I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I looked over there and I said, I hate you. Like legit, I hate you. And you should die, like you should just do it. You've been playing around with the idea for so long. You should just, you should do it. You know, and two weeks prior, I had overdosed on heroin and I could not, I just couldn't figure out how to stop. I wanted to stop desperately. I did. I really did. I remember walking from that apartment that I overdosed in.
I was walking west on 13th Street and I was like, that's it, man. No more. Done. How have you let yourself go? Get to this place. That night I was back at it. And so for those two weeks, I kind of had made a commitment in the opposite direction and said, alright, dude, we're not going to figure out how to end this in a positive way you might as well push as hard as you can till it's over, like till you're dead. Michael Chernow has earned the right to deliver you a message.
And that message is anyone, no matter how dire your circumstances or daunting your obstacles, has the ability to change, to liberate yourself from your past, rewrite the script of your life and transform yourself wholesale one day at a time. I don't want to spoil it, but I will say that this is a powerful conversation about sobriety, about resilience and redemption. It's about humility over ego and the power of consistent small habits to move mountains.
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And I guess the movie pitch of his life might be something like burnt. Did you see that movie burnt meets the karate kid. And today he just lays it all out in an old school round of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. It's layered of course with earned wisdom and just no shortage of practical and potentially life altering takeaways. So wait for the time we shall not because this is a long one and you're going to want to listen right up until the very end. Enjoy.
Awesome to finally meet you. I'm so excited to get into your story. I've been looking forward to this for a while. But I have a confession to make up front and this will give you a lens into just what an alcoholic I am. So over the years, I have been hit up by so many people trying to get us together. Gary V. Lance, everybody's, you got me turn out, you got me turn out.
And there's something in my brain that just says, well, if these people are telling me I have to meet this guy or if this guy is like so keen to meet me, like it had the opposite effect. Michael, it shut me down. Yeah. I think like I need to move in the other direction. And that's my character defect. Like I don't know what that's all about. For some reason, I had like this resistance, but it's contempt prior to investigation, right?
And when Lance was hitting me up and then he was sharing, you know, what you guys kind of did together, I was like, what does, what does the matter with me? Like this guy's awesome. Like it's all on me, dude. So I owe you an apology and also, you know, kind of an immense. Like I think what you're doing is dope. I think your message is super powerful. I think you're an incredible ambassador of what you're trying to share. And I'm excited to kind of hear all about it with you. Well, I'll do.
Thank you, man. You know, you're one of these guys where I've been a fan for a long time and I've been listening for a long time. And I think the thing that we have in common, well, we have a few things in common actually, but being in the world of recovery and having a platform to be able to say, hey, like, not only is there like a way out of this life that you feel like you're locked into, but the other side is like so much better. And here's an example of what that could be.
You know, I think that's a powerful thing. So that connection that I just knew that I had with you was something that I really wanted to, I really wanted to just be able to come here and connect on that. And then also like, you know, you've made an impact on like so many people's lives, whether you know it or not. And I know for guys like us, it's kind of hard to hear that, but you have, you have. Thank you. I'm trying to get better at just taking stuff like that in, but I appreciate that, man.
That means a lot to me. And I know that you probably, as I do, think a lot about how to bring voice to the recovery aspect of our lived experience and how to contextualize it. I know personally that had I known what I know now about what recovery is when I was struggling to get sober or resisting going into the program and raising my hand and asking for help and receiving help, that maybe I would have come in a little bit earlier.
And I think that occasionally pushes up against the tradition of anonymity and what you're kind of permitted to share publicly and what you're sort of chastised for sharing publicly. Do you think about that at all? Like, I just think I'm just sharing my personal experience.
I would never reveal the identity of anybody or talk about details that would be transgressive in any kind of way, but I feel really strongly about sharing this message of recovery because it revolutionized my life, change everything about my life. It gave me the life that I have today. I know that you feel the same. I think it's a controversial question in regards to where we came from, right? For me, there's no controversy.
Every single time I share about my recovery, I get a plethora of DMs from people asking if I can give them a couple of minutes to chat. You know, I remember early on in my career, I'm probably not early on, but I'd say after I opened up my second restaurant concept, I had an opportunity to do a pretty sizeable Wall Street Journal piece. They wanted to talk to me about restaurants in New York and my life story of how I kind of navigated the streets of New York City into the restaurant guy.
And I spoke to my sponsor, which for people that don't know what that means and recovery talk is basically the mentor, right? I called my mentor who's super successful guy, dude, who I love and respect. And I said, hey, you know, what are your thoughts on me sharing about my real recovery story, not just the sober community, you know, just being really real about what happened, you know, what it's like for me. And he was like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. You cannot do that.
You cannot do that. Not only should you not do that because you're a business person and you don't need other people knowing the ins and outs of your personal life because you're, this is a business focusing. And that really turned me off. And I decided from that moment on that this is a huge part of my life without that change in August of 2004 for me. I have zero truly. I believe that.
