Let's continue now, Billy Cunningham, the Great America and one of the great aspects of our human life, just the mental side of things, which often dominates the physical side. We spent disproportionate amounts of money on physicality, lack of resources, and a lot of condemnation of mental difficulties. And one of the persons whose lives have crossed with mine is Brandon Sajo, who began in Cincinnati as a sportscaster. He
kind of filtered away a little bit. He worked here, worked with me a little bit, but then he shall I use the term, resurface a few years later with the Mental Game podcast headquartered in la and once again Brandon, soho, welcome to the Bill Cunningham Show. And first of all, Brandon described to the American people how our paths crossed. At one point, many years ago.
I was a young cub at seven hundred doing the America Trucking Network overnight and so I think I filled in maybe once or twice during your show and then the Sunday show. So I was just a little guy trying to figure out the media world.
And from that point you went to television, and then after that something happened you worked at local television stations here in Cincinnati. What happened? What was the break in your life that changed it fundamentally?
Yeah, I mean I had struggled with my mental health behind the scenes since being you know, a freshman at LaSalle back in two thousand and seven, and struggled with alcoholism and depression, suicidal thoughts off and on, and then got to this rock bottom during twenty twenty one. Look, you know it, we lose everything. So for the Bengals to go to the super Bowl and you see, to be in the playoffs, it was huge. But behind the scenes, I lost three family members. I lost my relationship the
woman I thought I was gonna marry. I had all this pressure on me at work and I had no other choice but to ask for help or I, you know, wouldn't be alive. And so thankfully I had the courage to do that. But man, I just thought alone didn't want to live anymore, and without asking for help, I'm probably not here having this conversation with you.
Man, well, as alcohol is a medicine for you, yeah, it.
Was, like I call it, it would numb the pain. You know. I lost, you know, my grandpa to addiction. Never met him. He was, you know, passed before I was born. My dad was an alcoholic. I just, yeah, it's something that I turned to. I call it autopilot. You know. I think you can joke. I love I love all the places down things, but you can joke with a lot of those people down there. It would see me until three or four in the morning, five
nights a week, my entire in Cincinnati. It's really sad to look back at.
So you were in a dark, lonely place, no one to turn to. Alcohol was like a bottle, it was like a crutch. It was like a medicine. You were severely mentally depressed. How close were you to suicide?
I mean that walks home almost every night to where I lived in Covington, on the Robling Bridge. I mean I sat there fifty to seventy five nights thinking about you know, and in it. I had many nights of I mean, I wrote goodbye letter, I had a lot of you know, Willie. If I didn't have the courage to talk to my mom that night, the final night on that bridge, i'd probably go. So yeah, I was. I was as closed as to gets man. I haven't
told this story really at all. There was a night that I was calling people to say goodbye, and the first person I called was George Vobil and God bless him. He came to my house at two am that with me in my living room and talked me kind of off that ledge. I will preface it with being the good man that he is. He saw a bottle of Burdon across the hall on my bar and said, hey, can I have a sip while I sit here and
listen to you? And I said absolutely no. It's hard for me to laugh about this stuff sometimes looking back, but you know, yeah, I was at I was at rock bottom, and I don't want to be here anymore. Man. I'm about as close as you can get, and I thank God every day that I'm still alive. You.
We're working a Channel five with Shri and with others since So at this point, what were the pressures that you felt that you could not deal with? Many can shed them like water hitting at Duck's back, others it soaks in. What did you perceive is the problems in your mind? Brendon say o that that we're on that were insurmountable.
I think for me, the biggest thing was feeling alone.
You know it.
Growing up in Cincinnati, the most common thing that people do is marry their high school sweetheart, had the perfect house, stay on the east side or west side, and live a happy life. And you know, that's what I wanted, and it wasn't what I had. You know, I was single a lot of my life, dealing with some relationships stuff. And you know that that breakup in that moment, along with losing you know, family members, including my cousin Ben, who had a heart attack at thirty one. He's basically
my older brother. But I think the relationship falling apart, that's what got me the most. And I felt like, as a man, you know, I'm supposed to be married and be a father one day, and I want to find this stuff and what is wrong with me? Why get it? And so yeah that I thought I'd always be alone, and yeah, it just made me feel like I wasn't good enough for anyone, even myself.
You know, men aren't supposed to cry, and men aren't supposed to show emotion, and men are supposed to be harry s alphas. And when things don't turn out that way, some sink into a bottle. Some sink into drugs and you eventually checked into a mental hospital. Is that correct?
Yeah, the Lender Center of Hope and Mason, which has saved my life in so many lives people, not just in Ohio but all across the country. It really is an amazing.
Place what happened there.
