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Alcohol Nearly Destroyed Me | Rich Roll on Overcoming Addiction · Motivation Mindset Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Alcohol is the solution to the problem, and it works
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: until it stops working. Even though I had accomplished certain
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: things as a swimmer and had sort of distinguished myself academically,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I was still very much a naval gazer.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: You know. I couldn't talk to a girl. I couldn't.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I just wasn't comfortable in my own skin. I felt like,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and you hear this in AA a lot, like everybody
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: else had the rule book for life, and I was
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: sitting on the outside, like marveling at how people seem to,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you know, gracefully navigate the world, where I just felt,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: you know, anxious all the time. And alcohol solved that problem,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Like I have a lot of love for it, Like
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: it gave me social tools that I lacked and taught
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: me how to be a social animal in a social situation.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I could go to a party and crack a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: joke and flirt with a girl and do all these
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: things that were beyond my capacity to handle prior to that.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So it's not all bad. Like it worked, you know
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: what I mean, which is why I doubled down on it.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Like the cure for alcoholism isn't removing alcohol. Alcohol is
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: is the solution to the problem, and it works until
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: it stops working, and it took a while before it
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: stopped working in my case. But the ism remains. Once
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: you remove the substance, you can't blame anyone else. And
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: it's not about anything external. It's only about your relationship
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: with you. And you're still going to be, you know,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: impulsed by your innate biases. And however, your hardwiring has
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: set you up to you know, perceive the world, but
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you get that extra little moment of recognition to course correct,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: you know. And you know, I would say that I've
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: become you know, I got sober in ninety eight, so
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I've been in this thing for a long time. And
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: when I came in, I just thought, oh, it's drug
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: addicts and alcohols, that's what addiction is. But I've become
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: convinced that addiction lives on this massive spectrum and we
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: are all victims of addiction on some level, some mild
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and some extreme, from you know, the guy lying in
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the gutter with a bottle, to the guy who can't
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: pull the needle out of his arm, to the compulsive
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: scrolling while we're taking you know, or the guy who
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: or the woman who who goes from bad relationship to
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: bad relationship, you know, repeating a certain pattern because there's
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: something about that that they can't there's a compulsivity to
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: that that they can't control. So I think thinking about
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: addiction more broadly makes it applicable and instructive and useful
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: for people as they develop enough self awareness to have
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: objectivity on how they maneuver the world and the daily
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: habits that they continually find themselves, you know, falling prey
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to that are leading their lives in the wrong direction.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And the impulse to addiction. This was the way that
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: we're wired. It doesn't have to all be bad. Because
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I knew someone. I dated her before I you know,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: got with my wife, and her name is Maya, And
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: we actually did a podcast on gratitude, and what I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: found about her is she had a daily gratitude practice
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: that was unbroken for seven years, and she was addicted
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: to gratitude, like literally addicted to gratitude. And it was amazing.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: She was such a happy person. Yeah, she forged that addiction.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: It is a practice, right, Absolutely, it didn't come She
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: didn't necessarily wake up feeling grateful, not by dint of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you know, her allegiance to that practice becomes that which
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: she aspired to become.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't a it was a thirty minute practice
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: like it was like a legit practice that she did.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: She had a whole curriculum that she had developed and
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: being grateful for different aspects of her life. And so
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: that's possible with the same mechanism that drives people to
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: all of the things that you mentioned prior, the same
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: mechanism can kick in and get you addicted to those things.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: The kind of final chapter in my alcoholism just to
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: disabuse everybody of any kind of romantic Bukowski notion of
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: what it was like. I was not, you know, petting
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the Great American novel or doing anything creative. I was
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: by myself, drinking alone, often waking up in the morning
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: and having a vocatonic in the shower and working as
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: a lawyer and trying to sneak drinks throughout the day.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Like it was exhausting.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: It was sad and lonely. I had burned bridges with friends.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I was unreliable, My parents didn't want anything to do
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: with me, and you know, ultimately I had a marriage
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: that ended on the honeymoon, like I had, you know,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I created a lot of chaos and wreckage and destroyed
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of relationships and just became you know, irresponsible,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: unreliable member of society, living like two blocks from here,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: sleeping on a bear mattress on the floor of a
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: apartment with no furniture, and you know, the phone wasn't ringing.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I was I'd gotten two DUIs. I was looking at
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: possible jail time, I was going to get fired from
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: my job, and just woke up one day, you know,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: after a bender and nothing particularly terrible had happened that night,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: but I had kind of reached that nadier where I