I mean, the chances of me being alive now with like all the fentanyl and all the stuff that's in the market today are our slimton on based on how I was tracking. I have no problem talking about my journey. And I actually feel like, you know, the literature that we are accustomed to was written, you know, a hundred years ago, essentially. And times were very different. And now a hundred thousand plus people are dying every year in the United States of America from overdoses.
And that's probably a small number in comparison to what actually is happening. But hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of alcohol and drug abuse. It's a real epidemic. I feel like if I don't share about the success of coming through that, I'm not doing what I know I have to do, which is a bit of service. So yeah, I'm on the same page. I appreciate that. I think that there's just an astonishing number of people out there who are suffering.
And despite our sense of understanding that, you know, help is available or there are these meetings and these places that you can go based on the DMs and the emails that I get, there's still a lot of people who are like, what do I do? And I'll always take the time to respond to those DMs because that's my primary purpose, right? And even though people have heard my story or I talk about, you know, I talk about recovery constantly, the questions will still be the same.
Like, here's my thing, like, what would be your advice? The advice is always the same, right? Like, well, I share my experience. I'm not giving advice. That's the other thing that we learn. I'm not here to judge you or to tell you how to live your life. I'm here to tell you, like, here's what worked for me. And if you're interested in that, like, I can hold your hand and walk you through it.
The other thing that I would just add to it is the success rate of people getting sober and staying sober is small, right? However, as a human being, and I don't know if we're born with this predisposition to extreme ways of life, right? I would imagine that there's some level of, I don't know if it's in my genes or it's in my DNA, you know, but I am an extreme human. Everything I do for the most part. If I don't do it, if I don't like it, I'm not going to do it.
If I like it, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go hard, right? To your benefit and to your detriment. This is a super power and it's also you're a Kille-Siehl. But what I learned about once I made a decision to change my life and get sober, I then can apply that ability to commit and discipline towards that commitment to every other area in my life. And that is a humbling power to understand about yourself.
But if you can do that, like I just finished listening to your book and I'm listening to the book and it was so wonderful for me to just know that I'm not alone in this crazy extreme way of thinking. And I have other friends that are also sober and not sober that are also pretty hardcore extremists in things that they want to pursue. But I know for sure that I want to do something and I say it out loud, I'm going to fucking do it.
That was given to me from the ability to get sober and stay sober. Did you go through that experience of being told or chastised for being an extremist and being told time and time again that you need to find more balance? Like yesterday. I just know. Yeah. It's like, okay.
It was a long journey for me to kind of just own that aspect of who I was instead of feeling bad about it or trying to change my fundamental wiring and instead just embrace it and try to channel it in positive directions with some self-awareness. I mean, obviously you don't want to be so out of balance that or so single-minded that you're losing sight of the other things in your life that are important or perhaps more important than the thing you're focused on in the moment.
But once you kind of own it and allow yourself to indulge in it and you direct it with some conscious awareness, it is a superpower and I'm grateful for it. It is what has given me the confidence and the courage to walk the path that I've walked since I've gotten sober. There's just no doubt. And I think also it's what's helped me be a great husband, father and leader, the ability to do what I say I'm going to do.
You know, I've gotten better at this over the years but if I don't think I'm going to do it, I typically won't say it. So if I'm contemplating something that happens to be hard and challenging, which I do all the time, right? Like I'm like, man, I'm going to climb Everest. But like if I'm thinking about something, I choose not to actually speak it. I'll write about it. I'll journal about it. You know, for until I'm ready or not to just go.
But typically the first person I'll tell is my wife and once I do it, once I tell my wife, you know, she is not an extreme human and she rolls her eyes at everything that I tell her. I'm going to do that extreme. But if I tell her, it's happening no matter what. That it happens. Yeah. That's incredible. And the results, you know, demonstrate that. You've had some tremendous successes. You're on to a new venture. We're going to talk about that. But let's add some color here.
Like let's take it back a little bit. I mean, your story is very cinematic. You know, it's part, boor dain, burnt. It's got a little light dusting of Requiem for a dream, a little train spotting in there. And also some karate kid on top of it, right? Like in the screenplay of your life, like let's verbalize the screenplay. You know, opening scene is like your nadir, your lowest moment, like interior apartment, dawn. Like, where's the bottom here?
So the bottom here is August 1, hot New York City summer. I had been up for probably 48 hours. I knew I had work for whatever reason. Throughout the whole time, I've sustained a legitimate job while I was really, while I was, you know, in the depths of my addiction. And did that help to maintain the denial and just empower you to keep going? Tell her to me to let you know. That sense of like I can do it all, I can party all the time, I can show up for work, I can do all this stuff.
