Hunter Biden Is Out Of Secrets: A Story of Recovery, Exposure & Amends

Hunter Biden is a writer, painter, and lawyer who spent a decade being publicly dissected. We explore the trauma beneath the addiction, the anatomy of a relapse, guilt versus shame, and what happens when your covers are pulled so completely that nothing holds power over you anymore. Seven years sober, he calls the worst years of his life a gift. Hunter is proof that prophets walk among us. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Eight Sleep: Get $350 off your Pod 5 Ultra with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.eightsleep.com/richroll Noble Mobile: Try Noble for just $10 with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.noblemobile.com Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much👉🏼https://www.airbnb.com/host Prolon: Get 15% OFF sitewide + a $40 bonus gift👉🏼https://www.prolonlife.com/richroll Birch: Get 27% off ALL mattresses + 2 free eco-rest pillows👉🏼https://www. BirchLiving.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.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.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. If you are new to the show, there's something you may not know about me, which is that for the last seven years, I have slept outdoors in a tent every night because quality sleep does not come easy to me. And temperature regulation is the biggest reason why. And this is something I've solved by two things, the SoCal nights being generally cool year round, and then the Eight Sleep Pod Five, which regulates the temperature under my sheets to maximize deep sleep. Pod Five is a smart mattress cover that goes right over your existing setup and it cools or heats each side of the bed anywhere from 55 to 110 degrees and then holds you there all night. It also

• 0:43Rich Roll?

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• 1:21Speaker 01

  I wish I could say I'm on my way to sainthood. I'm not even close on my way to sainthood.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  You're a degenerate.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am. That's exactly right.

• 1:29Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the club.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Hunter has been in the center of major political and legal controversies.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  Addresses his lifelong battle with addiction.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  When I took my first drink, it seemed to be an answer to everything. And then it wasn't just coke, it was crack. And then you chase that answer into your own prison cell. And I had the binary choice of live or die.

• 1:50Rich Roll?

  The intensity of what you had to endure, like, I don't think anybody can understand what that must have been like.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I was given the greatest gift that any addict could ever ask for if they can survive it. Total and complete exposure. That has stuck with me. The shame. I don't know why I haven't even told you this right now. If you think that you are alone, I'm here to tell you, you can make it.

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  It's great to have you here, man. I'm so excited to talk to you. We have a bunch of points of intersection. We're both of a certain age. We're about the same age. And we both came up in and around DC in the late 80s and early 90s. You know, I was doing what I was doing and you were in and out. I mean, you went to Georgetown. My parents live in Georgetown. I was thinking this morning, there's a fairly decent chance we might have been at the same bar at the same time.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  If you were at any of my...

• 3:00Rich Roll?

  You know, partying and not realizing it. It's laudatory, this, this mission that you're on. I mean, there are very few people whose lives are not touched by addiction, either directly or indirectly or tangentially. And I see you as somebody who has done a lot of work and is now whole enough to enter the public sphere and talk about this, not from a perspective of, of trying to repair your public image, but from a real service oriented motivation

• 3:39Rich Roll?

  to advance understanding and compassion around this cunning, baffling and powerful disease that has afflicted you, has afflicted me. It's an animating, you know, reason why I do this podcast. And even if it impacts one life positively and saves them from some of the suffering, you know, that you suffered and I have suffered, then it's worth it, you know? And I, and it comes across loud and clear. It's clear that's why you're doing it. Where does the, you know, addiction story begin for you?

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I first got sober in 2003. I'm, I'm gonna go back. And when I first, the first time I got sober, which I stayed sober for an extended period of time, I was a firm believer in the idea that, that, you know, I was a drunk because I was genetically predisposed to be a drunk. And, and that's it. And there doesn't have to be any other reason.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's very much an AA thing. It's like, we don't really need to spend a lot of time wondering why, you know? And I'm starting to change my mind about that.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  And I did. And it is time around. And, and one of the, one of the people that helped change my mind was Kabor Mate, Dr. Mate.

• 5:00Rich Roll?

  Same for me.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and based upon his own anecdotal evidence as treating hardcore addicts in Toronto for extended periods of Toronto, right? Or Vancouver. Vancouver. Yeah. Vancouver for an extended period of time. He came to the conclusion that not, you know, a large percentage, but 100% of the people that he was treating all experienced significant trauma in their lives. And it may not be a direct causal connection to addiction, but it is a, but there is an obvious connection just by virtue of the, as he, I think, says in some of the things I watch, he said, there's not a single person that is an addict that he has treated

• 5:44Speaker 01

  that has not had significant trauma in their life. And so, yeah, for me, where does my addiction begin? Part of it may be my genetic predisposal to, to addiction, which they haven't been able to figure out, you know, what gene that is necessarily. But part of it's the trauma of, of my early childhood. My mom and sister and my brother and I were in a car accident. It was incredibly violent accident that killed both of them. My brother and I were trapped in the car for an extended period of time. They finally got us out and I spent, I spent about a month in the hospital with traumatic brain injury and my brother spent, you know, longer in a body cast for an extended period of time.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  And equally significant was the fact that it was essentially like never to be spoken about again.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  It wasn't, there wasn't like an open, kind of like, let's heal this wound kind of environment.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  My mom, as we called her mommy, mommy and Caspi were always spoken about, but never the accident and never that trauma afterwards. Never the, you know, the aspect of loss. It was only the honoring of the, of the, of her memory, of their memory. And, and the reality was that I was surrounded by love after that. My Aunt Valerie moved in with us and she raised Bo and I when, until my dad got remarried and we got remarried, as we say. And my Uncle Jimmy converted the, the garage into an apartment for himself and he was there. And my, my grandparents

• 7:21Speaker 01

  on both sides, we spent, you know, you know, an enormous amount of time with. And then the wider community because my dad had just got elected. He was 29. And so, my childhood was filled with a lot of love, but you know what? I was, my brother and I reacted very differently to, to it. You know, I was filled with anxiety. And when I took my first drink,

• 7:46Speaker 01

  I remember it clear as day is that before I got sick from overtaking too much of the alcohol in is that it seemed to be an answer to everything, you know?

• 7:58Rich Roll?

  How old were you?

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, at that time, I literally snuck a glass of champagne under a table, like when I was eight years old, eight or nine years old. And, and, and then snuck another. And, and I didn't like continue drinking after that, but I remember that, vividly remember that. And, and then when I, you know, I started drinking in high school and it was the thing that, you know, you could ask the girl to dance and, you know, and, or you could, you know, whatever it is, whatever feeling of being alone in a room, full of people, however it manifested itself was gone once I took a drink. And, and that, you know, and, and so

• 8:43Speaker 01

  I developed a persona around drinking in Georgetown. I think the reason that I most wanted to go to Georgetown because the drinking age was 18 in DC until the year I got there.

• 8:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Like, I got grandfathered in, I think. I think I was right on the cusp there. But yeah, it was kind of amazing. I'm 59, I'm about to turn 60.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  You were grandfathered in.

• 9:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And just being 18 and going hog wild. It was, you know, it was a good time. I mean, it works. That's the thing that you're speaking to also.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  That's what I always say. Why? Because it worked.

• 9:18Rich Roll?

  It's very effective. Suddenly, no anxiety. You can walk into the high school dance or the bar or the cocktail party and just no problem.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:29Rich Roll?

