- Today I wanna talk about one
of the most difficult struggles of my entire life.
Something that destroyed relationships,
destroyed opportunities, destroyed my body,
destroyed my career and almost completely destroyed me
and that was my relationship with alcohol
and I pretty much drank every single day
for 30 years of my life.
This is real talk here and two years ago,
right here at this place which is Centre Parks
which is a place outside of London.
No this is not a product placement.
On New Year's Eve two years ago, I said to myself
I'm gonna try to stop drinking for 30 days
and see how that goes and 30 went to 60 went to 90
and now I'm two years later and I've been completely sober
for two years and I wanna talk about that journey
and I wanna explain to you what it is for me
and also what it's not.
I do not go to AA meetings.
I've never been to the 12 steps.
I also am a former heroin addict who had two overdoses
in New York City in 2001.
I used to smoke Lucky Strike on filters
like a pack a day back in my day.
I've tried most drugs as well.
This is my story in my journey and this is
by no means something prescriptive for you
and I know there's lots of people,
friends of mine that have been on the show
like Rich Roll and John Joseph who have their own stories
of sobriety and their own methods of getting there
and I totally respect them as well.
It's just those aren't my stories and I wanna talk
about this today and this is something I wanted
to do a year ago and maybe I want even to do a year
and a half ago and talk to you about,
but I've never seen the right time.
I don't know if this is the right time,
but I think I really need to talk about this
because I really wish that the 20 year old Brian
could have listened to what I'm about to say
because I think it would have given me a lot of perspective
because for most of my life, I had a romantic,
dysfunctional, abusive relationship with alcohol and for me,
I think my first drink was somewhere
around 13, 14 years old.
I remember I had just gone to Japan with my mom
and I brought back a bottle of Saki and I got
in an argument with her and slammed the door
and I went into my room and I took a shot of Saki.
I don't know why.
I think I probably saw tough guys do that
in the movies, right.
That's what tough guys do, they drink hard, right
and I'm sure that was part of what was in my brain,
but I did it and Brian soon discovered
that alcohol was the way that I could escape.
I could escape the frustrations I had with this world
and I think the more I get to know myself,
it was a way of escaping me.
I'm a mean bastard.
I'm really hard on everyone around me including myself.
It's just never good enough.
It could always be better Brian.
You could always do better.
Something deep down inside of me
always knows I could do better and I could have done more
and that can be really beneficial.
It creates a high achiever.
I've done some amazing things with my life
that I'm super proud of, but it also means
that the internal dialogue in my head
sometimes maybe it's too much for me even
to deal with myself so for me, having those 12 beers
at the end of the day or those 14 shots
of tequila was a way of me getting away from me
for taking just a little, a few hour break
from type A Brian Rose, he was so demanding.
it was almost like getting away from an abusive father
or mother, but it was me so you know, no excuses there,
but I became fascinated with drinking
and I remember my mom took us to Europe when I was 15, 16
and I could drink at a bar, they actually served me a beer
Where in America you know, there's no way.
You have to be like 21.
So that was like an eye-opener for me and I was like wow,
and I was drinking in Europe and then I got back
to high school and a college student that used to live
with us used to bind the alcohol and you know,
I'd get drunk when I would go out and you know,
do shots in the car before I go to a movie,
but when I finally got to MIT, I got into something called
a fraternity and it was 50 dudes in a house
with no supervision and that's when it all came undone
and I started really drinking professionally
and some nights we wouldn't even go out.
It'd be be 25 guys hanging out in the bar.
No girls, no need and we would finish a keg
and just do drinking games all night
and it was some serious male bonding.
Probably something I really needed as a man
and I loved those times, but it was also something
that really incubated this culture
of drinking every single day and at the same time,
I was also getting A's at MIT.
Probably one of the most challenging institutions
in the world and yet I'm drinking every night.
Every night I would finish the night
after I would study till 2:00 in the morning with some beers
and so this just became part of who I was
and I also started becoming what I would become
which was a functional alcoholic.