Yeah, and it was in the restaurant business. So it's, you know, like, I mean, I was definitely like a, I used to take it further than, but I also worked in an environment that was like somewhat okay. It was a Monday and I had been up for days. And the two guys that I was with kind of called it quits. And I remember very clearly being in my apartment, not wanting to stop what I had in my pocket and in the booze that I had.
And for whatever reason, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I stopped and I looked over there and I said, I hate you. Like legit. I hate you. And you should die. Like you should just do it. Do you've been playing around with the idea for so long? You should just, you should do it. You know, and two weeks prior, I had overdosed on heroin and I could not, I just couldn't figure out how to stop. I wanted to stop desperately. I did. I really did.
I remember walking from that apartment that I overdosed in. I was walking west on 13th Street and I was like, that's it, man. No more done. How have you let yourself go get to this place? And that night I was back at it. And so for those two weeks, I kind of had made a commitment in the opposite direction and said, all right, dude, well, you're not going to figure out how to end this in a positive way.
You might as well push as hard as you can till it's over, you know, like till you're dead basically because you almost died, can't figure it out. You're so close, I really wanted to end it that morning. But I didn't. I blacked out and I came to 16 hours later. I'd slept to work for the umpteenth time. My boss, I called my boss and I said, I'm so sorry, man. He's like Mikey. It's it. Sorry. Like, I love you. You're a great person, but you're dying. He knows around you. You're dying.
I'm not going to allow that to happen on my watch. You're done. You're fired. And I mean, I loved my job. I really did. I loved where I worked. And I said, Frank, please, please give me another shot, man, please, I will get sober. And he said, there's no chance you're bartending or running, you know, bar managing this restaurant in your condition. Just no chance.
But if you show up at the restaurant at eight o'clock in the morning for the next 30 days, I'll consider giving you your job back, but you have to get sober. And I said, whatever, whatever you want me to do. So I began that journey and that was like kind of like a kick in the ass that I needed. I don't know what really was different that day than, you know, all the other times that I'd slept through work and wanted to kill myself and, you know, felt like my life was useless or hopeless.
But I made a phone call to an old friend who was kind of like an older sister to me when I was running around the streets, you know, without a home. I knew that she was dating a sober guy. And I think she was sober at the time as well. And I said, I'm done. I need help. I'm desperate. I need help. And so she introduced me to this guy, Marcus, who showed up? He's the juice press guy, right? Yeah. He was the founder of Juice Brothers. Yeah. Yeah, he showed up for me.
And at that time in my life, I had no idea. I didn't know much about sobriety, you know. But I did know that a lot of people meet in church basements. And I knew that my life was basically over. I was going to be a boring human. I probably wasn't going to hook up with another attractive girl ever again because I'm sober. She'll be alive, but everything's going to be a sheet of gray. Yeah, everything's going to be bleak. I'm going to hang out in libraries, you know.
And this was, this is what I knew. And then I met Marcus. And he was covering tattoos, just like, you know, total badass. And listen to me for the first time ever. I really felt like when I talked to him, it was the first time anybody had ever listened to me. Was that one of the first times you were open and honest about what you were actually doing and took the mask off?
You know, I think that there were probably a lot of times, you know, 36 hours into a run where I'd sit, I'd be sitting with somebody and some weird, cracked out environment, telling them about my life and how I was going to change and how I knew I had a problem. But I think sober, kind of sober, that was the first time that I got real. What's interesting and what I kind of want to explore a little bit more deeply here is the utter, the sheer powerlessness that the addict or the alcoholic faces.
You would just talk about how you have this superpower. When you say you're going to do something, you do it. It's happening. It's already happened. When you direct that laser beam in a certain direction, it's like game over before it even starts. And yet with this problem, with heroin, with drugs, that laser beam was completely ineffective. You said, I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore. And then within the same day, you were doing it.
And I think that that is very difficult for people who are not addicts or alcoholics or don't really understand the true nature and power of addiction to wrap around their brains. Just stop. You're going to kill yourself. You've got to cut this out. And you who are so strong willed, you have this incredible self-will, this well-honed discipline. It still eluded your ability to do it yourself. And I even noticed it when you were talking to Lance.
Lance is trying really hard to understand this disease of addiction. There were moments in that conversation where you could hear his bafflement because he doesn't suffer from it. And so that's why there's something really magical and mystical and powerful about one addict talking to another. So when you sit down across from Marcus, who's sober, there's an energy there where you feel understood because this person has lived it himself and gets it.
And you don't have to explain the confusing complex emotions that are part of that experience. Something that I realized a handful of years ago is that addicts and alcoholics are incredibly disciplined to the drugs in the alcohol. Like as disciplined and as committed as I am to living a well life today. Crafty as well. Insanely resourceful. We'll do anything, right? Like anything. When I listened to your book and you broke that pedal and you were like, I'm done.
