Tommy Rosen's Comeback Story

00:00:09 Speaker 1: All right, welcome back everybody. We're here for another episode of Comeback Stories, and today's guest is Tommy Rosen. Tommy's a yoga teacher and addiction recovery expert with thirty one years of sobriety. He spent the last two plus decades immersed in yoga recovery wellness and holds certifications in both Kundalini and Hatha yoga. And he's the author of Recovery two point zero, an amazing book by the way, It's moved beyond addiction and upgrade your life. He's also the founder and host of Recovery two point zero Beyond Addiction online conference series and leads Recovery two point overtreats. Tommy also presents regularly at yoga festivals and conferences where actually is where I connected with him, most recently at the Teleide Yoga Festival where we made this interview happen. So welcome Tommy, good to have you. I am so delighted to be here with both of you. Thank you. So we like to usually just dive right in and we want to know what was growing up for you, Like m I grew up in New York City. I would say, materially speaking, very privileged. Uh, and it really which is incredibly privileged. A lot of opportunities, um, a lot of gifts that came with, you know, a family that came from money and from from opportunity and possibility. And I would also say that I'm a good I'm a good case study for you know, the financial side of things not necessarily being the only important thing in life, you know, and it's not the thing that ultimately makes us. But I grew up in a sort of a home that was filled with a lot of turmoil, a lot of confusion, a lot of tension, a lot of emotional pain and suffering. And I'd say that the thing that I took away primarily from that would be a state, a low grade, low grade state of anxiety. Now, the way that played out for me in my life was athletics and hyperactivity movement. My response to being nervous or anxious was to stay on the move, keep moving, keep your keep yourself occupied at all times. On top of sort of a confusing environment that I was in, I also fueled my hyperactivity with a really, really terrible diet. And I can't overstate how addicted I was in my childhood to sugar and really really bad food, which which made the feeling of being in my own skin very very uncomfortable. So there's a psychological piece to this, but there's also this physical piece of you know, how are we treating ourself? And like I said, I just I just stayed on the move, you know, and I baseball was my life growing up. I mean I was like, like you, Donnie, I was very much intending to be a professional ballplayer. I don't know if you actually even knew that, but that was a huge, huge part of my story growing up. And what ended up happening for me was that when the distractions that I had been used to in my childhood, which were movement, constant movement, and also there was television and movies of really hours and hours of that and really really bad food, when those things weren't enough, it was sort of a natural move into drugs and alcohol. It was it was, you know, I can remember the first time I ever smoked cannabis was like the first time I ever had a deep breath in my life. Actually felt like I had taken a deep breath for the first time in my entire life. And I liked the fee feeling of it so much. I liked the feeling of ease and relaxation that it brought to me. I had a sense, as I had mentioned, of of sort of underlying anxiety through my childhood, and all of a sudden that anxiety was to a great extent relieved. And so I had found something that calmed my hyperactive mind, that calmed my hyperactive spirit, that made it possible for me to slow down just a little bit. And so in the early days, you know, that substance in particular, cannabis really served me, really really serve me. And it's such a crowd favorite, you know. You know when there's sort of two or three types of people in the world with regards to cannabis. There's they're the people who smoke cannabis, and they don't want to hear anything from you that that could challenge the idea that that that that's a great choice in your life, no matter what lifelong choice you know. Or the other types are people who like me, I've sort of been there and have had an experience and really experienced what it could do for you and also got to experience what it could take from you, and then ultimately put it down, and then there's another group of people are sort of in the middle between, and they're like, you know, they have a sneaking suspicion that this isn't bringing them to their greatest possible expression of their life. But at the same time they're not sure they want to let it go and move beyond that. But maybe I'm getting a little ahead of the story. But my childhood was in very many respects, it was beautiful childhood. And then I had a lot of opportunities. But this inner sense of anxiety was always there as long as I can remember, and my behavior was in part a result of dealing with that anxiety which was just there. And I can I can say this now I'm fifty five years old. I can say this looking back at an incredible life overcovery. I can say this very clearly to you. But it was not clear to me in my childhood, or in my teens, even in my twenties, not clear yet what was up with me? Why was it so hard and so uncomfortable in many respects to be me? At the same time, if you met me when I was younger, you you probably would have liked me. I was really a very gregarious person who woke up on the right side of the bed, like I really enjoy being alive, even though I can tell you there was that low, great sense of anxiety there. I wasn't a depressive, I wasn't somebody who wanted to leave now. I wanted to experience relief, and I wanted to experience adventure, and I wanted to experience life in its fullest. And