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: was like, I can't do this anymore. And I had
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: been seeing an addiction therapist and he was like are
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: you ready, and he's like, I got a bed for you.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And ended up going up to Oregon and checking into
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: a rehab thinking I was going to do a quick
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: couple week spin dry because I was so important and
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: I had to get back to my job, and you know,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I had this epiphany, you know, coming to there that
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I you know, my best thinking. I thought, wow, I'm
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: this smart guy. I was literally you know, institutionalized, and
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that landed on me, like a ton of bricks, and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: I just realized, like, I better figure this out because
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the future is not looking bright, and started opening up
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and taking direction and listening and letting go of how
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I thought things should be, and for the first time,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: was honest about the things that I was doing, in
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: the ways that I was behaving and the you know,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I remember accounts At telling me like, you know, you
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: have a case of alcoholism that we typically only see
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: in like sixty five year old men who come in here,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: who have been drinking for the better part of their lifetime.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: And if you don't, if you don't get this, like
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: you're probably gonna die. And you just said it so
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: point blank, like I'll never forget it, and it scared
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the shot of me. So he said, I think you
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I know that you think you're going to spin out
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of here in twenty eight days, but we think you
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: should stick around. And I just said, I'll stay here
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: as long as you think I should should be here.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And I ended up living there for one hundred days,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: which is kind of a long time to be in rehab, sure,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: but that saved my life. There's so much capability that
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: resides within all of us, and you know, like yourself.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I've had the privilege of sitting across from so many
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: people who've done extraordinary things, and you see the humanity
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: in all of them. I mean, we project this superhero
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: quality onto all these people, but they're all just human
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: beings who had a dream and worked hard to achieve it.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And it's inspiring to really own and grasp the idea
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: that that, you know, we're all sitting on top of
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: deep reservoirs of potential that remain untapped, and our job
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: is to, you know, figure out how to authentically, you know,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: connect with that voice that is telling us to you know,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: unlock something and share it with the world. And if
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you can do that and then share that story and
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: tie it in some way to service as a teacher
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: or in some way that can inspire other people or
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: pave the way for a better world, I mean that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: to me is the recipe for a good, purpose driven,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: fulfilling life. I'm much more focused on what I'm doing
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: today and how I can you know, leverage these tools
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that I've learned to ameliorate, you know, the disease as
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: it as it rears its head and other kind of
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: behavioral stuff like I don't it's very rare that I
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: would crave alcohol these days, Like I don't think about it,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: it's been so long, but but I still have the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: ism and that pops up in all kinds of ways
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: and makes me an apt or resentful or frustrated or
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: you know, grinding on this problem. Like we were talking
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: when I walked in, Like we're both enjoying amazing lives,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Like we're very privileged to get to do what we
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: get to do and meet these amazing people and support
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: our families, you know by doing it. So why don't
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I wake up inherently grateful every day? You know? It's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: it's like that's what I use most of my mental
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: energy trying to, you know, focus.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: On when you were telling yourself, you know that you
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: got to keep going, you need to suffer more because
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: this is about suffering tolerance. Ultimately, you have to coach yourself.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: You have to be a good coach to yourself in
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: this process because it is very very much mental. What's
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: your kind of inner monologue as the inner coach of
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: yourself in these points where you need to push yourself
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: through the suffering.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I think for me, it's all about being present and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: comfortable with the discomfort, you know. I think if you
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: get caught up in like I got to make it
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: to hear or you know, I'm thinking about some destination,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: then it detracts from your ability to get there, because
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: you can't get there if you're not anchored in the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: moment that you're actually in. And I think what happens
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: is time becomes very malleable. Like if I'm doing an
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: eight hour ride and you're in this like suffering state
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: of mind, you're not used to that, it's going to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: feel like eternity. But when you build up to it,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: like suddenly an eight hour ride feels like a two
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: hour ride.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: So there is a weird thing that.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Happens with that that I think any endurance athlete would
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: would recognize. But for me, it's just it's about being
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: It's always bringing myself back to the present moment and
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: not trying to run away from it or distract myself
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: from it.