And then somebody shows up with a fucking pedal for you. You got back on the bike and you finished the thing, right? Similarly in the world of addiction, you know, when you're in it and you're active, you're in it hard. And something happens like an overdose. And you're like, I'm done. And then show what shows up with another opportunity. And you're like, oh, let's go. Yeah. And with that, all the shame and the guilt which butts up against that sense of being super human.
Like I can work at the restaurant for 48 hours straight and party and do it. Like that idea, like I'm more capable than the average person. And I'm the worst person ever because I can't solve this fundamental problem. I've been away from it for a while now.
And when I think about how catastrophic just a typical day in my life was then, compared to where I live today, if I go back and think about just like a standard day for me then, I would consider that today catastrophic, like what I used to live like and exhausting, just terrible, right? Like from the moment I opened my eyes, which was typically four o'clock in the afternoon, to the minute I closed my eyes, which could be 48 hours later.
The order of events that I would walk through, I can't even believe that I lived a life like that. I think that is very, very difficult for someone who has never experienced it to understand. But in those days, I did not have any ownership of my life. My life had complete ownership of me. And so I've just followed my life around or really kind of dragged me around. And today, I am absolutely 100% driving the ship.
The other wrinkle here is emerging out of this childhood that was rife with chaos and abuse. Like it was a rough situation for you as a kid growing up in New York City. It was. And for you to be this committed family guy in a healthy relationship and being a dad and all of that, like obviously, sobriety is fundamental to that. But there's a lot of other mental health work that has to go into healing that trauma and kind of transcending the pattern that could have been generationally passed down.
So talk a little bit about that growing up. I grew up in a small one-bedroom apartment. My father was an electrician and a lighting designer. And my mother was a secretary into dentist's office. And my father was a hoarder and mentally ill. So my sister and I shared a bedroom. We were at each other's throats. We were very close in age. And I wanted to escape from as early as I could remember. My father was very, very aggressive, very, very abusive. And when he wasn't abusing, he was neglecting.
And my mom, she's just a loving, caring person. But she was also caught in the crossfire of abuse from my dad. My dad is no longer here. And I want to make sure that we get to, I want to share a story, a real sort of groundbreaking story that's happened to me recently and some breathwork stuff that I've done. But I wanted to escape from as early as I can remember. And that meant sleeping as many friends houses as I could from kindergarten on.
But also led me to being sexually abused by a sports coach and a Cubscaught leader, because I really just wanted out. I wanted out. And any opportunity, anytime someone would say, hey, you know, come hang out with me, I did, because it just wasn't safe at home for me, mentally, physically, and now I know spiritually. But yeah, my dad was abusive. I do believe some people were meant to be parents and some people weren't. And my father was certainly not meant to be a parent. I know love to me.
I believe it for sure. However, I don't think he had the capacity to get past his own mental illness and struggles to share that love. And that's why I think today I'm unashamed to say that I put my well-being before everything else in my life, because I watched someone who didn't ever.
And that person, my father, could not get past his own shit to be able to tell me my sister, my mother, that he loved us, because I don't even know if he knew because he was so caught up in his own shit, because he never took care of himself. So I today make myself the priority in my life. And I really do, I make sure that I take care of myself so that I could show up as a father, husband, and a great one, and also a business person. But I would sleep out as many friends as I could.
And I remember, this is like a clear memory of mine at this kid Ross Delefield's house when I was, I think, was probably first grade. And he lived on 79th Street between 1st and New York. And I was at his house. I don't think it was the first time I was there, but he was like a good friend of mine. And his father, Danny Delefield, was like, my ideal dad. I was like, man, this is, I want this guy to be my dad.
And I remember saying to myself, sitting down at dinner with his family, which my family never ever did. I mean, maybe two times in my life did we ever sit down at a table and have dinner in our apartment. And I said, man, I've got to get these parents to love me. I got to get them to like me. Like it's like, that's what I got to do, so that they can go invite me to sleep over here. You know, like, this was like, out of survival. This is what I was thinking at that age, you know?
And that's how I kind of literally all through elementary school, I got to get their parents to like me. I got to figure out a way to get them to like me. And I got really good at that. Super good at getting people to like me. Being the chameleon. Being the chameleon. Being the chameleon. Being the chameleon. People pleasing chameleon. Who do you need me to be right now so I can make sure that my knees are going to get met.
Totally. Yeah. You know, sleeping over at friends houses led to, you know, getting into a lot of trouble early on, you know, at 12 years old. I got put into pain when he mentioned the institution because I attempted suicide, but really it was a cry for help, you know? They evaluated me. I remember my mother was hysterical, but that's when the child services got involved in our family. And, you know, it was illegal for two kids of opposite sex to share such close quarters in a bedroom.
So I had to say that I slept on the couch in our living room. And anytime my father and I would get into an altercation, it was no longer like just arguing at that age, you know, it was now, you know, like full blown battles. I got to a point where I was not fighting back. I wasn't just like taking it on the chin literally. I was fighting back and cops would show up. So finally I was, you know, at 13 years old, I had totally succumbed to addiction.