it's a great irony of my life that I had to go through so many forms of addiction to find myself on a path of recovery that would actually give me the things I had always been looking for. When you look back into your younger years, childhood, what would you say, is like an early memory of pain that you can remember, but you know, there's a sense, there's some graphic things which I'd rather not bring up here, you know, but I could say that for me, there was a sense of something's wrong, but you don't quite know what it is. It's always around, It has no name, nobody's talking about it. We don't have tools or a way out of feeling this way. Think of it like a scratch that you can't itch, an itch that you can't ever scratch. You know, you you you feel the itch, but you can't get deep enough down into it. And so I could tell you about specific instances of you know, difficulty between me and my parents or my sisters, and the very difficult home dynamic that we lived in, but really what it was just an environment where there was a sense of something that that didn't go well, something you know, had happened, and we were living out sort of the aftermath of whatever it was that happened, and we were trying to figure out a way through that. And I know that sounds super cryptic, not really clear, like not a specific example, but that was the feeling. That was the feeling, you know. And I think what I was after, what I've always been after, is a connection and love and authenticity coming from my center, you know, and everything in my life has been sort of an effort towards realizing those things in my life. And when I was a kid, I just there really was no no shot at it. I didn't have the tools or the means at my disposal to to figure out the things that I would later be able to figure out through yoga and meditation and spirituality and connecting you know, with other people on a similar path. So I don't know if that's such a good answer your question, but that's that's that's what I wanted to say. You know, it really was more of a feeling than specific instances. Does that make sense to you? Did you ever? Did you ever come to understand what actually did happen and why it was, like why you didn't feel safe or why why you felt like you were made be walking on eggshells? Yeah? So, so people always want to have a story, you know, here's my story, here's what happened to me, you know, And I think at a certain point it's important to have a story and to tell the story, but not to be gripped and as my friend says, not to cement the story into reality. In other words, I don't want to live at the mercy of my story. So what is the pain? Where does it come from? What is that disconnection, that anxiety? What had happened? If you really want to understand any family dynamic, you won't be able to understand a complete picture unless you go back many, many generations. You start to see patterns through a family, ways that people behave a dishonesty, hear a betrayal, there inability to really connect in a meaningful way, really really poor lifestyle practices. You'll find a lot of addictions in my family, a lot of a lot of mental health issues. I think almost in any family. If you really go back, you start to see, wow, look at these patterns. Well, the pain that you want me to talk about now from my childhood is really the pain in my grandparents childhood and my great grandparents childhood and my great great grandparents childhood. And when I look back at those stories, man, their childhoods were so messed up, it's it's like it's And why it's important for me to say this is that idea that something happened to me has been an idea that I've had to get over in my life, no matter. And I'm not saying that. You know, there's some people where some horrendous things have taken place in their life. People have and sexually abused, people have been physically abused, people who have been manipulated and controlled in terrible ways by people who are supposed to take care of them. And those are difficult situations. And I have my own story of that, and everyone has their own story of that. My question to me and to you and to us is we're now adults and we don't want to be defined by those things that happen to us. And so the story that I need to tell now is a story of healing, a story of understanding, a story of forgiveness, a story of compassion. I have to look back and understand. If I feel like my grandfather, for example, behaved in a terrible and horrible way in my family, I want to try to understand that rather than feel like I'm a victim of circumstances that took place before I was even born. That it's almost like my my inheritance. So we all inherit the trauma of our parents. I believe that we inherit the trauma of our parents, and so our parents were not able to work something out. It got passed down, and now it's our job. We got to work it out now. And this is what I think. Recovery from addiction is recovery from someone's history. It's a it's a broader conversation than some people want to have. But when you asked me to tell you you know what had happened. You know what had happened. Generations of unconsciousness, not bad people, well meaning people, unconscious causing harm, setting into motion a train of circumstances beyond their understanding that would end up coming down to my generation, and my reaction to it all would be Wow, I'm in pain. Wow, I don't like this. Something's wrong. It's uncomfortable to be here. I'm going to have to work this out. And the way I originally decided to work this out was through drugs and alcohol. I'm going to work this out, That's what I'm going to do. These are my chosen medicines. But at the time it just felt like expiration or experimentation for me. I just wanted. Like I said, I wasn't a depressive type. I've