So I don't know about you, WILLI I'm gonna guess that you had the same concept of a mental hospital that I did at the site ward where they throw someone in a white, padded room and they cry for hours and then when they're done crying, they're all better and they go home. That's not what it is at all. I would say about ten to fifteen percent of the time was one on one therapy with my therapist or
a psychiatrist. But you know, ninety percent of the time with a classroom just like you know we had in high school with twenty to twenty five people eighteen to eighty years old, every color, creed, job background. We just had this one thing in common. We didn't want to live anymore. Get help. And that was the first time
I realized I wasn't alone. And it was the first time that I learned what grief was and how to deal with these intrusive thoughts and what to look for and how to cope and what's healthy and unhealthy that obviously alcohol is going to hurt me, But how do I open up to someone being a man? I mean, I know we can't save the word on the radio, but I'll never forget one of these you know, therapists teaching these sessions going Brandon, w aren't you opened up?
Why aren't you telling your story? And I said, well, as a man, I've always just been kind of a blank, you know the B word. I've always been weak, I've been emotional as a man. And she stopped me right there and she said, you know what, that's the problem with the stigma with mental health, but specifically men's mental health, and you're not that. And that's what starting to have those conversations with the other men in the room, that's
what opened the door for me to get help. But just learning things that I had never learned before, like you know, recognizing when you're struggling, when you're not being yourself, that's a huge red site. Really. My job, similar to yours, was to interview these big stars and to be on the field with Burrow and Chase and be on TV every day living out that dream job I had, you know, in my hometown. I hated my job all of a sudden, And it wasn't because of Channel five. It's because of
my mental health struggles. I hated working out. I was sleeping into one in the afternoon. I was drunker than a skunk every night. I mean, I wasn't being myself, and so those things add up and you getting a point where that's all I knew to do was to ask for help.
But for Lender Center, but for your mother, but for George Fogel, you'd be at the bottom of the Ohio River.
I think, so, man, that's a that's a tough way to ask it. I uh, I'm thinking, I'm you know, I'm a visual storyteller. So yeah, I think, yeah. You know what's crazy about that is that we are a voting family and my mom didn't know any of this stuff, and we would always anchor next to the Roebling to watch and you know, the fireworks for red games, or to hang out on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and so, uh yeah, I think of you know what's tough too
that I think it's Tom Greshen. I think a guy that we lost like him, Corey Cunningham, we went to UC with me, played football for the Giants. We lost him last year. And because people were scared to open up and they thought that this was the end of the world and they were always going to feel these feelings. So I'm one of the lucky ones man, and uh, it's been Yeah. I don't know what would have happened, but I don't think I would have been a lot.
Friend. Say O, how long were you at the Lender Center and how did your journey go from there in Mason to Los Angeles with your podcast, explain that.
Yeah, I was there for two weeks, and you know, care ranges between what your needs are, how you're struggling. I was in the partial hospitalization program, so I basically went to the hospital every day like kind of like a nine to five job. And because I wasn't, you know, maybe in a spot where they thought I could harm myself at home, I was able to go home every night. But it was the first time really that like I got to focus on me, I have to worry about work.
And Channel five was amazing with their support my coworkers. You mentioned Shari and George, but also the people up top that like, really let me have that time off. And so when I got back to work, I realized I didn't have that same passion for mental health or for sport supporting anymore. I had this new passion for mental health. And I texted my boy Sam Hubbard and said, Hey, can I try this idea out with you? He ended up becoming the first guest and without saying none of
this is possible, And man, it started. You know how it is, you get some knows from people you want to interview, or from agents or managers or people behind the scenes that are controlling the narratives, and I just kept taking no. Eventually started getting more yeses with people like Ricky Williams or Kate Flannery from the office. And it's built where I never thought in a million years I'd live in Los Angeles and be able to share these stories to some of the biggest stars like Terry
Crews or Kirk kurb Street or whoever you pick. And my goal, man is not to get like famous and to not be bigger than Cincinnati. Cincinnati made me who I am. And I'm going to the Reds game. You know when they were in town doing this series this week. It's like, I love Cynthy and they support me so much. But the more we can grow, the more we can save lives and help people. So it's been quite the journey.
It's my favorite thing, man, is I get to go to schools I go to I was just at LaSalle High School, my alma mater, last week of my story, and it broke my heart that we lost someone to suicide Jonah last year. Sarah Lease, you're a good friend. It's her cousin and I got to, you know, talk with them and their family. And my goal is to save lives. A chance that I get to now because of a podcast. Go to schools, go to companies, go
to cope just shoot, you know. Joe Burrow's parents helped me bring thousands of people to an arena at LSU to talk about mental health. I never thought this would be it, but man, it's a special purpose that I found through that struggle and a brand.