  You know, I can talk to a girl. I can like, you know, be, tell a joke, all of that.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think when we say anxiety to people out there, it's like, everybody has a little anxiety. What are you talking? Well, I, you know, I don't know whether it's just like circular, you know, I mean, reinforcement, but you know, the anxiety to me was almost debilitating. It made me feel empty inside. I, you know, and, and now I, I know what all of it is. And whether it's the result of the trauma and things like that, but it was all fear. Everything, every bad decision that I made, every habit that I formed was based

• 10:11Speaker 01

  on fear. And what I mean by that was, it's with everyone, is that we all have this delusion or illusion that, that, that we need to be afraid of people, places, things, ourselves, of being found out that you're not really who you profess to be, that the mask is going to come off. And so, anyway, going forward to what you were saying, you were so nice to say, and I really mean that. It means a great deal to me, particularly coming from you, is this idea that I've done the work and that it shows.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Here's another really honest thing. I was given the greatest gift that any addict could ever ask for if they can survive it is total and complete exposure. I was so publicly humiliated, so publicly exposed with literally video and, and, you know, in, in Technicolor, on every newspaper in the globe, on every TV screen for a period of time. I was the third most spoken about person on Fox News for a four-year period of time, other than Donald Trump and my father. And, and top of that, they did 16 hours of documentary film, and they took all the pictures from my, my digital life and, you know, put them up for

• 11:31Speaker 01

  everybody to see. And it wasn't just coke, it was crack, you know what I mean? And it was this much crack, and it was that. And what that did is it, it gave me a binary choice. I wish I could say that it was the result of what most people have to do in order to get to the space that at least I hoped that I'm in today, which is this incredible freedom of being exactly who I am and being comfortable with that, which is they just completely obliterated my ego. And I had the binary choice of live or die. I could go back and I could use, and I knew I would die. If I didn't die a physical death, I

• 12:13Speaker 01

  obviously die at, at, at an even worse type of death. Or I could choose to live. And I chose to live. And I had to learn how to live in that, in that fishbowl. And with everybody seeing all of my faults, not just the pictures, but like the, the out of context texts to, you know, like calling my mother a bad name in, in a, in a fit of anger and, and, and addiction, you know, or like lashing out at so and so, or, you know, like everything, everything, how I spent my money, you know, on, you know, on sex and, and things like

• 12:57Speaker 01

  all of it, all of it. There's nothing out there that, there's nothing that is, that I have as a secret anymore.

• 13:05Rich Roll?

  I don't think anybody could have had their covers pulled and been more nakedly exposed than you, like in the history of the human race.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  By the way,

• 13:16Rich Roll?

  It's absolutely insane that you survived that. I mean, there's rock bottom and there's the dark night of the soul, but the intensity

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:24Rich Roll?

  of what you had to endure, like to burn in those flames for such an extended period of time.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:30Rich Roll?

  I, I don't think any, anybody can, can like, understand what that must have been like.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  No. And, and here's the thing. I mean, like the New York Post, you know, I, I was told, I don't know whether it's true or apocryphal, that I was on the cover of the New York Post in like a year period of time, more than any single other individual in the history of the paper, going back to when it was founded in like the late 1700s. And in that though, which you, you, like, you, it just creates a choice. If we can get back to the idea of how did, how did we allow that to happen to anyone? I mean, can you imagine it? Any other person where people wouldn't stand up and say, but they didn't, you know why

• 14:19Speaker 01

  they didn't? And the reason I'm out there talking about it is because I was a crack addict. And they have a vision and idea of what a crack addict is.

• 14:28Rich Roll?

  It's the lowest of the low in terms of drug addicts.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  And then you take crack, you know what I mean? I think that the, you know, I joked the only thing worse would be a meth addict, but the meth addicts all online tell me, fuck you.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But it, but it's sufficiently dehumanizing that no one's losing sleep over taking shots at you.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. No, and by the way, no one, it didn't matter whether it was on MSNBC or whether it was on Fox News. On the, the left, they dismissed me as being a degenerate fail son who's drifted off his father coattails his whole life. And so, you know, but that's not Joe Biden's problem. It's his problem as a father, not as a president. So, you know, just stay in the corner over here. That level dismissal was, was probably the hardest. It was the hardest to, to, for me to get comfortable with and, and accept as being the reality of my life at that moment in time. The other one was easier because

• 15:30Speaker 01

  it was such just caustic, it was just so vitriolic and, and irrational in, you know, they spin from, you know, that addiction, which is really easy to do. It's called eliminationist rhetoric. And what they do is, you know, they, they, they, they put into the, into the bloodstream of the public, the worst possible accusation that you can make about someone, which is that they're a pedophile. And that's the original thing that Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik did. They went and stood on the courthouse steps in Newcastle County in Delaware, and they held a laptop, which was not my laptop, and, and talked about inappropriate

• 16:10Speaker 01

  images of children. And what that does is, is that if 5% of the people can believe that, then 50% of the people can believe that you're capable of bribery or influence peddling or anything else. And one of the things that I point out to everybody is that I don't know anybody in public life that has been more exposed, had their digital life more exposed than me. 22 years of my entire digital footprint, and I'm not talking about a laptop. This is why I always say, there is, the laptop is bullshit. What I'm talking about is 22 years of everything, everything that was deleted, everything that

• 16:51Speaker 01

  was, still existed in a cloud somewhere. So every deleted photo, every actual photo that was still in the cloud, they had all my voicemails going back a decade, my voicemails from different devices over the period of that time. They had every text message, every single, deleted or otherwise. They had every single email. And you know what was not in that? All of that. That's why I always say, show me yours, is this, not a single instance of a single communication from me to anyone that worked for my dad or my dad saying, hey, I need you to do this on behalf of someone that I'm getting paid by. Not one. Not one.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  So the thing that is most attached to my name as a symbol of criminality is actually the thing that is the most exculpatory to me. But anyway, back to what we're saying in terms of level of the recovery and why now. For me, I don't have any fear anymore. And I have a message for people that are still out there sick and suffering. If you think that you are alone in your misery and can't climb out of the, of the well of addiction that you fell into, I'm here to tell you, you can make it. No matter what the consequences

• 18:19Speaker 01

  that are coming down the pipe for you, I promise you, you can make it.

• 18:23Rich Roll?

  I mean, if you could survive that.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  I mean, Whatever somebody is going through.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:30Rich Roll?

  There's, there's always hope.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:32Rich Roll?

  There's always hope. But it is, it is a, you know, relapse is also a large, you know, part of your story. And I want to talk about, you know, right thinking around relapse. It's all about willingness. You know, it's sobriety isn't for the people that need it. It's for the people that want it. And you can't impose willingness on another human being. And so the hopefulness and the possibility of achieving sobriety is very much a function of your internal drive. And that has to be arrived upon organically, right? Like you had to be beaten down like nobody's business to arrive at a place where you were broken

• 19:12Rich Roll?

  enough to try to do this a different way. And everybody has their own version of that, right? You can't just tell somebody, hey, it's time. Like they have to decide that it's time.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, I, one of the other things that I say all the time, and I steal all this shit, by the way. None of it's original to me. Any, any of these like great lines that I have are 100% stolen from people that are much wiser than me that I listened to in the rooms a long time ago. And one of them is that I use all the time is getting sober is easy. All you gotta do is change everything.

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've heard that one many times.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  And to me, there's a real truth to that. And, and I got really, really lucky. And I view it as, as, as a miracle, but I've witnessed others that in recovery that received this miracle, is the angel of Melissa in my life, my wife now.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  It's really, really hard. And I, the thing that I'm most, the people I'm most impressed by in this world are the people that, that, that do it alone, that don't have the support system that I did. But when I met Melissa, she just intuitively knew things that, that I hadn't, hadn't done before. I mean, she took every, she, she took my phone, she erased every single number in it. She, you know, she moved us to a house that was secluded in the, in the hills. And, you know, she took my car keys. She, she had to act as my jailer for a period of time. But it was also a complete shift in, I didn't have to

• 20:57Speaker 01

  return immediately to the, to the chaos, or what some people would call the comfort of, of, of all the people that desperately were trying to get me clean and sober. And in that separation from that, I found something that I had never accessed before in the early days or at any period in recovery, which was my practice of art, which I had done my whole life, but I never had done it to the degree that I, seven years ago, became

• 21:38Speaker 01

  a way of life for me. And, and so those two things, and I always say to people, like, I found my purpose, not with a big P, you know what I mean? Like, I think that's kind of like, it's kind of bullshit. And if you, or it's not bullshit, but it, it sets people up for failure, this idea that, you know, like, yeah, well, I, you know, I work at McDonald's and I need to get clean and sober, and you're telling me to find my purpose, you know, when I'm working two shifts and I'm driving an Uber. I'm like,