never been a suicidal type that's been in my family. But that didn't get past to me. I've been on the anxious side when I struggle in my life, even now as a fifty five year old man, when I get off center, I'm not off center in terms of depression. I'm off center in terms of anxiety. It's the thing I need to watch for. And all my practices today, my yoga, my meditation, the way that I communicate with people are about bringing that disease into balance. So what happened, you know, unconsciousness happened, and uh and and it's here and we have to we all have to work it out now in our lifetime, so we're not under the weight of, you know, that unconsciousness for a whole lifetime. We want to we want to get beyond that. And I think that's where yoga comes in. And we talked about that, that place of unconsciousness. I feel that so so deeply, especially with my addiction journey. UM and when you talked about how you with drugs and alcohol, you were working it out. I thought that that was what I was doing on my journey as well, when really, like I always say, I wasn't dealing with what was there. I was honestly like I was delaying it, like until the point that I really decided to want to deal with it and want to face it. But I was unconscious of that. That was the subconscious choice that I was making on an everyday basis. And I also wasn't conscious of the fact that, you know, I'm on this earth for a reason, like I have a purpose, Like there's a reason why I'm not like anybody else. Because in my journey, I felt like I was so different and so you know, just not like anybody else that I had to find a way to fit in and be normal. But I wasn't conscious of the fact that that was my gift, that was the way that I could truly impact the world through my purpose if I could, you know, find a way to cope with everything that came with it. But I couldn't do it. I felt that drugs and alcohol were the only way. And you know, it led to ten years. If I look back from fifteen to twenty five years old, there was no consciousness there. There was no true awareness of self there, there was no true awareness or desire to heal there. It was just floating. It was just lifelessness. And you know, I like to ask you, can you walk us through those days of your addictions, of the emotions you felt, maybe the lifelessness, the emptiness that you felt, and lead us up to the point where a shift began to happen. Yes, I love that question. I just want to say about your own experience that that's such a beautiful thing you just voiced that you you had there was a moment in in your life where you were experiencing that same unconsciousness that I'm I so strongly relate to in my own life, much of it, and then you you awoke to a greater purpose and a greater reason to be here. I would say my worst days in my life have been the days where I felt an absolute disconnection from purpose. There seemed no reason to be here. I have no idea how to plug in to this world or to engage in any kind of meaningful way in what's happening here. How you know, I know, somewhere inside, I know I have gifts, but I don't know how to use them. I have no sense of what to do, and so very painful to be in that place, and so in my addiction, you know. So we know that drugs and alcohol as an example of addictive substances or a choice, an addictive choice, we know that those are chosen solutions to a core problem, a fundamental problem that was there long before those substances came in. So that means addiction, or the causes and the conditions for addiction are not related to a particular substance. They're not related to a particular behavior. Even the addiction itself was there for me. It was the sense of anxiety that I've been describing and all the feelings that go along with that. So when we do engage in a substance or a behavior, an addictive substance or behavior, and it goes into full blown addiction, we now have to remove that substance or behavior just so we can get back to the pole position to be able to do the actual work or that was necessary in the first place. We didn't know that because we chose these substances to help us along, and they did help us along. And I mean that not even facetiously that like, I don't regret finding cannabis when I was thirteen, that that was what was available to someone like me at that time, and it served me up until a point. The thing that people I love for people to try to understand this idea that addictions not related to the substance or the behavior. It's a state of being of such discomfort that one wants to alter one's relationship with reality, with the present moment, with your whatever you're doing. So for me, the addiction begins not when I started smoking cannabis long long, long time before. But I think you're asking me to talk about substance based addiction, which was one of the first ones I really came through full bore, and it just it went from cannabis, alcohol into you know, a big, big journey with psychedelics in my life, and then descending from that much more at what I would go a much more exalted experience into cocaine addiction and crack addiction and heroin addiction, and it becoming just you know, the kinds of addictions where Okay, now I'm involved in addictive behavior that can kill me any given day. I could die from this any given day, and I can't. You know, I cannot go forward in my life until these substances are removed from my life. But even when I knew and I didn't know, I want, I want to talk to you about denial. You know, sometimes we deny I don't have a problem, I don't have a problem, and I did plenty of that. But I knew once the cocaine and heroin came into this picture, I knew, and I knew this was going to end badly. This going in a good direction here, this is going to end badly for me. And I know that I'll never