I, at that point by the end of my freshman year in high school, I was proud too. Like very proud. Like I had found it, you know, I was like, this is me. I'm excited. Like this is it. I'm going to be the drug guy. Was it alcohol first or what was the introduction? It was actually cigarettes first in sixth grade cigarettes. And then marijuana the summer between six and seventh grade. And then a friend of mine went to this like super like small private school. Wow. I was still in public school.
She went to this super small private school for like troubled kids. And that's when party drugs kind of came into my life. And you grew up on the upper east side, like on like first in 87th or something like that. For people that don't know, despite the fact that you're in a one bedroom apartment, it's a prosperous neighborhood. You go a couple blocks over and it's penthouses and you know, like a lot of wells.
So I imagine and everybody in New York City is kind of living together right like you're bumping into those type of kids. 100% and they have all the best drugs. Yeah. And they're ready to buy whatever you're going to sell probably. But it's not surprising like you're this kid who's in a very challenging situation without any tools without any guidance has all of these emotions coming up as puberty, you know, starts to progress, right? What are you supposed to do with that?
And when drugs and alcohol enter the picture like they're the solution like they're the cure to alcoholism and to addiction. And it's important to understand that they serve a purpose and they work. They ultimately, you know, stop working and then they destroy your life. But there is a period of time where this is the medication that you've been looking for your whole life that allows you to finally like, you know, exhale a little bit. Save your own body. Save your own body.
Yeah, they saved my life at that time. At that point in my life, I really do believe that they saved my life. And I don't say that so that people can go out and say, oh gosh, that's what's going to do it for me because ultimately they almost killed me as well. Made me miserable and took everything, every ounce of self confidence and self worth from me, from every cell in my body at the end. But at that time in my life, it was, I'd found what I was looking for.
I needed an escape, an ultimate escape that I had complete control over. You know, I can control everything. I can control the good feelings, the bad feelings, the insecurities, the fear, all of it. I had complete control. And that felt like I had figured it out at that early age. And honestly, it was a lot of fun. I mean, eventually the child service has got deep involved.
I was 15. They had threatened to put me in foster care or told my mother that she'd have to take me out of the house because my father and I were fighting too much physically. I just kind of packed a bag and I said, mom, I'm out, you know, at 15. At 15? Wow. And I was out. I just left and I didn't go back. I moved into NYU dorm with this girl that I had met. And college. Yeah. And this is the other thing.
Like you're a hustler and you're a super handsome guy and you know, wild and free on the streets of New York City, you're going to find a way. I always landed on my feet. Yeah. And like, you know, I landed on my feet in some really amazing places, like lofts and you know, and so, you know, sure. Those first few years when I got out of my parents' house for real and I was working in restaurants and then ultimately in nightclubs, I felt free. I did. And that's not sugar coating it.
That's being the truth. It was so scary for me as a kid. So scary for me. I didn't even realize, even though I've done so much work on myself, the 12 steps and therapies on and off for years and years, you know, I didn't know how scary it was for me as a kid until I had this experience with breathwork that just opened a lot up for me recently. So do you want to footnote that for now? I want to footnote that story. I want to footnote it. I'm out in the street.
I'm working in restaurants and selling a lot of drugs, you know, running the streets, going to nightclubs, traveling up and down the east coast, going to parties and selling, you know, all sorts of drugs and making money in state and high school somehow, you know, I stayed in high school. You still showed up for school. I still showed up for school. I used to seem like school was done with when you were in high school. So it's funny. I mean, I did go to school, but I didn't go to school.
Like I would show up and then I did like barely went to class and I don't know again, like those moments as a young kid having to look at my friends' parents and make them like me, I did the same thing with all of my teachers, you know, like all of them. And I made sure that I just established a relationship with all of my teachers in school so that when I didn't show up, I could come back in and be like, you know, I've got a pretty fucked up situation. I know.
I was just like a master manipulator, master. Even though I'm a good person, I just figured out how to do that in a lot of areas in my life. That also serves you well as a business person as an entrepreneur.
And I would imagine in the work that you've done and maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves, like having to undo that must have felt like a threat to another superpower, which is your people skills and how to kind of gather people together around a particular goal that you're self-interested in, right? Well, you know, it's a thin line. What's authentic and what is a manipulation?
Totally. And I think because of me understanding pretty early on that I had this super power of connecting with people and even though it was a forced thing as a young person, it was a way for me to escape my home. I do believe that is inherently what I'm here to do. It's connect with people. If someone were to ask me, so what is your superpower? I would say it's the ability to connect with people at scale in an authentic way. And I think at that age, I was just learning about that about myself.