Someone that could drink a lot and still show up
and convince himself that he was showing up,
but every time I drank in a difficult situation,
it was a way of not processing things and that's what's
I think really important to remember here,
When you drink or use or shop or have sex
or something to get yourself out of what's,
the pain in your brain, you don't process it,
you just kick the can down the road and you're gonna have
to deal with it later and if you kick it down the road
enough times, you're gonna have a major trauma
because you're not living your life in a congruent way
'cause you never dealt with the pain of the reality
of the situation and so this is what happened to Brian.
I would have a breakup with a girlfriend
and I would just dive deeper into the bottle.
Of course when I went to Wall Street,
the culture was again of excess and drinking so,
and New York City as Ruth Rahl would say,
it's like an alcoholics dream.
Like every corner is a bar and I started hanging out
with friends that you know, drank as much as I did
and so I got really into that as well and again,
I was basically drinking every single day.
For me, it just didn't make sense not to drink every day
and I would just find a way to push through the next day
and so I remember showing up as a trader you know,
in the morning and have a coffee and a diet coke
and I was ready to go and this perpetuated itself
and it continued and it continued and you know,
every day you succumb to this stuff.
You probably dig yourself in a bigger hole
of never been able to get out and I got to a point
where I just thought I would never get rid of this thing
and of course the alcohol let leads
to usually bad decisions.
Started hanging out with people that were using drugs
and of course I started doing drugs
and of course heroin was my drug of choice
and if you wanna know more about that,
watch my movie Iron Mind, it's on YouTube, it's free
and you can hear my whole story with that,
with that crazy drug and again,
back to something Dennis McKenna once said to me.
We just done a movie with called Reconnect.
Drugs aren't bad.
Drugs are just substances.
It's the people that consume them in dangerous ways
that are bad.
So heroin isn't bad.
Heroin can be used to kill pain and can be used
to get people out of really bad situations
so we can heal them, but when you're shoving it up your nose
every other day and you know,
and you stop breathing multiple times,
have to go to the emergency room, then that's a person
that has the problem.
So you know, alcohol in itself isn't bad, but my,
I can't handle it and I know I read an article recently
where Brad Pitt said, I got my alcohol privileges revoked
and he's been sober I think for a few years
because Brad knows that when he drinks,
he becomes a guy he doesn't like
and so that's the way I look at it.
My last two years and for the rest of my life now,
I've got my alcohol privileges revoked
and that's Brian's journey.
It doesn't necessarily mean your journey.
It's funny, sometimes I see people that can have a drink
or two and then not drink for a few weeks and I'm like oh,
that's how normal people drink.
For me it was like, let's have 50 drinks you know.
That was like what we always did
and that's the only thing I knew.
So again, this proceeds.
There's warning signs all along the way.
I had girlfriends that would just look at me
and when they got to know me, they'd be like, what?
Do you do this every single day?
Do you always have so many drinks, but you know,
they would love me and they would support me,
but it just got worse and worse and worse
and when I moved to London and finally got off the heroin,
I was still drinking.
That was just something that was such a big part of me
that I just didn't know how to get rid of it
and it just got to a point where I just hated myself
for the person I was when I was drinking
and I remember being in shortage and going out
to buy like a bottle of vodka and looking at the guy
that was selling at me and he was looking
at my eye thinking, look at you, you're a fucking loser.
You gotta fucking buy this bottle of vodka
just to make it through your life
and I saw him looking at me.
Whether he was or not, I don't know and I was just like,
I fucking hate this feeling of being a loser
and I can't figure it out and so I just wanna say
to anybody out there who's just frustrated
with the behaviour you can't control is it, man,
I get it you know, and I'm supposed to be one
of the smartest people in the world.
I'm surrounded by great people, by loving parents,
by incredible education
and I can't figure out my own alcoholism you know.
It's so frustrating for me, so frustrating
and I got to a point
where I never thought I would figure it out.
I just thought this was gonna be me
and I would probably die early at 60 of liver failure
or something and you know, that was just gonna be me
and so the thing that changed all that
was me connecting with the rest of the world
and I think a lot of alcoholics feel that way.