ever be able to live anything like a decent life if I don't remove these substances from my life, but I have no idea how to do it, and I'm I'm so weakened in my spirit and I'm so weakened in my body. I'm so confused and frightened in my mind that each day all you could think to do was I have to get high. I have to get high to relieve this. It's too much of a burden. And at that point, it wasn't even that life were the things that had happened to me were such a burden anymore. Now it was just the self imposed burden of drug addiction. And that was me, that was on me, That wasn't related to anybody else per se, you know. So that's where it went. That was my bottom with substances was when it happened early for me. So I got to twenty two years old, and that's when I reached my bottom and picked up the phone and asked for help. I know you had a one year relapse in your story, and I bring that up because I when I share my story, I had three years sober and went back out for about a year. And that's such an important part of my story because it's reminded me today that the work will never stop. And I needed that to happen because if it, you know, we were to happen today, there's just so much more at stake. So I'm so grateful for that part. So was your bottom before the one year one year relapse? Or was it after that? So that that bottom I just described at twenty two was the first bottom I reached in my life where you know, I would describe a bottom as a moment, a sacred moment where you're finally ready to tell the truth. And I was finally ready to tell the truth, and the truth was I can no longer live the way I've been living. My methods have failed, but I don't know how else to live. I'm literally cornered. I'm stuck. I don't have a next play here. So that's the bottom. And the thing that people in recovery really share is that they share having experienced that moment, and they share that moment that that's sacred place of recognizing that your efforts to that point have failed and something else was going to be necessary. I got sober the first time then in drug and alcohol treatment, I went to Hazelden. I had a great experience there. I stayed sober out of treatment for a year. So I was a year sober at which point I relapsed and I went back out and I was in and out and out, in and out for another year after that. At the end of that year, and there's a lot to tell and a lot to learn about relapse and what I had experienced in that year. But when I got to the end of that year, I reached a second bottom, and I would say that it was almost a more important bottom to reach. And it's the bottom where you recognize that you can't float through life, like being abstinent from drugs and alcohol wouldn't be enough. That some kind of work to heal yourself, to learn and to grow spiritually. I say, you need to wake up, but you also need to grow up. So all of that work had not yet been done. And I but I reached the second special bottom. Will call it the bottom of being sick of yourself. Before I was just desperate. That was the first bottom, the bottom of desperation. This was the bottom of I'm sick of myself. I need help, I need a way through this. And that was a powerful bottom. I got sober that day June twenty third, nineteen ninety one and I've never had to drink or use any drugs again. Now that's a beautiful thing, and that's a miracle for someone like me. And remember it, The whole point was that addiction was not the substance. It was something underneath that had been bothering me. So now I would have to get to that work. Now I would have to heal these questions, heal this intergenerational trauma that we've been speaking about, and I would have a chance to do it. And so now I'm thirty one years into that experiment, and I brought in twelve step work, a lot of therapy and therapeutic work, dedicated my life to yoga and meditation, and it's just been the most magical, unbelievable journey. I just can't believe what's possible on this path. It's hard to express. Nobody would believe me, you know, if I try. You just have to come and hang out with me for a little while and see that I'm not lying to you. That we're having a really good time out here, you know. And and it's such a blessing. And I just say thank you all the time every day, and it's not to say that there aren't challenges in my life. Of course, there are good days and there are challenging days still, of course that's just being human. But I'm so grateful to be alive, so grateful to be sober, and to be in recovery and to have a spiritual path and to have practices and to be you know, talking to the two of you today, I'm just delighted to speak with you about this topic. And we all stand as example as a victory over something that so many people don't get to survive, and so we're just we're blessed, just blessed. It's an honor to have you here. First off, you're it's been some serious sapphire right now. I love the way that you dressed up addiction being underlining. You know, a fellowship that Donnie and I are part of. You know, it talks about our liquors but a symptom, and you know, like you say, it takes that work in order for us to really make that change. Like that sobriety piece really gets us back to the place where it's like, Okay, now's the time to do the work. Now, it's the time to peel back the layers. And I love that part. And one thing about Donnie and I always discusses, it's not the story that It's all about the story that you tell yourself. You know, that's that's the only thing that matters. And for you, in the thirty one years of your sobriety, I know there had to have been an exchange of narrative somewhere along the way. Whereas before you talked about the anxiety dominating and then and the stories you may have been telling yourself from that, when was the shift