• 22:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think these words do more harm than good often, you know, because they make people feel bad because they don't know what their purpose is, or like, what, you know, like, you need to find meaning. It's like, it's well intended, but like, you know, if you're someone like myself, who's walking around insecure and feeling like a fraud and all that, like, it's just, like, you're like, what do you, you know, like, oh, well, good luck with that, you know?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Find your bliss, you know what I mean? Like, and I'm like, Jesus Christ, I'm just trying to get out of bed. But for me, what I mean by it with the small P purpose, is that I literally found something to do with my hands. I, you know, one of the things about crack addiction that I always say to people is that there's a ritual piece of it, in the habit of the pipe, and I mean, I can do all of the hand motions still, and it's, and seven years removed, and I'll be able to do them for the rest of my life. And there's this thing about ignition and things, and all of these things that are, are brain-body connections that, that I realized that when I was painting, and it

• 23:12Speaker 01

  doesn't have to be painting, doesn't have to, it could be running, it could be, all I'm saying is that I know for me, I don't have a prescription for anything else, but what helped me was giving me something to do hours at a time in my free time, that took me out of my head, occupied my, my body and my hands in particular, in an exercise that at the end of, I felt like I had done something. And, and I've watched people do it with athletic things, I've watched people do it with, you know, gardening, I've watched people do it with, but I just felt like, and I still feel to this day, if there's

• 23:57Speaker 01

  any prescription that I have, is, I find that to be a really, really important part, at least of my recovery.

• 24:09Rich Roll?

  Mr. Andrew Yang, would you say that your relationship with your phone is intentional or reactive?

• 24:17Speaker 05

  Mostly reactive, unfortunately. You could even say abusive, where it just sends me pings and notifications and vibrations, and I just run to it and respond, saying, what is it? What's the matter?

• 24:30Rich Roll?

  Well, I got good news for you, Andrew, because there is a cellular company that's going to help you with that very problem. And it's actually going to pay you to use your phone less.

• 24:40Speaker 05

  Well, I do like money. What's it called?

• 24:42Rich Roll?

  It's called Noble Mobile. Have you heard of it?

• 24:45Speaker 05

  I have, in a dream, it came.

• 24:49Rich Roll?

  If you want to learn about Noble Mobile, the company founded by the great Andrew Yang, sitting next to me right now, you can do that. And you can sign up and you can change your relationship with your phone entirely. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to noblemobile.com, and you can try it for just $10 for your first month, when you use the very special VIP Behind the Velvet Rope code.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Rich roll. Make your relationship with your phone less abusive, more deliberate, a little more distant.

• 25:20Rich Roll?

  And we'll all be happier.

• 25:24Rich Roll?

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• 26:37Rich Roll?

  For people that don't have direct experience with addiction, it's important to understand the degree of self-obsession that takes place in the addict's mind, and the incessant, you know, looping of self-defeating narratives, like, you're just lost in your head.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:56Rich Roll?

  And it feels impossible to interrupt that, or, or to arrest that in any way. And for you, like, what I see is somebody who found art as a way to quiet that, like, oh, I can just disabuse myself of my self-obsession for a moment, because I'm present with this thing that I'm creating. And that becomes like a wedge, where you're like, oh, it is possible to not just be thinking about myself all the time, and then to have something three-dimensional or two-dimensional that you are like, oh, I did this.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Oh, by the way, everything I created at first was genius.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, who cares whether it's bad or good?

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Picasso.

• 27:35Rich Roll?

  The point is that, that you're making yourself like, at least nominally useful, and you're, you're getting outside of your head, you know what I mean? And ultimately, that can, with greater work, become an act of service. I mean, service is the antidote to the self-obsessive mind of the addict, and that's what you're doing and showing up in all these public forums. But you have to find something, like, for me, it was running. But I think where it gets confusing for people is, they start to conflate, like, whether it's the art or something athletic, they start to think that that's the solution to the addiction. Like, this is just like one spoke in a wheel, and it doesn't come at the cost of actually like, working the program, and, you know, like, learning a

• 28:20Rich Roll?

  new way of life, to your point, like, you have to change everything. And first and foremost, you have to put your sobriety first, and you have to like, work these steps, and like, do all the fucking bullshit that they tell you to do, that sounds stupid, and you have to believe in all of these aphorisms that, you know, feel like your, you know, grandmother came up with. And that's part of it. And then you get to like, sit down and, you know, draw something or paint a picture, and get out of your own head for a minute.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  One of the things that kept me trapped in my addiction, in the cycle of relapse that I was in, was that I wasn't being honest with the people around me. And in doing so, I wasn't being honest with myself. And I had all these secrets, you know, that all had to do with my failure to stay clean and sober for, you know, it was like a 10-year odyssey, nine-year odyssey. And, and the shame of that. You know, not just the shame of the rooms that you find yourself in, but the shame of failure, of not being able to, of not being able to, to, to find a way through with the

• 29:31Rich Roll?

  And the specter of a father who is literally

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even with that, I think everybody can associate with this. It's just the shame of your, my, my kids, you know? My three older girls, who were in their teens at the time that I went through the really harshest part after my brother's death of, of my addiction, is that I, I was ever-present in their lives. Most of their lives, I was, they didn't know me to have a problem. They knew that I was in recovery, and then, but I was, I was, I was never absent. And when they lost their uncle, who was like, a second father to them, because we were that close, I wasn't there. You know? I became lost in my own

• 30:16Speaker 01

  addiction. And so what I always say is that, again, I steal all these things, is that addiction is never an excuse, but at least it's an explanation. And it's an explanation that, that

• 30:36Speaker 01

  I before could never admit the things that I had done that I should have felt guilty for to myself or otherwise, because it just filled me with shame and appropriately. And I realized that guilt is an appropriate emotion, meaning that you should feel bad and seek amends for the things that you've done wrong to other people or to yourself. But shame is something that's telling you that you're not worthy of their love ever. And you get trapped in that cycle.

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  Guilt is feeling bad about something you did. Shame is, you know, basically the idea that you're a bad person, not somebody who did a bad thing.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:28Rich Roll?

  And guilt and shame, unless you reckon with them and make peace with your past, is inevitably just leading you back to using.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Every single relapse that I had between 2010 and 2019, and there were dozens, dozens of attempts, you know?

• 31:51Rich Roll?

  You wrote kind of an incredible piece on your Substack about relapse, and I wanted to, I wanted to read a little bit of it. I won't read the whole thing, but I want to read a part of it. It's titled "The Addiction of Nations," and you can find it on Hunter's Substack. "Relapse does not begin with a drink or a pill. It begins with a thought. The thought arrives quietly. It does not announce itself as danger. If it did, the person would recognize it immediately and shut it down. Instead, it appears in a form so ordinary that it passes unnoticed at first, the way a small seed disappears into soil before anyone thinks to mark where it landed. The moment usually occurs during something unremarkable.

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  Driving home from work, sitting alone at a kitchen table after the house has gone quiet, walking past a place that used to mean something else. The mind drifts, and somewhere inside the drift, a sentence begins to assemble itself. Not a declaration, more like a suggestion. Maybe things are different now. The sentence is so small that it hardly feels like a decision. It feels like curiosity. The mind turns it over once, then sets it down again. A person who has lived through addiction knows this moment well enough to distrust it, but distrust alone is rarely enough to erase it. The thought remains, and once it remains, it begins to grow.

• 33:16Rich Roll?

  Not all at once, slowly, the way a root system spreads beneath the ground where no one can see it. The mind begins constructing explanations around the idea. The explanations feel reasonable because they borrow the language of responsibility and self-control. You have learned something. You understand the consequences now. You are not the person you were then. The thought becomes a narrative. The narrative becomes a permission structure. And by the time the person recognizes what has happened, the small seed that appeared earlier in the day has grown into something much larger, an oak tree in the middle of the mind. At that point, the relapse is already underway. The substance comes later."

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's so beautiful. It's a very eloquent and poetic way of saying, you know, the relapse train pulls out of the station well before the drink, and it is this seed of a thought that, at its inception, you know is crazy and insane, but if you don't find a way to deal with it, it will linger, and it is a seed that you will unconsciously fertilize

• 34:26Speaker 01

  It's serious.