I've seen you in arenas with ten thousand people, and the good you have done is really unbridled. You could not have imagined when you were a line producer here that with me, that you would be in ten years filling up arenas at LSU. That would be impossible. In my life, I can recall going to Longview State Mental Hospital. My father's brother, his name was Bob, and we'd go maybe four or five times a year to visit him at Longview State Mental Hospital. I believe he was there
most of his life. They and he never got out of the mental hospital. And from that, I was scared to death of eventually getting into an orphanage because my father is alcoholism. The fact we had nowhere to go. When I was a little boy, my mom hooked me up. We hooked up with my mother's sister and her name was Annette Arling House, and I could not imagine what would have happened to us in Deer Park, a young
mother with four kids and the father's an alcoholic. He's gone, never came back again except for my beloved aunt and at arling House, we all moved in with her. So living in one house was their mother, another sister, my mother a Nette, that's four here comes four more kids. And I was scared to death that's something that happen to me, that i'ding up in an orphanage or ending up in a mental hospital, and So when I got my law degree, the first thing I wanted to do
was work with mental health. So I spent years down in the Hamliny County Probate Court handling mental health hearings to help individuals with mental problems that did not have to be institutionalized. Now there's been a metamorphosis with treatments. Are you aware of the last how this was dealt with, say, thirty to forty years ago, as compared to is being dealt with today? Are you aware of the journey that's been made and how far we've come yet how far we have to go?
Yes? And one, thank you for having that personal vulnerability on air right now, but also the work that you've done that to help change that stigma, to break it not just by words but also by actions. I think I have seen it change, you know, I've My mom, for instance, was on medication and therapy for fifteen years. I didn't learn any of that stuff until I told her I was suicidal three years ago, because we didn't talk about this stuff. My father lost his father in
his twenties. We didn't talk about any of those emotions because he was taught never unpack it. So it's completely changed. I want to make sure, I say this where you can have all of the amazing support from your family, friends, therapist, anyone that wants to help you. But if that person in the mirror doesn't want to make that change, and isn't willing to ask for help and be vulnerable and shed those tears and be emotional, especially as a man, it's never going to change. And so I've lost, Like
I mentioned Corey, I've lost my friend Mike. I can go into my phone and show you messages from these guys telling me how much they loved what I was doing with mental health and how you know they want me to check in or they would check in on me. I was blindsided by it, man, And so I've got two friends to suicide in becoming the mental health guy. So if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. But at the end of the day, that person in the mirror has to want to make that change.
How are you doing now? Is it over? Is an ongoing struggle? Have you put it away in a safe and locked it and never getting out again? Does the monster of mental health still stalk you a little bit?
I would say that my life I'll tell you this, Willy Am. I love myself and I'm happy with myself for the first time ever in my life over the past year and a half. So I don't think I'll ever get to that rock bottom again. But mental health isn't a fight you win. It's a fight that you battle. So there's days that might be tougher than others. But I really don't think I'll get back down to that past. But that's because I went to therapy. I still go
to therapy. I learned those things in the hospital in Mason, and so yeah, I think I'm happy, like genuinely, I am okay on my own being alone. Do I still dream of one day having a wife and kids and maybe moving back to Cincinnati and living out that dream that I wanted since I was that weird, romanticized fourteen year old freshman seeing everyone else dates, you know, our high school sweethearts, you know in Cincinnati. Yes, but that's not what's making me depressed every second of every day.
Because I don't have that partner or I don't have that family. That's the big difference for me. I really really do feel like I'm in the best place, and it's because I'm serving a purpose, you know. You know, I grew up, you know, with a dream to be a sports supporter. But at the end of the day, I want to just tell stories and help people. And I feel like I'm doing that the best way I know how to.
Now, you know, I told you off the air, Brandon, I'm glad you found your life's work. I think what sportscasters do is very important. No problem there with Charlie Clifford and others, no difficulty get about it. But that's not for everyone. And one of the great things in life is to have individuals like Brandon Sajo who realized, look the course I'm on, it's not the one for me. And I'm so glad you didn't jump off that bridge. I'm glad George Vogel was there. I'm glad your mother
was there. And now for those who want to get involved, as the Mental Game podcast by Brandon Sajo, s like in sam Aho, you've been out of the media in this town for about five or six years, but you're not out of our hearts because we remember at the time you were struggling. And I'm so glad you found the good place. And Brandon say hoo. You're always welcome here, and if you ever come back to this market and want to do something publicly, you have my phone number.
Let's work together and may God bless you and God bless America. Brandon say Ho, thank you for the man that you are today.
Thank you so much, WILLI, and just don't worry. Everyone can get help. You're not alone.
Thank you all right, Brandon, thank you very much. Let's continue with more news coming up at your home of the Reds and Bengals. News Radio seven hundred W Autumn