with that and what exactly is the narrative that you've been living by ever since that moment? I love this question, Thank you so much. There have been many many shifts. And the first and the most important shift came about a year into my last, my final recovery. So I was I had reached my second bottom, and I was now on a path squarely of recovery, and I was doing the twelve steps. I was working in a similar fellowship or maybe probably the same fellowship you guys are mentioning, and and I worked those twelve steps. And what that means for for people who are not familiar with that, or who may be confused by that or think that's some kind of weird cult or something whatever that is, that confusing thing. Those twelve steps. All that is is a process by which we released the past, become present, we make amends for damage that we've done, and we prepare ourselves to be helpful to somebody else. That's all that is. It doesn't have to get all weird. We don't have to bring even the word God into it. It's just a way that we can release, fully, release the past, become fully present, and be of service, plugging into our unique sense of purpose here. So I did those to the best of my ability. It wasn't pretty, very sloppy, but I did the best I could do at the time. I did it under the guidance of a sponsor who took me through. And I woke up one day and the shift had taken place, the first major, major, major shift. I could not remember the last time I actually thought about using drugs and alcohol. That was about a year, maybe a year and a quarter in. I woke up and I was free. I was just free. I was free from that kind of thinking. I didn't need it anymore. And I recognized the miracle of that that I went from a person who couldn't imagine getting through a day without drugs and alcohol to a person who couldn't imagine a day with drugs and alcohol in it. That was a monumental shift. Okay, So that's the first shift that needs to take place. That's the freedom that we speak of. That's the end of the inner war of should I use this or should I not? Should I do this or should I not? That war was over. Now what happens when that war is over? You happen, Life happens. You show up. You show up. Oh man. You know, I had always had a particular energy, let's just call it, an energy that was bigger than me around romantic relationships women for me in my case, and so I would have an opportunity in my newfound freedom to experience myself with greater awareness in relationships, and lo and behold, I was not good at it, oh man. I created so much pain for myself and others. I was that guy who really craved a deeper connection. Sincerely, I was not that guy who wanted to be single. I actually wanted to be with somebody. I really wanted to have a deep connection. And so when I would find and develop a relationship with somebody and have a deep connection. I couldn't find peace in the constraints of that relationship, and all I could think about doing was getting out and whether that meant, you know, being consumed with lust towards other other women or other women or whatever. The thing was that that would draw my mind away from just being comfortable right here in the in the in the experience of love with another human being. Couldn't do it, couldn't do it. So then I would become single again. Yay, I'm free. Who great? And that would be fun for a minute, and then I'd start the longing again to be in something more real, more deep, more meaningful. And so the cycle went. And the common denominator between me as a single man or me as a guy in relationship was me. I'm the one, you know. And it took a little while to figure out, like, hey, man, the way that I think, the way that I see, the way that I am, the way that I've been trained to be in relationship and in connection with women in a romantic way is creating pain for me and others, and I have to recognize it. And that was a thing that took me, you know, nine years in recovery before I finally reached a bottom with this issue. We'll call it codependency, the issue of how we relate to others, in this case in romantic relationships. But I could see my codependency really showing up in all my relationships, whether that was family or business relationships, or friendships or romantic So that was something I had to look at. Why this is so important, it's because my theory is I would contend that everybody who experiences drug addiction or alcoholism or other forms of addiction, I believe that this codependent version of addiction was there first. So before my drug and alcohol days began, I already had challenges in relationships, and those challenges in relationships were part of the reason why I was so uncomfortable in my body in the first place. And so it makes a lot of sense. As I would get sober, drugs and alcohol would be removed from my life, I would show up. But you know, it's not all It's not all the liabilities I also was. I had many beautiful qualities as well. We're just focusing on the addictive parts, you know. I just want to say that to everybody, Like, if you're thinking, oh, my God, I've got this, I've got that. Well, don't forget. You may have these things, but you've also got some beautiful things about you as well. And you know, I was a kind always a kind hearted person and always strive to be that compassionate and you know, trying to be present and very determined and very dedicated. And I actually could be really focused when I put my mind on something, you know, whether that was a positive thing or not. So. But I had to deal with this codependency piece in my life and I had to learn how to be in relationship better. I had to learn how to show up more empowered and most importantly, and here's the keyword, authenticly as me. See, I had learned how to how to please you, I had not learned