• 34:27Rich Roll?

  to the point where it's, like, by the time you pick up the drink or the drug, like, there's no thought involved, like, it's a done deal. And sometimes it's a conscious decision, and sometimes it's that unconscious thing where, you know, you hear these stories all the time, like, oh, I just, I was in this situation, and then it just occurred to me to, like, order the drink, and then I was drinking, and I don't even know how it happened. Well, it happened because of all the things that you just, you know, kind of beautifully elaborated on.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  The only thing, at least, this is my, talk about the work. The only thing that I allow myself to live in fear of is my own mind. It is, like, just you reading that back to me gave me chills, because every addict knows exactly what it's like.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that was like reading my mind.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the hardest, hardest thing, at least for me, one of the hardest things in recovery, is in any way trying to articulate to those who have not experienced the why of it. Like, how? How? Like, all the work that you put in, all of the healing that had been done, all of the consequences that you know that you're gonna face. There's a scene in that movie that kind of got panned in, with Denzel Washington, you know, where he's

• 35:56Rich Roll?

  Flight.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Flight.

• 35:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a friend of mine wrote that movie.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, that scene, you'll know the one I'm talking about.

• 36:02Rich Roll?

  It's, it's the most accurate description of alcoholism on screen that I've ever seen.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Ever seen. And it's him in the hotel room. He knows that he has the biggest day in his life, that if he just makes it through this, he's back in the captain's chair, and that everybody on screen that has not faced, has not experienced addiction, looked at what he did and thought that that was a Hollywood, you know, bullshit, like, of course he wouldn't go into the mini bar and drink the mini bar.

• 36:29Rich Roll?

  I mean, you just, you know exactly what's gonna happen.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  It was gonna happen.

• 36:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  So, it is, and today's different, but I really lived like this today. Like, I did not wake up today, and there was not even a seed. And there's also, I don't know with you, about you, I know for me, is this delicate dance of not giving these experiences and this, this knowledge too much weight that

• 37:12Speaker 01

  it paralyzes you in your life, while at the same time being constantly aware of that in your life. You know, here's another really selfish reason why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. You know, I say, because it's in service to other people that are still out there sick and suffering. The real honest answer is, is first and foremost, it's in service to myself. Is the person that I'm helping the most by speaking about my experience is me.

• 37:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the, you know, service being this cornerstone of recovery, like, you're not gonna be able to maintain long-term sobriety if you're not, you know, of service to those that are still suffering. And that comes across as some kind of sacrifice or martyrdom, but the truth is, is there's a selfish motive to this. Like, it's actually like selfish service.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:17Rich Roll?

  Because in sponsoring somebody else or showing up for somebody else, this is more healing to you than it is to the other person, and it's a necessary aspect of disabusing yourself, of the obsession of the mind, and investing yourself in the well-being of somebody else that is essential to maintaining sobriety. So, it is a selfish act to be selfless in your service, and if service feels like annoying or inconvenient or whatever, couching it in, in those selfish terms makes it easier to pick up the phone and call that person who's having a hard time when you're sitting and spinning and lost in thought and like, just, you know, kind of rehashing what happened yesterday, or, you know, like terrified about what's gonna happen tomorrow.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, as much as I was exposed, you know, there's those moments in my addiction in which I, you know, that I still experience as, you know, as, like, real, you know, traumas. And, and left to my own devices and in my own head, you know, they become that seed. And so, again, like

• 39:35Rich Roll?

  The big thing, though

• 39:37Speaker 01

  is, I wish I could say, like, I'm, I'm on my way to sainthood. I'm not even fucking close on my way to sainthood.

• 39:43Rich Roll?

  No, you're a fucking degenerate.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I am, I am. That's exactly right.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the club.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:48Rich Roll?

  At the core of all of this is resentment. Resentment is always gonna lead you back to relapse.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  Resentment is an indulgence that the addict or the alcoholic cannot afford. And I don't know if there's anyone on planet Earth who is more entitled to resent certain people than you. Like, so many people directly vilified you, you know, it's, it's absurd to call it the town square, I mean, like, globally, right? So I'm interested in how you were able to relinquish what I'm sure were deep-seated resentments against these people who were attacking you for things that were not evidence-based or unfairly or whatever in your mind.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Okay, everybody's gonna get mad at me, but again

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Why do you think I went on Tucker Carlson? Because one of my deepest resentments-

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  So that you could overcome your resentment towards him?

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, I know Tucker for 30 years and I didn't know him well. We weren't close friends in any way.

• 40:58Rich Roll?

  Did you know him from the program?

• 41:00Speaker 01

  No, I didn't know him from the program, but he lived in the same neighborhood in Spring Valley where I was. And we had a lot of mutual friends going back to the time when, you know, my high school girlfriend went to high school with him. I mean, I've known Tucker and his wife and my wife at the time had became running buddies and friends. And, and, and so we were never friends, but we were, but, but we knew each other and we were acquaintances.

• 41:31Rich Roll?

  Which makes all the vilification on his part all the more painful.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:37Rich Roll?

  Because you had a, you already had a relationship.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Because he knew that shit that he was saying wasn't true. And what can I do? In service, I think part of service is, is that you need to do things in service of yourself, even if they're hard. And resentments are the hardest. And you said, I have resentments towards, you know, Miranda Devine at the New York Post. And I have resentments towards, and what I've decided is, is that I just have to, just go head on. And, you know, when Tucker asked if I wanted to talk to him, I said, yeah, I do. Because number one, it, it, it gave me a lot of anxiety.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  And I've decided to do everything that I'm scared to do. And I used to be scared to sit down, you put a microphone at me and, and it, you know, it was hard for me to formulate my thoughts and fast as I wanted to, or to sound as good as I thought that I needed to sound, or to not stammer a little bit and, you know, take out all the ands and buts and ums. And, you know, I don't even think about that anymore. And part of the reason is, is because I keep in the back of my mind, Rich has seen the worst of me. And I don't have to pretend to be anything other than

• 43:06Speaker 01

  the person that I am sitting in front of him right now, or make excuses, or defend myself in any way. I just need to be me.

• 43:19Rich Roll?

  And you don't need anything from that other person? Like if you were to-

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yes, I don't need your affirmation.

• 43:24Rich Roll?

  -say everything Tucker said about you negatively and clipped it together into like, it would probably be hours of, you know, just-

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:34Rich Roll?

  Something very difficult to sit through. And then you're sitting across from him and he's, he's like pretty cheery about, it's not like he's like, oh my God, you know, I can't believe I saw, you know, there's none of that, right? But I also didn't get the sense that you needed that from him.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  No, I didn't.

• 43:51Rich Roll?

  You know, you were just like, I'm here to like overcome my own resentment.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:55Rich Roll?

  And it has nothing to do with how he responds to me. It's all about my relationship to this dynamic.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  It's the reverse of what we learned about forgiveness. Is that we, as, as addicts, have to seek amends and we have to seek forgiveness, but not the result of it. The act of actually going in and saying you're sorry with sincerity is not about whether or not that person forgives you. It's about the fact that you do it. Again, it's incredibly selfish. And the same thing with resentment is, it's, it's my thing. It's not theirs. I, it's, it's for me to lay down.

• 44:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And, um, because I, I, I could live the rest of my life just filled with hate over what they did to me and how they did, you know, now I think about it now. They gave me the most incredible, beautiful gift that I've ever been given in my entire life, which was complete and total liberty, complete freedom from all of my secrets, complete freedom from all of the shame. They gave me this incredible chance at a life in which I could simply be who I am. Everything. And, and every day trying to do the next right thing and failing so often.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Like I guarantee you, I'm going to do enough things in this podcast alone to piss off 30% of the people that'll be on here calling me a pedophile and this and that and the other thing. They make decisions and do things that are, you know, but it doesn't even remotely affect me. And now I'm open to criticism. You know what I mean? I'm, I'm open if I'm going to be public and I'm going to be talking, then, you know, I should be responsible for the things that I say and hopefully not be misleading or, or, or doing something in a way that is hurtful or harmful to somebody else. But, you know, uh, again, like I wish I could say that, you know,

• 46:08Speaker 01

  you know, that this practice that I had, it came to me through this enormous amount of like hard work. And I moved to Rishi Cash and I lived with a monk for seven years and I, you know, and, and I practiced. But most of it was, um, uh, just pure survival.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Rich Roll?