They feel very disconnected from the world
and when they go and have their drink,
they don't feel that pain anymore and for a lot of them,
it's a way of just escaping and getting away from the world
and disconnecting and so I understand that
and so funny enough, London Real forced me to get out there
and connect with the world and the more I connected,
the more I listened, the more I gave back,
the more I became part of this human organism,
the less I felt the need to drink as much
and that the weird thing is is it's you know,
when you look at the media in the world,
they tell you it's all or nothing.
You have to go to AA, you have to stop and all that stuff
and look maybe that works for a lot of people,
but that wasn't the case with me.
For me, it just became less of a necessity every day
and less of a necessity and I became more connected
and I started walking away from some
of these abusive behaviours 'cause I felt
like I had a purpose and I had people looking up to me
and I just felt more loved maybe.
Made me more part of this world and then got to a point
where of about three or four years ago,
I was still drinking wine here and there
and sometimes it would be like you know, a few nights a week
and a few nights a week more and I was just like
why am I doing this, you know?
I'm like this is just being lazy now.
Now you're just being lazy.
This is some little comfort that you use
because you've had a hard day or whatever,
which is all BS at the end of the day
and then finally here on New Year's two years ago,
I said to my (mumbles), I said babe,
let's stop drinking for 30 days and she said okay,
let's do it and 30 days later, she said let's have a drink
and I said no, I'm actually liking this
and there's been times where I've been like,
man I could really just drink because you know,
this is just not the funnest day or the funnest situation,
but I just kind of found a way through it
and breathed through it.
Funny enough the closest I was ever to having a drink was
when I went on vacation to Bordeaux last year
and this is a course featured in the movie Reconnect
where I felt just completely out of my element.
I had nothing to do.
I felt kind of frustrated.
I couldn't work, I couldn't take action,
I couldn't fill my time and I said to (mumbles),
I'm think about drinking and she was like no, no,
no, no, don't do that, but like that was the time.
So you know, a lot of people say I'm a workaholic
and I don't know my worth life balance,
but if I get in those situations and I start drinking again,
then that's not good.
So I'm also getting to know myself and getting to know,
you know what, maybe I know what's best for me
and not everyone else knows what's best for me
and so the last few years have been the most,
just the greatest of my life.
I'm so proud of myself when I wake up
every day not hungover.
Just like I was proud of myself every day
after I stopped doing heroin.
Like for me I was like fucking,
you're just a fucking rock star.
I was so proud of myself.
So proud that I kicked that nasty
brown fucking powder going up my nose, man.
I was so proud of myself, for years I was proud of myself
and every day I'm proud of myself because for me,
this is my battle.
You know, we all have a battle.
You have a battle.
Your battle might be, like I said, negative self-talk.
It could be retail therapy.
It could be sex, it could be drinking,
it could be binge eating with food.
You're always shoving something in your mouth
because you always wanna be thinking
or feeling something that you don't wanna feel you know.
Everybody has their kryptonite.
For me, it's alcohol.
It's something that changes my state to get me out
of the moment and if I can win that battle every day,
then I feel great about myself and I can kick ass
and I really believe that in this life,
it's not about us becoming great,
becoming greater in certain things,
it's about us fighting our demons and our flaws
and if you can get up every day
and conquer your few little demons out there
that are out there looking for you every day,
they're gunning for you and trust me,
alcohol and drugs are still gunning for me,
they still got me in my sights and if I start to go weak
and my power level starts to go down like in a video game,
then they're gonna pick me off and they'll be like,
come on Brian, let's have that drink.
So every day I have to be a vigilant, like a motherfucker
and that way every day I get my sleep, I get my meditation,
I do my gratitude, I do my affirmations,
I go do hard meaningful work, I exhaust myself physically,
I try to be with any painful emotions, I try to forgive,
I try to lead others, I try to give back,
I try to do all those things and then guess what?
The next day, it's another battle and the next day,
it's another battle and the next day, it's another battle
and I'm not naive enough to think
that I've got this thing licked because I don't
and so maybe there is an equivalent.
Maybe alcoholics go to AA meetings every day
to remind themselves and surround himself with people
to know not to go back on that track, but for me,
I've found a way to keep me where I'm at
and so I think the main message I wanna tell Brian at 20,
at 30, at 40 is that look brother,
this isn't gonna be this way forever, it's not necessarily.