how to be me and show up as me authentically. I present to you a version that I thought you would appreciate, and it almost killed me. Damn, You're killed me. And you know now I'm in an incredibly amazing relationship with my wife of nineteen years. That's a faithful, honest, straightforward, loving, dignity respect relationship with somebody that I've spent twenty two years with. And if you knew me, you would say no on not you man, impossible. What would you have had to do for that to become possible? And you know, again, it's not like there's no perfect relationship. My wife and I can get into it like anybody else, but we have this unbelievable foundation of love and trust and I'm just so grateful for it that that is a gift of being able to do the work as it shows up in your life in recovery. You asked, you asked about you know, what are those big shift moments. It was a big shift moment for me to reach a bottom as a person who knew I couldn't be in relationship with another person and have it work out. And I had to do a lot of work around that to become the kind of person who could be with somebody. And then we get into the other major topic that people struggle with in recovery, which is money, career, abundance, purpose, What am I doing? How do I make my way? You know? And it's very very difficult for many of us. And so you know, another one of the addictions I had to experience in my life was gambling, very painful, and I was that guy. You guys are in Las Vegas right now. I joke with Donnie. I said, you know, Donnie, I'm not allowed in that in that city. You know, I can't go there and see you. You know, I have a big history. There a lot of ghosts in that town for me, and I used to go. I used to show up in casinos and just spend and lose an incredible amount of money and also sometimes make an incredible amount of money, which was really the worst thing someone like me could do because it would drive me back again and again looking for that same thing. But yeah, I would show up in the casinos and they'd be like, oh, mister Rosen, we're super super happy to have you back, you know, and they meant it. You know, we get your free room, free meal, you know. Can we get you ten thousand dollars to gamble with? You can take a marker out from the casino. It was just a mess, you know. And these are the things that were important parts of my development as a human being. That's where I was at. I grew up in a family a very strange sort of dynamic where I was around a lot of money but didn't have access to it, and that was a weird thing that was a very strange thing. And you know my sense of you know, from my anxiety to the way that I think, which is very different and unconventional. The truth is is that I'm really an entrepreneur and I think very differently than many people. But I didn't have anyone to guide me forward in those first sort of three decades of my life. I'm a late bloomer. I I came to my success in life on the financial level. I came to my success in life in my forties, and I came to the healing of a lot of the things that we're talking about. But this is all possible on this road to recovery, in this beautiful question that you asked me about different shifts that take place. But I did want to tell you one last shift, which is the most important shift of all. Because of all the addictive behaviors that I'm telling you about, and because of the stress associated with them, it took a big toll on my body. And the way that showed up in my physical body was chronic pain in my lower back. And at one point that pain became so great that I became what you would think of as cripple. So while I could still stand and I could walk and move. I was in pain twenty four seven, great pain. I couldn't run, I couldn't jump, couldn't train, no yoga. My life had become very small. Whereas my entire life i'd been an athlete. This is about when I was about so I'm fifty five now, it's about thirty seven years old, somewhere in there. And so as a thirty seven year old man like I just became unable to move. And this is what sent me looking for a healer. Now, my words, my affirmation, my mantra at the time was can you please fix me? And I'd go into doctor's offices and I say, can you please fix me? And each doctor, each kind of healer would have a different idea of what was wrong with me. They'd have a different treatment plan. I tried everything for about a year. It's just the year of great pain for me, the year of pain. I'm reaching my third bottom. Now third and let's hope the final bottom. And the third and final bottom was I guess you call it the bottom of paralysis. I've reached another wall in my life I can't get through, but this time it's it physical. So I went out. Finally I went to seater Signed, my hospital in LA It's a prominent hospital, and they took mries of me. And I had avoided this. I'd avoided Western medicine. I just didn't want to go there. And they said to me, you have severe degenerative disc disease. You have major herniations at L three, L four and L four L five. This never gets better. You are going to be on drugs for the rest of your life to manage your pain, and probably in the next year you're going to be on a table and you're gonna have to get surgery. And I was next to that was two thousand and three. I was next to my new wife, Kia, my wife now, and that was what you call a bottom. I walked out of that office and I was like, how did this happen? How could this have happened to me? I'm twelve years sober, no drugs, no Alcohol've been doing so much work. I've been trying, trying, trying. What was I'm missing? And this was the darkness before the dawn. A friend came up to me and said, listen, man, if you really want to fix your back, you need to go see this man. Named Guru Prem. Guru Prem, and I, being from New York City and