44:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's a good time to do it.

• 1:44:02Speaker 00

  Well, I want it to be like you. I was like, I want to be like, like Rich Roll when I'm 50.

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  You don't want to be like me, you want to be like you, man.

• 1:44:10Speaker 00

  I want to be-

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  You want to get to that point where you, you actually like, you get over the hump of it sucking so that you look forward to it.

• 1:44:16Speaker 00

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  And it's not any different than, I can't stand going to these meetings and then one day it's like, I can't wait to get through the meeting.

• 1:44:23Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. That's the other best thing I ever heard. When someone says, how long do I have to go to meetings for? And then this woman called into the show and she said, you go, you go to meetings until you like it. And that's what I tell everybody, you go until you like it, you know, which is weird.

• 1:44:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that is weird.

• 1:44:40Speaker 00

  She also predicted Todd's death. She heard Todd on the show and she predicted Todd's death and then he died six weeks before Kristen.

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:44:50Speaker 00

  So it's one of those things. I want, I want everyone to live and do well.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  I heard you use this interesting analogy about your recovery, which is this idea of tethering the hot balloon. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:45:03Speaker 00

  Well, I think the idea was if I'm a balloon rising and I, and I don't want to float away, how many things can keep me tethered to the ground? And the more things that keep me tethered as a positive thing, am I, am I doing service? Am I- Sponsoring anybody, am I going to meetings? Am I putting my recovery first? Am I praying? Am I meditating? Am I exercising? Am I trying to do the next right thing? All those things are gonna be the tethers. And if I stop doing those things, the tethers get off the ground and you float away, but not in a positive way. You float away and you're gone. My favorite idea was a reverse strip poker, where like you, I don't even remember the idea.

• 1:45:48Speaker 00

  But the idea was like, you better have a fucking ton of clothing on because once you, and meaning like all these different attributes of your recovery. Because if you don't, you're gonna wind up with nothing and you're gonna be naked and vulnerable. So you add these things.

• 1:46:03Rich Roll?

  The more layers that you have on, the more resilient you are against whatever is pulling you away from.

• 1:46:09Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:46:10Rich Roll?

  The better version of yourself. In the same way that the more tethers you have, the more likely you're grounded, right? Like as many backups and fail safes as possible.

• 1:46:19Speaker 00

  Hundred percent. My favorite, you wanna hear my favorite analogy for recovery that I came up with? This is my favorite one. You're sitting next to a lake or a body of water. And I go to a beach meeting, you know, four days a week in Suffolk County, New York, and it's on the Great South Bay. And I, so I see the addict or the alcoholic is a person sitting on this body of water. And they have a bucket and they have an eyedropper. And they need to fill up the bucket with the eyedropper, which will take forever, but it will fill up one little bit at a time. And what you need to do is not spill the bucket, you know? So protect your time because you're gonna have to fill it up with an eyedropper, but it will get full, you know? And that's how I see my whole program.

• 1:47:02Rich Roll?

  I like that, man. That is a good one. I think that is your best one. That's better than reverse strip poker.

• 1:47:07Speaker 00

  I know, I know, I know. I try.

• 1:47:10Rich Roll?

  Well, it was good talking to you, man. I think that's a great place to, you know, kinda end it for today.

• 1:47:14Speaker 00

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:47:15Rich Roll?

  Did we do it?

• 1:47:16Speaker 00

  You tell me. You know, I'm thinking it's never gonna air now.

• 1:47:19Rich Roll?

  I'll do a Maron thing. Like, how do you feel? Are we good?

• 1:47:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was so funny, because afterwards, I was like, I don't think it was that good. And he got so angry at me because he liked it.

• 1:47:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did?

• 1:47:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, he liked it. I was at the airport, and he's like, he texted me, like, what'd you think? And I was like, I don't know. And he's like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, he liked it, and his producer liked it, and everybody that listened to it loved it. But I left there thinking it wasn't that good.

• 1:47:42Rich Roll?

  Well, I loved it, and I think this was pretty good, too. So I don't know how you feel about this.

• 1:47:46Speaker 00

  I feel better.

• 1:47:46Rich Roll?

  You need me to text you at the airport, let you know.

• 1:47:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe you should text me.

• 1:47:49Rich Roll?

  All right, man. That was great. I loved it, buddy.

• 1:47:51Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:47:52Rich Roll?

  Let's hang out in New York.

• 1:47:53Speaker 00

  Just let me know.

• 1:47:54Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:47:55Rich Roll?

  Toodles for Chris.

• 1:47:56Speaker 00

  Indeed.

• 1:47:57Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 1:48:06Rich 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, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors,

• 1:48:49Rich Roll?

  who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. 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 Camiello. 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 Solis.

• 1:49:32Rich Roll?

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

• 1:49:47Speaker 00

  Namaste.