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• 47:10Rich Roll?

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• 47:54Rich Roll?

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• 48:37Rich Roll?

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• 49:11Rich Roll?

  I completely understand this notion of, of your ego death being a gift. I imagine that's difficult for the average person who hasn't kind of flirted in this world to, to really get their heads around. So I think it would be good if you could talk a little bit more in explaining that. I mean, obviously it's our, it's, it's healing our broken parts that make us, uh, you know, able to be a healing energy for other people. And it's a level of humility, uh, because you've been beaten down so deliberately for so long

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  that allows you to be with other people who are undergoing challenges or, or who disagree with you and to, to kind of navigate those social environments with a degree of grace. But how do you like further define that?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question and I'm not sure I have the answer. But I do know this, is that my ego death was much easier on me than it was for the people that love me. For the people that love me, for Melissa, for my children, for my dad, uh, the, uh, my friends, people that really knew me, is that, that they have a righteous anger about it, you know? And it's very, it's very trite for me to say, you know, or maybe it's not trite. But, but it's a, for me on my lofty perch to say, like, I forgive. Let's move on. It was a gift to me.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't a gift for my wife, who had people show up at our door when she was seven months pregnant with, uh, with red hats on. And chase her down Mulholland Drive and drive her off the road. You know, it wasn't a gift for her when, um, you know, they surrounded, when we moved to, to Venice to get away from that. When they literally sat out in the, in the canal with bullhorns and enchanted antisemitic stuff and, uh-

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Because she's Jewish and, and, uh, and so there was a lot of violence in their speech and, and, and real actual threats of violence, um, that happened. So I, again, in like, you know, I get to be this paragon of like, of recovery and like, oh, it was a gift to me and all my secrets are exposed. Well, what about all the people that were in those pictures? That didn't ask for any of this? That had to, you know, had to answer questions to, you know, their family and their friends and, and their lives, you know, the innocent bystanders. Um, and what about my mom? What about my sister? You know, what about my, you know,

• 52:00Speaker 01

  my aunts and uncles and, and, and their righteous anger that the person that they know was, was this was happening to? And I have to admit, I feel guilty about that sometimes. I feel guilty that sometimes I'm not aware enough of the damage that was done to them. Like, just think about it from this perspective. My three older daughters, uh, who are all professionals and adults in, in, in their lives now. You know how hard it is? Who's your dad? Right? Well, seven months ago, when you answered that question, what do you do? Because I know that they love me more than anything in the world, but think

• 52:45Speaker 01

  of how it feels, you know, for them. To think that everywhere that they have to go, they have to, to be in some kind of a defensive mode, that they're either gonna fight on my behalf, or they're going to flee. That every relationship, every new job, every um, new person that they meet at their university or thing is gonna be, the first thing is gonna be what, you know?

• 53:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they can never outrun that.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Never outrun it. I get to be here and talk to Rich Roll, and I get to have this like incredible conversation about growth and spirituality. And what I've discovered in the worst moment of my life was the greatest gift. And isn't that a beautiful thing? What about them?

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  They're watching this podcast with, you know, a lot of fuck you energy.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, not towards me anymore. And, and, and, but I, but, but 100% um, uh, I, the, the fuck you energy is, is directed at the people that did this. And, um, because there are people that did this. Let's also remember, I take full responsibility for my addiction. I take full responsibility for the fact that I put a lot of it on camera. I take full responsibility for a whole lot of that stuff. But what I don't take responsibility is for the complete and total invasion of my privacy and the corruption of the narrative of what it actually said. And so there, you know, and so do I have a target in that? In terms

• 54:14Speaker 01

  of who? Yeah. I mean, for me, because I know for certain that it is all the product of the depravity of Donald Trump himself. Um, but again, to your original question about this, is, um, you know, around resentment is, yeah, I got into a great place. Like, wow, me, I'm, I'm, you know what I mean? And I really have. I've gotten a great place where I'm, I can write that about relapse.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  But there's, but there's a lot of casualties out there, uh, with the people that you care about. And for you, you know, overcoming your, your resentments is life or death. But normal people are, you know, more than welcome to, you know, nourish their resentments without, you know, cataclysmic life consequences as a result of that. And so that's, that's, that's the gift of, of the program and the tools. And not everybody, you know, has those tools. As much as I think like, everybody would be a better person if they went through the steps. Um, most people don't have to. And, and so they have to live with certain,

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  uh, difficult emotions without the capacity to process them in the way that you have. But I would imagine like, listen, you haven't transcended the mortal coil. Like, there's gotta be shit that you grind on still.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Oh, of course. Damn, one of the things I grind on is, is, is, um, is Donald Trump, you know? And I'm, and, and I, and, and I'd say without any apology whatsoever, you know, unapologetically, is that, um, uh, that there are people that are, um, that are deserving of, of my derision, but I think of all of our derision. I think that there are people that are, um, you know, there is a sickness that has descended upon the land to be, to be, uh, to, to steal a, uh, another piece of prose. And, and, and it's real. In my

• 56:29Speaker 01

  estimation, it's real. It's not derangement syndrome. It's not anything. There's this, um, uh, there's this, uh, license to cruelty, um, that exists. And

• 56:42Rich Roll?

  Encouragement and permissiveness.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had a really fascinating conversation with an undocumented, um, person yesterday that has been here for 38 years. They came when they were two years old. And they went through the whole process, uh, you know, Abdaka and everything, excuse me, 28 years. Abdaka and, um, and then it ended when they were right at the end of it and Trump came in. And they had, had, um, uh, three family members that they can't find now, that have been put into detention. And the point that I made to them is their question was why? This doesn't make any sense. None of them are criminals. They've all been here for, for decades. Yes, they, they came here on no account of, of their own quote unquote criminality

• 57:29Speaker 01

  of crossing the border. And they paid taxes, you know, from the moment they got jobs when they were 15, 16 years old, is why are they targeting them? And the answer is this cruelty. Cruelty is the point with them. It's the first time, and I think in, uh, I think since, um, you know, and at least that behavior has been modeled by a president since Andrew Johnson and, uh, after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, is cruelty is the point. And, um, and by the way, that was my whole story as it relates to that, of this exposure,

• 58:10Speaker 01

  of this humiliation, um, of this, uh, dehumanizing. That was the whole point. It was never about me. They thought that they were going to, if they could kill me, in whatever sense of the word, literal or figuratively, they would end my dad. And they were the, he was the person that they feared the most, just by polling in terms of, of that. And they were right.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  They did miscalculate, uh, though, in that Trump thought he could go after you, uh, for being this addict. And I think he, um, misunderstood how that was going to be received. I think that that really, uh, did not go well for him. Because, because everybody has a relationship with somebody who is suffering in, in this regard. And, you know, best case scenario, that fell flat. Uh, and I think it, in many ways, it worked against him. And I see now, you know, there is a tide that's shifting. Like, I am hopeful, uh, you know, when all of these sort of hardcore MAGA people are breaking ranks, like, it's

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  fracturing. And I think people are waking up to the realization that this is not the way. Uh, and, you know, I, I, I am also very inspired by Gen Z. I think Gen Z is the kindest generation that, uh, that I've had the good fortune of, you know, being connected with. And I think that they are carrying a certain hopefulness as well, uh, that has no time for, you know, what we're seeing at the kind of highest levels at the moment.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Well, they just have no time for the bullshit. They can, to them, at least in my experience, like, when I went out with Andrew Callahan on, he has, he does this, he did this tour, which was awesome. It was, uh, Channel 5 Carnival.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  And part of the Channel 5 Carnival for a 56-year-old guy and people that, that know me, like, watched like clips of it. And they were like, what, what were you doing? Well, part of the carnival was that he has a, you know, it's an audience of about 2,000 people in these stadiums. And he invited me to go out with him and the last three of them. It was one of the, it was one of the best things that I've ever done for myself. It's mainly, you know, like I say, draft age, 18 to like 35-year-old. And, um, all the people that

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  People sitting behind microphones in, you know, wherever call like, you know, the lazy in their basements, terminally online, you know, out of touch, Gen Z, then whatever. And, uh, and what I found was a incredible community. I found people that were in, that didn't have any, that it wasn't about partisanship. It wasn't about, you know, Republicans or Democrats, but they cared. They cared deeply, but more than anything, they cared deeply for each other. And the evidence of that was this, they did a talent show. And these people would come up and do these silly tricks. But people that you would look at and you would, that you knew were, that in any other setting,

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  were kind of scared of their shadow. At least that you, that's what you would have thought about them. And they do these silly, funny, sometimes serious things. And the whole energy of the, of that community was love. Like no matter what it is or how silly it was, you cheered and high fived and everybody. And it was, it was one of the coolest eye opening things that I've ever, you know, um, I went with these guys that, that, you know, Dead City punk band, this is like legendary punk band. They used, they did all those, I mean, they're, they're true anarchists. Each one of them is a, like, I love them. They're my buddies. You know why?