And then once I kind of figured it out that I could do this when the drugs and alcohol became part of my life, now I knew I could use it as a weapon, you know. And then once I gave up the drugs and alcohol, I realized that it didn't have to be a weapon anymore. It is who I am. Today's episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So at this point we're officially about halfway through 2024, so I want you to take a moment and reflect back on the aspirations you set for yourself back in January.
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And if you don't want to subscribe, you can still get 20% off of all my favorite products. Livemomentus.com slash ritual. So where do you, the restaurants, enter the picture? Like you get your first job as a dishwasher or something like that? Like how do you enter that world? I get a job as a delivery boy in a vegan restaurant on the upper side called the candle cafe. Just still there. I know, please. I know. Bene, you know, Benay, who is the, Benay. Postus there for a while.
She's not there anymore. Anyway, I've eaten there many times. Bart and his wife, the owners. Yeah. Do I still there? Do I still, did it close? I think they're still there. Are they still there? They still there. I was illegally 12 years old when I got a job there. And I was on roller blades. And this is when roller blades were cool. Uh-huh. Just have to throw that out there.
Delivering videos, VHS videos for couch potato video and my buddy Daniel, who is my agent, you know, is my partner in the meatball shop who I'm staying with now, who is actually he's a year older than me. He was answering phones in the delivery department of this restaurant and said, Hey, man, you should come deliver food for us as well. So delivering videos ended up, you know, getting the job of a candle cafe delivering food for them about six months after that.
I also picked up a weed delivery opportunity. I was delivering videos, food and weed. And it kind of all worked out together, you know, like anybody who was ordering videos, I'd like sort of suss them out and be like, can I interest you in anything else? It's sort of the weed version of Gator. Like, you know, is this a potential customer here? Yeah. In the restaurant business, you called it's called reading your customer, read the table.
Right. So I did that ultimately got a job in the kitchen as a dish washer and then a prep cook and then they put me on the floor and that began my journey in the world of restaurants. And I stayed working in restaurants my whole life until very recently when I launched Creatures A Habit. But I learned that the restaurant made me feel like I could beat myself for the first time. I was like in this place where for whatever reason, my insecurities kind of like dissipated in the restaurant.
Interesting. I wonder if that has something to do with just the chaos of that world and that it has a very unique energy, right? That can make you feel alive if you're somebody who's well suited to that. All the people and there's moving pieces and everything's happening really quickly and you do have to be able to interact with people and communicate with them to get anything done. It's exciting. Well, it's also like you don't spend too much time with anyone person.
So it was like a bunch of many conversations I was having. You're in and out. There's no risk to that. Yeah. I was like, let me help you here. Let me help you over here. And then I find some, but I loved it. I loved it. I loved it and I felt like that was, this is where I was going to hang my hat for a while. And so I worked in restaurants all through high school, got a job in a nightclub, worked at one of New York City's sort of coolest nightclubs in the 90s. Life. It was an amazing place.
I mean, I was the young. I'm sure you saw a lot going down there. I was the youngest. I got a job there when I was 16. I was the youngest person by a long shot that worked at the club and everybody loved that. Everybody loved the cute 16 year old boy. You know, that like all of them. Everyone loved it. I took, you know, absolute advantage of that. And it was a lot of fun. It's so crazy that would never happen now. Oh, yeah. No way.
If somebody saw a 16 year old kid running around the nightclub with a big, you know, it was a bar back. So I'm like running through the club with a huge bucket ice on my shoulder. You know, they call the cops, man. They'd be like, what's happening here? Was that Madonna era? Yeah. It was like 96. Like all of that was happening around that time, right? The light was a little earlier. The light was probably like 93, 94.
This was like 96. But I was going to like the Roxy and limelight and the tunnel in 1993 and 94 when I was 13 and 14 years old. You hear about like the New York City crazy club kids, you know, the movie kids, like I lived that life. Yeah. And that was, you know, a big part of I believe today my success. But going through that and I say this all the time because I believe it to be true. You have to go through what you go through to get to where you're at, right?
I've been asked also a bunch like, do you regret any of this stuff? Because it got really ugly. There's no doubt. I mean, I was selling a lot of drugs, doing a lot of drugs. You know, I got, you know, held up at gunpoint, pissed a whip, duct tape thrown into my bath to robbed. You know, I remember there was a towards the end, I got violent because I was angry and I didn't care anymore. And I'm not a violent person.
But the anger and the lack of self-confidence and self-respect that I had just made my, my fuse so short that I thought everybody was thinking about me, hated me, you know, that self-centered fear. And so if somebody did something that I didn't like, I could be laughing with you one minute. And you said something to me that I didn't like. I would punch you right in the face and I didn't think twice about it. Like a good fellow's moment, like a Joe Pesci sort of like a switch. Not even like that.