I know you were giving up on yourself, you hated yourself,
you loathed yourself, you didn't believe in yourself.
Your self-esteem was so low because you couldn't control
this nasty clear liquid you'd have
to shove down your throat every night
just to feel whole and I just wanna say buddy,
like it will get better, but you're gonna have
to do things that aren't comfortable.
You're gonna have to go out there
and connect with this world and with the people
of this world that could potentially hurt you
and that you think could hurt you and by doing that,
you're gonna feel finally connected
and when you feel connected, you're not gonna feel
like you have to escape or abuse yourself
or get out of this situation and so that's my advice
to the younger Brian and that's my advice
to any people out there.
I know a lot of you are struggling
with addictive behaviours you know.
Whether it's like I said, drugs or food or sex or retail
or your damn phone.
I know people with 15 news apps
and they are literally addicted to their phone
and they can't set it down.
You know, that's not necessarily any worse
than some of these other addictions.
I mean sure, you're not gonna rot your liver out,
but you might be completely not present
and not dealing with tricky emotions for a long time.
So I just wanna say that that look,
every day is a brand new day.
Try looking at some of your behaviours,
try looking at your fears and ask yourself
why you're of them and go into them
because that's ultimately what it was for me.
I was afraid of people hurting me and of course
so I moved in with Mariana and Gabi.
I was afraid of being connected with humans
that could potentially hurt me
so I had these two little boys that are,
they're so vulnerable.
Anything could happen to them you know,
and I would be crushed and devastated and honestly,
that's what kept me from having kids before
and from even being around humans
'cause I thought they would hurt me
because if something happened to them,
but now I embrace that as a possibility every day
and I recognise that the joy I get
and the connectivity I get by being willing to be hurt
is worth it and and maybe that's
what all of us need to realise that it's okay
to to be hurt, to let our feelings down,
to let our guard down, to be vulnerable,
to go out there and be part of this world.
Life is pain, life is joy, life is all of these things.
If we breathe, we'll find a way through it.
There's a lesson in all of this.
There's a lesson in everything out there
and so that's why I don't necessarily regret
my 30 years of hard drinking.
I mean I guess I do, but it brought me to this place
where I am so clear right now, I'm so focused right now
that every minute of every day is so important for me.
So I could never spend that minute not fully present,
not sober and I could never jeopardise a minute the next day
where I wouldn't be completely present
'cause I feel like I'm on this mission.
I've got to do these incredible things for this world
and I'm so grateful that alcohol showed me that.
So there's my story.
I don't know if that was the best version of what it was,
but this is a little bit of what it was like to be me
those last 30 years and again,
there is hope for everyone out there and yeah,
I thank you for keeping me honest all of you.
You know, being watched by everyone is
just a wonderful thing.
That accountability is just priceless and I always say find
some people that will hold you accountable
because all of you out there have held me accountable
and I know no one's watching me per se
to see if I'm having a drink, but I wanna be able
to tell you this year I'm two years
and next year I'm three years
and the next year I'm four years and the thing is after
about a year, I don't even think about it anymore.
I wasn't counting the days until it's two years now
because now I am a non drinker, that's it
and then I will go on to do other things in the future
and I will become that person
and I think that's the definition of when a habit
just becomes who you are.
So there you go, those are my thoughts on alcohol,
on drinking and on any kind of a state change
that you are not in control of.
Are there times where I would still love to have a drink?
Yeah, there's sometimes social situations
where I'm like yeah, I should be the one,
but the truth is is you can have a hell of a lot of fun
in this life without changing your state
because life is fun.
So now I find I'm actually goofier and sillier
in public that I was even when I was drinking
and so amen to that.
Anyways, wherever you are out there, happy new year.
I hope you can make some incredible moves for 2020
to just become the person that you wanna be.
There's a great line from the movie Wall Street
where a Bud Fox says to his dad,
he said one day you're gonna be proud of me dad
and he says it's yourself you got to be proud of buddy
and that's the truth.
It's you you got to be proud of.
Today I'm proud of Brian Rose and I hope you can take steps
so you can be proud of you.
All right, much love, bye.