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Because they're all in recovery and they talk about it openly. And, you know, now do they, you know, do they literally like, uh, you know? I mean, they are true anarchists. Like I say Dead City for life, like these guys, but they're part of this community. They're part, and, and they're, and they're incredibly well read and they understand what's going on. And it's the opposite reaction of the, the people that listen to Nick Fuentes. Is that instead of disconnecting, instead of thinking everything's a joke, they know that it's not. They understand all the jokes, but they know that they have a voice. And, um, I don't know if you feel like this, it's all the things I learned in recovery.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Like, you know what? What we haven't dealt with yet was the trauma of COVID. I mean, over a million people died, the people that like the, like, and we act as if this entire generation that didn't get to go to the graduations or weddings or, or, you know, their, or grandmother dying or, you know, but particularly the ones that missed like the three years of, you know, interaction with their friends when, you know, when the most important time in your life to have that.

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, an entire generation deprived of experiences we take for granted. And we dismiss the impact of that period of time on literally millions of young people.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  And then you know what we did to them? We allowed for these tech oligarchs and their social media platforms to literally prey on them. To make them at best unhealthy, at worst dead. It's sick. It's sick. And so I don't even remember the question.

• 1:03:58Rich Roll?

  I don't either, but, but I think to your point, you were talking about, um, this kind of celebration of cruelty.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Rich Roll?

  I think that's working in lockstep with this celebration of these tech oligarchs. Like these guys are like rock stars, you know, and they go on friendly platforms and spin their yarns. And everybody kind of like, you know, bows at the altar of these people as if they're some kind of demigods. I mean, they are like, you know, this is our pantheon in our secular world right now. And, you know, like these people don't have our best interest at heart. Like, you know, they're all about just accumulating power and wealth. And we're meanwhile, like worshiping them for that. As we see this moral decay around us, like it is the Odyssey. Like, did you see the Odyssey?

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  I did, of course.

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  I had Ryan Holiday on and we were talking about the fact that like, this is, this is like a movie about the 12 steps. Like he is going through the wringer and, you know, he has to get to this point of surrender to make it home. It's like, you know, he's, I mean, there's, it's just like the parallels are like all over the place. But obviously also a parable of like what's happening right now and in, in modern society where we don't have a unifying like anchor to bring us together. What we celebrate is self-interest. And, you know, when cruelty is something that, you know, we're seeing at the top of the pyramid,

• 1:05:33Rich Roll?

  it's giving everyone else this permission or this encouragement to act accordingly. And, you know, Elon Musk said it himself, like, you know, empathy is weakness. We need to purge our society of empathy. And like, this is just anathema to recovery. It's like empathy is like what is going to heal us. And when I see you go on all these podcasts and sit with all these like controversial people and all of that, like you are practicing empathy, sometimes with people who are deeply unempathetic, simply for the purpose of modeling it. Because all of the callousness and the cruelty is really a function of fear. Like you said it earlier, like all of the craven bad behavior is about fear.

• 1:06:16Rich Roll?

  And, you know, like you can say, well, I'm mad at this, but whatever the reason is, you just keep peeling the layers of the onion and ultimately it always comes down to fear. Like that is, that is the emotion that animates all of this at the same time. So these are people who are masquerading as, you know, alpha, strong men. But they are the most like fearful people.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Broken.

• 1:06:44Rich Roll?

  In society, yeah, they're, they're, they're broken and they're inflicting their unhealed trauma on the rest of us. And costuming it as, as, you know, masculinity or something like that.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  And each one of them, you know, and I don't know any of them personally, but I watch, um, I, I've had a little experience with, um, with Elon and, and because he really, really attacked me during the time because of Twitter and that, that gave a whole new life and energy to the whole Hunter Biden question of suppression of, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, um, and I was really angry, you know, with the fuck. And, um, he's a really broken person. He said, he has had 100% incredible amount of trauma in his life. And I don't say this to be revealing of anything that's not already out there.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  His father is a, um, a really, really awful human being. And, and people can go look for themselves, but I think very unlikely that his father did not treat him like the way that he treated every other child in his life, his father. And you can see it, you know? All of these, you know, that's why I love Ryan Holiday is that, um, you know, I, I, I have his book, The Daily Stoic, and I use it. And, um, and I'm a, a huge believer in, in, uh, the lessons that we can learn, not from only from Aurelius, but from, from all of those myths and, you know, the hero's journey.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  And, um, and in those, in those incredible pieces of wisdom that exist out there, whether it's Aldous Huxley or whether it's Young or whether it's, um, you know, the Bhagavad Gita. You know what's always the same? Is those characters, they're evil, they're, they're the, the archetype that of the broken person, the sociopath, the psycho, whatever, whatever label that you want to put on them. The malignant narcissist, the, um, each one of the carrier, the agamemnon's. And, and, and they repeat themselves.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  And that's why I say nothing is new under the sun. We are all on our, uh, on a personal level, on our own hero's journey, but we, we are collectively. Uh, you know, now we may live in what I think at a moment of, which is an inflection point. And we may be living through the most significant step in our evolution because of AI. And I know that you've had some people on here that know way more about it than me.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  But I think that at a moment in time in which compassion, understanding and empathy will be the central question of whether we make it through or not is that like, maybe I'm just a drop in the bucket, but, but you know, what, what, what other choice do we have?

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  I don't know, but like they are, uh, did you ever see the, uh, uh, what's his name? Sam Altman, he did give an interview about, I think it was two or three years ago. He said, what, he was asked, what piece of fiction do you, um, uh, you know, what in fiction, uh, science fiction most represents what you think the world could look like? Um, with the, uh, introduction of AGI and superintelligence. And he said, without hesitation, he said Pantheon. Have you seen Pantheon?

• 1:10:38Rich Roll?

  I haven't.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  It's cartoon, but it's, but it's, the voices are like William Hurt, they're like serious actors and it's a series that's on, I think it's still on Netflix. Go watch it.

• 1:10:50Rich Roll?

  The theme being?

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  The theme being that we're all screwed.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  I thought you were going to say like Terminator.

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  No, no, but this is worse. This is worse.

• 1:11:02Rich Roll?

  And yet we barrel forward.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  And yet we barrel forward.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  This is the, this is the tragedy of the, the human species. Like we are nothing if not builders who are insistent on just continuing to move forward and innovate irrespective of the downstream consequences. Like we'll deal with that when it happens and history, you know, is pretty clear that like there's always unforeseen consequences and the fact that the people that are innovating, doing the innovating already have that insight and it has no impact on, on, you know, how they're on the pace of this advancement is deeply disconcerting.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  You know, that's why I always go back to, again, I don't know, it's apocryphal and, or did she really actually said it, but the, uh, Mother Teresa's line, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family is, um, and I think that your family doesn't have to just mean your blood relatives, but that, that family that is the community that you're a part of. And I get to, I, I get to lay claim to a family that is, uh, 50 million, uh, wide and strong, as do you, of people that I know that we have experienced, that we, we share one thing, the experience in pain of addiction and the, and the trauma in, in of it, of itself.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  And it's to varying different degrees, but I know there's a, a half a dozen rooms within stone's throw of me right here where I can, if I need to go sit.