Like I'd be laughing with you and then you'd say something to me and I'd just be like, bop, you know, and people kind of were like, who is this crazy dude? I don't even want to be near this guy anymore towards the end. I got 86 from every single bar, you know, East of Allen, West of Essex, South of Houston and North of Canal. Like I literally did that whole square I managed to get 86 from everywhere. And so the last two years were really bad. But I wouldn't change the thing.
I wouldn't change the thing. I don't know if I'd want to go through it again. But I wouldn't change any of it because I really do believe that every moment of it has made me the guy I am today. And I can honestly say looking at you today that I love my life, I fucking love my life. I'm so blessed and grateful for my life.
And if you took a snapshot of my household 13 years old to just a typical Saturday in my household today with my family, you would never, ever, ever say this person has any chance living this life. No way. Zero chance. And I'm not talking about material shit. I'm talking about like this human being going through what he went through here, the picture that's painted does not end here. It ends like this kid in jail or dead.
What was going through my mind and the experiences that I was having in those days? What do you make of that? What do you want people to understand about that and how it applies to their own lives? Very simple. You can allow your past to predict your present or future. You certainly can. All day long you can be a fucking victim and you can allow what happened in your life to completely dictate what happens today or tomorrow or not.
And I've chose to not allow what happened in my past to dictate what I do think, say, or how I conducted my life today. I just don't. But also to own your past and to not deny it, to accept it for what it was and to honor yourself having had to endure it, right? We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. And your life is a miracle and that miracle is built upon sobriety and discipline, but also staying in it until the miracle happens. It's a spiritual program, right?
So, the letting go, the release of that self-will or holding on to that sense of who you were at that time and allowing other people in and making yourself available for something to and something beyond your ability to control as somebody who needed to control their life, that's like the fucking gears upon which that change is constructed. Yeah, I also think that it's no news. Lots and lots of successful people that have done extraordinary things have deep traumas and adversity.
It's just, it's not news. Yeah, it's the engine of resilience if you survive it and you're able to learn from those experiences. And it's the dilemma of every successful person who's emerged out of their version of your experience to then have kids. And you wouldn't wish any of those experiences on your children, you're creating this better life for them. But it's a life that lacks the type of challenges that you had to face to become who you are.
I guess the other piece of what the message is and what I believe I'm here to do today. Anyone can change it anytime. It's never too late. You're never too far gone. You might think you are. You might not believe with every ounce of life in you that it's too late. It's too far gone. I'm too old. I'm on Skid Row. There's no way. It's just, I got it, I got a throne to tell. And it's just not true. It's just not true. You know, something that I did in October with Creatures of Habits.
So October is alcohol and substance abuse awareness month. And in October, I partnered with Goruk and a foundation called the release recovery. Sure. And I worked on this for a long time. I worked on it for about a year and a half, but I had a custom Creatures of Habit Goruk Weight Vest made. Running was a huge part of my life. Running became, you know, just a big part of my life. And I used to do this run in the city that I kind of coined the triple bypass.
But I lived in Williamsburg and I would run over the Williamsburg Bridge down to the Brooklyn Bridge, over the Brooklyn Bridge, back up to the Manhattan Bridge, back up to the Williamsburg and back home. I said, you know, that run was so monumental for me. I remember like probably like the first, within the first year of sobriety, fitness was a huge part of my, I don't know if I'd be sitting here today if I wasn't introduced to fitness right away.
But I remember like it was yesterday, the Williamsburg Bridge, when you're going down towards Manhattan from Brooklyn far on the Manhattan side. Whereas these orange metal like sort of rafters. Yeah. Exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. And I was running over that bridge and the sky was just the perfect blue. It was just the perfect blue. And I'm running over that bridge and I'm looking up and I'm these like red rafters are sort of contrasting against the perfect blue.
And I just said to myself, I can't fucking believe that this is where I'm doing right now. Like I am so lucky. How did I get here? How was I able to go from where I was to where I am now? And I remember kind of just like putting my arms out and being like, oh my God, thank you. Thank you. I'm alive. Not only in my life, but I'm living. And so when I was thinking about what to do, I wanted to do something that was going to make an impact, not like donate money to some charity.
I wanted to be able to say, okay, man, I'm going to get in there. I'm going to try to help save lives in the world of this thing that I know, you know, so well. So I designed this go-rug wayvest and I said, all right, go-rug. We're going to invite as many people as we can to raise money and we're going to do the walk. We're going to we're going to rock the run that I did, you know, for the first many years in sobriety four or five days a week. And so sure enough, we've got the weight vest made.
You know, we raised $75,000, $100 people showed up, flew in from all, you know, all over the country to this thing. And we, why was this? October 14th. Last year. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And we all rocked. And it was so like powerful for me to like know that all these people were rocking this run that I did that when I was really in the early days of doing this.