• 1:12:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  And, and, um, and be witness to, to their pain and, um, and not feel alone. And there's an amazing, amazing selfish thing about that. Again, like the single thing, the one part of wisdom, which I've learned from you, I literally, I mean, I've learned from listening to you. Like I'm, I'm sitting here talking as if I know anything and the fact of the matter is just that you've done more in service to this than anyone else out there talking about it. Um, and I've learned more from you than I think that I could ever impart if I have another 50 years. And that is that we are not alone and that, um, uh, that all of the things that I just

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  said are things that, you know, you've spent, you know, an entire career trying to, you know, educate people about.

• 1:13:26Rich Roll?

  At the same time, like everything that I've shared is not, these are not my original thoughts either. These are all things that I've learned through experience and, and in the rooms that I'm just parroting.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Cool part of this about it is if you, if, if you aren't familiar with addiction to everybody outside, you sound really fucking smart.

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  Which is really my, this is my secret agenda. Yeah. I just want everyone.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, you learned it from a toothless guy that was sitting in the corner of a meeting who, you know, is the old timers that's been there 16 years and, you know, he doesn't have a job and hadn't taken a shower in two weeks.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  And he is like, you go, oh my.

• 1:14:06Rich Roll?

  This is the wisest person I've ever met in my life.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  And it is.

• 1:14:09Rich Roll?

  Cause these prophets walk among us.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Rich Roll?

  I want to talk about the trauma piece a little bit. Uh, you mentioned Gabor Maté earlier.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:20Rich Roll?

  It must've been, it was probably like eight or nine years ago.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  Uh, when I read in the realm of, of The Hungry Ghosts and I was like, I gotta meet this guy. And I flew to Vancouver to do a podcast with him and, and he did exactly what I wanted him to do, which is flip the table on me and then dissect my.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:40Rich Roll?

  Story. And it was a real epiphany for me because I grew up, you know, like I had a, like there's nothing I could point to in my child, like I didn't have a car accident where people, you know, like there were, my parents didn't, they were always there. There's no reason for me to think like I have anything to complain about. I had my insecurities and my feeling like I didn't belong in my own skin and all that stuff that you hear in the rooms, um, with addicts and alcoholics. But my alcoholism, be it a genetic disposition, it just is what it is. Like I had never delved beneath the surface of that because that really isn't part of what the program is about.

• 1:15:20Rich Roll?

  And Gabor like really pulled the covers for me and I was resistant to what he had to say in that moment, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. And so I've been on this journey of trying to unpack my past and make peace with certain things and reckon with it honestly, but it's nothing like what you've had to contend with. And this is outside of the 12 step paradigm, right? So where are you in your reckoning or your healing with the things that happened in your early childhood that have repercussions in terms of your, you know, behavior in adulthood?

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  That's still, um, it's still work in progress, but I'm working and, and earnestly.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  And what does that look like?

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  What does that look like for me? For me, it has a lot to do with writing. Um, is that, um, I spend a lot of time, uh, uh, because it's a way for me to be in thought without it, uh, with, without it being, um, dangerous.

• 1:16:30Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  You know, I, I find that when I just, um, uh, find myself kind of, um, you know, engaged in this delusional thinking, meaning like that I understand the future or am beholden to the past, you know, that, those kinds of thoughts that like the, oh my God, like what about this and what's going to happen then and things like that. When I want to reflect on something, the way that I find I'm able to do it in a healthy way is through writing.

• 1:17:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  And I know, I, I would love to hear your take on it, but you know, like I have that one traumatic event, but the, but beyond that traumatic event, I was surrounded by love. I mean, surrounded by love. I have the best example of a father I can ever wish on anyone. If I am half the father my dad has been to me, my sister, my brother, then I am, I, I will have been, uh, a success in this world. And I really truly mean that is that he's incredible. And what was it? And, um, and I'm still unpacking it, you know? I, I think part of it.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  And this is even hard, is like the accumulation of, of, of, uh, of selfish decisions, even as a child, that created shame in my life. You know, I have this one memory that sticks with me and I've never actually told anybody this.

• 1:18:06Rich Roll?

  No, exclusive.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  And I don't want to overblow it, but I literally think about it all the time. I got a dog. His name was Mo. It was a black lab. It's all I wanted. It was a puppy. And, uh, and Mo lived for 16 years, the greatest dog ever. And I was, uh, 16 when I got Mo. And, um, and I, and I don't want to overblow this because it wasn't, I remember trying to train Mo, my dog, and getting so angry that I kicked the dog. Like where she whimpered and, and, um, and hid from me for like a period of time.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  That has stuck with me, the shame. I don't know why I'm even telling you this right now, other than the fact like the things. And so I guess what I'm trying to say is that your traumas don't have to be things that were inflicted upon you. Traumas sometimes are things that you did yourself. Like, who is that? Who is that person that was capable of kicking that dog? Like, I think about it all the time. And the way that I think about it is this, can I really be a good person? Am I, or am I that person?

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  The fact that it stays with you and that you think about it frequently, it basically says you're not pathological, because somebody who is wouldn't reflect on that. And I think, you know, it's an example of our pain is our pain. It can be a car accident where you're, there's traumatic casualties, or it can just be, you know, a slight that the person never thought of again and has lived with you for 40 years and influences your behaviors that turn into these looping patterns that, you know, send your life in a negative trajectory. It is what it is. So it's not about the severity of the pain.

• 1:20:28Rich Roll?

  It's simply what you experienced. And I think that in your case, I think it's, and listen, I'm not a psychologist. So like, you know, like, you know, please, like, I'm the furthest thing from a clinician. But what I hear is somebody who went through, you know, had an incredibly traumatic ordeal that even the most put together person would struggle with recovering from. And yes, you were surrounded with love and you grew up in privilege, et cetera. And so that fuels your dismissal of recognizing this thing really was traumatic, even though you were cared for in the aftermath.

• 1:21:12Rich Roll?

  And it's not just that isolated event. It's also, as I mentioned earlier, like the specter of growing up with like such a prominent figure, you know, your, your father, even if he is and was like the most beautiful and loving person possible. Like, that's, that would be a challenge for anyone, especially an anxiety riddled young kid who had a, who had a brother who seemed to be kind of the embodiment of, of charisma and potential and all these things, like the insecurity that, that, you know, I would imagine you were marinating in as a young person. So there's that. And then, not for nothing, like the trauma of having to go through the dismantlement,

• 1:21:57Rich Roll?

  you know, that you suffered, you know, from 2019 to 24, or whenever it was, the new cycle, where you were just pilloried like nobody ever has been. Like, all of these things are, are difficult things for a well-grounded person to manage. And the fact that you're alive is remarkable in and of itself. But I think there's real, I think there's real healing that is still available to you by going, like what we learn in the rooms, like you don't avoid your pain, you go directly towards it. And I think there, there's more freedom on the other side of excavating whatever is there.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's my point, is that, that a lot of it, what I do is, is, you ask me how I'm, I'm, if, if I'm engaged in that practice. And what I find is, is that I'm willing to like explore those things without getting lost in them. And that's why I brought up the example, which it may seem like, oh, you're so full of shit. That's the worst thing that, you know, but the, because it's not. And I'm not saying that, that the trauma was to me, that, but what I do know is that what still exists in me is

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  a voice that says, you're not worthy of this love. Like this moment in time right now, is that

• 1:23:31Rich Roll?

  You gotta earn it. You gotta earn it. You gotta write like a dope piece on Substack, or you gotta crush some podcast, or you have to, you know, paint something that, you know, everybody is gonna like freak out about. Like, that's the only way that you can feel love and accept it, because love is transactional.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that I'm growing beyond that. But I, I know I lived in that space for a long time. I know that I lived, for instance, is that I went to law school and I excelled. And I went to Georgetown and then I transferred to Yale and I got out. And I was scared to death of public speaking, so I knew that I didn't want to go into politics. But I was, my brother and I literally were inseparable. And I, I knew that he could have that. But the real thing I wanted to be was an artist and I wanted to write. And

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  That wasn't part of the, the Biden blueprint, though, I would imagine.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  My dad would have been fine, really. But you know who wasn't okay with that? Me. Because I didn't think that myself, you know, and by the way, not because of anything other than this, is because I was scared to death. Because you know what it takes to be an artist? It takes courage. And I lacked it.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  So there's the fear, but it's that disavowal of self, you know, that creates the dissonance. Like, you're living out of integrity with who you are, with unhealed trauma. Like, shocker, you know, here comes the crack pipe.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was answered everything. And that's the other thing I say to people is why? Because at first it was the answer to everything. And then you chase that answer into your own prison cell. And, but man, okay, back to fun things.