And because these people coming together to do this, there's a good chance that we can like literally save lives because that money is going towards getting people who are ready and willing to change that don't have the cash to get into treatment. We're paying the whole way. We're just going to pay for their whole entire. Basically underwriting their treatment, right? I mean, release does incredible work. Zach Clark. That's the name of the guy who founded that.
He's really made a huge impact in the sober universe and the work that he's doing in that way in which he's helping people. Really good for him. Yeah. Yeah, he's cool. And a runner, big runner, right? Yeah, yeah. Do you know Dan Churchill then? Oh, yeah. He's coming in here next week. Oh, yeah. Dan's a good friend. And I know that those guys are buddies. Was he part of that rock? Did he do the rock? He didn't do the rock. I know that he wanted to do the rock, but he wasn't able to make the rock.
I think he was, I don't remember. He was traveling somewhere. I love that story. But I want to drill down a little bit more on this notion of empowering people to understand that it's never too late and that you can always change. And I think something to underscore highlight here is within that reality, we can all change. All we have is today. Everybody's got one day. You can't do anything about tomorrow. You can't do anything about yesterday. Just what are we doing right now?
Look at its lost is the patience and the time window. When you Google you or if you Google me, it makes it look like these transformations took place relatively quickly. And it wasn't the case for me. It wasn't the case for you. So I want to go, and this kind of plays into the fitness aspect of your story. Like those early days when you met Marcus, you're in the program, you get introduced to fitness and martial arts.
But there's that period of time, at least for me, I'm curious if this was your experience. All you're doing is what you can control that day, which is basically I'm going to wake up. I'm going to go to a meeting. I don't know what my life is right now. I'm in this weird purgatory state where I can't see my way forward. I know I can't go back to what I was doing before. But I barely know what I'm going to be doing today.
Other than I'm going to feed myself, I'm going to try to hit the pillow without taking a drink or a drug. I'm going to talk to people in the program and maybe take care of myself in the gym or something like that. And it's a great time. It's sort of like your version of that is very much a montage in this movie and this screenplay of like doing, you know, doing kickboxing and going to meetings and stuff. And when you're in it, you don't know if that's ever going to end.
You might think, well, this is my life now. It's never going to change, right? If you told me when I got sober, if you told me that my life would be what it is today, then I would have zero. Like I wouldn't hurt you. I wouldn't hurt you. Yeah, I wouldn't hurt you. I mean, I look around. I'm like, what is happening? What is happening right now, Michael? How is this even real? Right. Totally. Like if you knew, like do you understand? And it's not because I planned it.
I mean, you're very directed, all of that sort of, you know, I can be a lot of discipline too, but I can promise you that what's happening right here right now was not the result of some plan that I hatched for myself. Totally. Yeah. I'll tell the story because I think it's a good story and I think it'll help sort of, you know, paint a picture of a few things that happened later on. But anyway, I reached out to Karen and that's the woman who would, you know, sort of introduce me to Marcus.
She was the woman that took me in when I was younger. I was working at life. She was bartending. I was bartender. She kind of was like an older sister type. When I knew I, when Frank said you got to get sober, you got to show up at the restaurant in the morning. She was the next person I called, called her, she called Marcus, Marcus showed up and listened to me for the first time.
He basically said you're going to go to this meeting and then after this meeting, you're going to come down to this Moitai kickboxing gym and meet me there. I had never heard of Moitai before, right? Like, the only thing that I know about kickboxing is like the terrible fights I'd had in the street had nothing to do with kickboxing, but I knew that there was some sort of physical component to it. Did you play sports as a kid? I did. I did.
So when I was young, I played like Phil and love with roller hockey and then ultimately high-socky. But it was short lived, you know, because things got ugly pretty, pretty quickly for me in, you know, 12, 13 years old. That's when I stopped. But I just listened to what Marcus had to say. So I went to a meeting that morning.
I went to the Moitai gym right after that meeting and I met him down there and there was another guy there, Gavin, who's also a very good friend of mine and he would, they would discuss with both sober Moitai guys. And they basically said, look, dude, here's the deal. You're young, 23. You've got unbelievable life ahead of you. You don't think so. We know because they'd already been sober for like 10 years. They're like, you don't think so, but we know so.
So you can either listen to what we have to say and do what we have to say to the tea or not. And if you listen to what we have to say, they weren't playing, you know, they weren't bullshading with these or suggestions. These were, they weren't doing that. They were like, this is what you got a fucking do. This is it. If you listen to this and you do these things, you will have a life beyond your wildest dreams, period, we guarantee. And I'm like, I mean, these guys look cool. They look tough.
I'm like, okay, fuck it. And you needed guidance and some strong male rel I hated authority. I hated authority and I still struggle with male authority still. At that time, I don't know what, outside of the fact that I thought they were cool, I don't know what propelled me to want to literally listen to every word that they said and hold onto those words like it was the last thing I did. But basically they wrote a plan for me. And I don't know. And I don't know. And I don't know.
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