• 1:25:20Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:25:21Speaker 01

  Fun things is, is that, you know, despite all of that, is like, the other part about living in this space that I'm living in right now? It's like, it is, it can, it can be fun. Part of it is, is that, and I mean this sincerely, I get to meet Rich, like I get to come and talk to you, you know, I'm, I'm a super fan. And the idea that, that I get to sit here and have a discussion with somebody that I know cares as deeply as I do about some of these things. And that has been, that has given me the opportunity to learn from the people that he has on

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  and elicits from them, things that, you know, have really made a difference in my life. It's like, this, yeah.

• 1:26:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. I mean, this, this idea that, you know, sobriety is nothing but martyrdom and suffering and pain, like, no, it's not that at all. It's actually liberation and there's a lot of joy and tons of laughter. And, you know, suddenly life, you get to experience life in the full spectrum, you know, in technicolor, right? For better or for worse. And, you know, I'm, I'm sitting here going, can't believe this fucking guy Hunter Biden is sitting here. He actually came to the studio and he's doing this? Like, how is this my life? How did this happen?

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Rich Roll?

  I can't make sense of it, other than to say like, well, it's all because of recovery. You know, it all stems back to that. Like, it is not logical or rational. It wasn't my plan to like be doing this. It's about every single day trying to bring my, you know, my, my thoughts and my words into greater integrity with my actions. And incrementally over like, you know, fucking 30 years, it's like, this is, you know, it's slow variety. Somehow I've arrived at this point where, you know, I have like the best job in the world and I get to like invite cool people that I'm just curious about and hold them hostage and force them to talk to me and then share that with the world.

• 1:27:23Rich Roll?

  And, and, and this is nourishing and beneficial to other people. Like, it's a commercial enterprise, but fundamentally

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's even cooler.

• 1:27:32Rich Roll?

  It's a, it's a, yeah, I mean, but it's like, it's a, it's in the spirit of service. And I also get to like support my family doing it. Like, it's like a magic trick.

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  So I'll give you the story.

• 1:27:43Rich Roll?

  It's in the, it's, what I'm getting at is, sorry to cut you off, is because it doesn't make sense, it allows me to appreciate the mystical and the spiritual in a way that, you know, has always been challenging for me, because there is no explanation.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:06Rich Roll?

  And so I'm curious around like your, what is your relationship with spirituality look like?

• 1:28:10Speaker 01

  Well, I'll give you the, the, you know, this idea of serendipity and the idea of the, when you're kind of like living in the flow, that's my idea of spirituality. You know, I was raised a Catholic and I have deep reverence for the faith of my father and my grandmother and the way in which they practiced their faith. At the, I, I stopped going to, to Mass a long time ago. And, and, but because for me, that my, the, my spirituality is rooted in,

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  you know, the perennial philosophy. It's rooted in the idea that we are all, not just figuratively, but literally connected. We are all one thing. All of the source of consciousness is, is derived from a, a, a single source of which we will never be able to articulate or know. And, you know, I, I find it kind of funny that this kind of a whole idea that we're all living in the matrix and, you know, like this kind of, I think from these technologists that say that this is all a simulation. I mean, you go back and read the Apollonishads and it's literally, it's, it's the

• 1:29:35Rich Roll?

  It's more extreme than a simulation.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But they're acting as if they're, that they're, their analysis is somehow novel. It's just using the language of the moment in which

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  I believe in the idea that our actions have consequences, but they begin with how we treat each other and, and, but more importantly, how we treat ourselves. And everything emanates from that. And, um, and so that's my spirituality. I give you the serendipity. So I, uh, I, uh, am working with a, uh, organization called Peak Path Health or Rehab Center. And, but I'm working with them to, here, here in LA. And, um, and to set up a aftercare foundation.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  Um, and a, a, a foundation centered on the continuity of care for people that can't afford it. Because I don't know about you, one of the, the realizations that I had is the enormity of the privilege that I had is that while I had to go to nine, 10 rehabs, um, and go through, I don't know how many outpatient programs and, and sit through, you know, uh, how much therapy and, and I did ayahuasca and I did Iwagane and I did five amino DMT and I did all of these things because I had access and the capacity and capability because I could. Well, 99% of the people that suffer from what we suffer from don't.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  And even if they're, uh, or the capacity insurance or they go on scholarship like we offer, they, they afterwards go back into the same exact environment. And there's like, um, you know, it's not called recidivism, but it's a, a, you know, 85%. The, the industry says like 75%, you know, relapse rate. I think it's more like 90%. And part of the reason is because the giant chasm, the gap in, in, in recovery, I think, is in the continuity of care afterwards.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  You can go to a treatment center for 28 days, but it spits you out the other side. And if you don't have, you know, some kind of support system and structure and accountability, like you're spinning in the wind.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so you know what? Now I get to try to build that.

• 1:32:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  And you know, I think it's like the most amazing thing in the world. And, and it's something I, that I feel like I know a lot about. It's something like I know that I don't know everything about and I get to go and find people to help me do it. And you have these connections and the thing. And again, it's like, you know, these selfish acts of service that are, that, you know, you realize that they, they just propagate more and more opportunity and more and more um, kind of wonderment of like what's next and you know.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  As long as you stay disconnected from, uh, outcomes.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Which is literally, exactly what is, you know, like what you said, my spirituality, like it's, you know, it's Krishna to Arjuna and Bhagavad Gita is, that's what it is all about, you know? It doesn't have anything to do with anything other than you detaching from the outcome. Do your service, your service to yourself, your service to your family, your service to your community. Do your service well and detach from the outcome. And that is what it's about.

• 1:33:12Rich Roll?

  Maybe we can land this plane with, uh, some thoughts for the person who is out there who's still suffering.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Again, I, I know my own experience is that the thing that made it feel impossible to me was the idea that I was completely alone in my suffering. And not only are you not alone, but you are surrounded by people that if you just have a moment of clarity and, and pick up a phone, reach out for help, call someone, uh, is that, that the miracle of what I'm experiencing, at least for today, is available to you. And it really is.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  Secrets, uh, grow in the darkness. Shame can't survive the light.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  And that's the other thing. I made it through people.

• 1:34:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And if this fucking guy could do it, I promise you.

• 1:34:18Speaker 01

  I always say to people is this, is that here's one of the things that I'm grateful for. I benefit more than anybody that I know in my lifetime, at least, from very low expectations. If I show up to your dinner party and I'm not whacked out on crack and you know, I mean, like, oh my God, he was amazing.

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  Actually, like, you know, yeah, he, he could like say words.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

• 1:34:44Rich Roll?

  Um, Hunter, this was amazing. Uh, what a treat. Uh, I appreciate you taking the time and, uh, I really am a champion of, of this campaign you are on right now where you are broadening understanding around addiction and modeling a new way of trying to communicate with people that we, you know, maybe are, are challenging our worldviews. And I, I think that's the way forward. Uh, not just politically, but as a culture, if we, you know, want to survive as a healthy society, as a, as a, you know, liberal democracy, um, we have to overcome this acrimony. And I think the compassion and the understanding and the, just the, the ability to sit with

• 1:35:29Rich Roll?

  somebody and, and listen and take them seriously and engage with their ideas, uh, is, is laudable. And, uh, I commend you for that.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  I really, really appreciate it. It means, it means more to me than you can possibly imagine. Thank you.

• 1:35:44Rich Roll?

  Um, well, let's do this again, man. This was fun.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I'm in the neighborhood.

• 1:35:49Rich Roll?

  Peace.