a little cynical about things, I said, I am not going to see Guru anybody, thank you very much. Not going to happen. I'm so fed up, I'm so angry, I'm so tired, I'm in so much pain. But I am not going to see Guru Prem. And that night, my wife and I went out to dinner Crosstown in LA. There was a woman at the table next to ours. She struck up a conversation with us. She said hello, We're like, oh hi. She's like, I just got to Los Angeles. Oh, We're like, you know, welcome. What brings you here? She says, well, I hurt my back and I came here to see this man named Guru Prem. That's what she said. Same. So my wife looked at me. She's like, call this man. Call this man. So I called Guru Prem. The next morning, I said, hey, man, apparently I'm supposed to come see you. He said, okay, come in tomorrow at noon. It was December two thousand and three. I got into this guy's office. He was exactly what you think of Guru Prem is going to look like I got the white white turban on beard, long beard glasses, you know, white robes, the whole deal. I thought to myself, it cannot have come to this, This cannot this can't be my salvation. I sat down. He said, sit down on this yoga mat. Took me like twenty seconds, Donnie, took me twenty seconds to get down onto the mat. That's how much pain I was in. And I sat there the best I could, try to hold myself up the best I could. I was in so much pain. And I looked into his eyes and he had something that I had never seen in my life to that point, and it was contentment. I never saw a contented person. I saw excited people, happy people, you know, every other kind of people. I never saw someone with true contentment. That in his eyes and in his face he showed that everything was okay. I never had that experience in my life. And I said to myself at that moment, whatever this man tells me to do, I'm going to do it, no matter what it is, I'm going to follow it like religiously. And I did it. Started with movement and breath yoga, breathwork, meditation. We would be talking in his office for years once a week and he'd have me talk about girls, he'd had me talk about relationships, and we'd be going through these movements, these special movements, and then he would say something to me like, you know, Tommy, there's only four women you're ever going to meet in your life. And I'd be going through this movement. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, stop, stop, I need to write this down. I need to write this down. Who are the four women? Who are the four women? You know? Is like a major spiritual lesson coming at me. And he came with love and spiritual lesson after spiritual lesson after spiritual lesson, and movement and breath. Ninety days after I met him, ninety days my back pain went away. I've never looked back where now nineteen years later, No surgery, no drugs of any kind, no pain, just life. He helped me to unravel the pattern of stress and anxiety that had been at the root of my addiction my entire life. And it turned out to be Kundalini yoga, hatha yoga, vinyasa yoga, breathwork, meditation combined with these philosophical understandings of what I was going through and what I was facing and he painted for me a vision of recovery where you could truly, truly heal to the next level. And no one had ever given me that, and that's what I needed. That's when I founded A few years later, I founded Recovery two point zero to pass on these teachings, just what he gave to me. I passed that on through Recovery two point zero today for anybody who is interested. And that's the story of these many shifts, these many transitions throughout my recovery. What are those teachings, I know there's probably a lot of them, but Recovery two point zero. And how is that maybe different than somebody that's gone through the AA twelve step recovery program. Yeah. So I want to say that all of this is complementary to the twelve Steps that I love the twelve Steps, and they remember, they gave me the foundation of getting me off of drugs and alcohol and giving me a way to see life in a more spiritual perspective. So none of this is putting down the twelve Steps. That would be incorrect for my story and my direct experience, twelve steps super powerful. I highly recommend them and the teachings that you're asking about. You know, first of all, the body. The body, the twelve steps are not dealing with the physical body. They're a spiritual psychological in nature also, but in terms of stress management, using the breath, unlocking all of the power and the secrets that the breath have to offer, being able to move in certain ways, to move energy, stuck energy. Think of stuck energy as the past. We talked about releasing the past and becoming fully present. Well, that happens on the mental, psychological level, spiritual level, but it also happens on the physical level. So what I had to learn the hard way was that I had to detox. That first detox when you come off of drugs and alcohol, you've got to do that big detox and let go of the chemicals. But there are many, many, many more detoxes after that. After that, you get into where you've got to detox yourself from the emotions that you're carrying, from your resentments that you're carrying, from the anger that you're carrying that's still in your body, and we forget that. So that's one teaching, for example, that would separate the recovery two point o work from just simple and not simple but the work of the twelve Steps. So we bring together more of a comprehensive you know, mind, body, and spirit approach to this thing that I think is much more effective in helping people. Also philosophically, we are understanding all addiction coming from the same place. So in our meetings we have recovery two point o meetings, just like there are twelve step meetings. In our meetings, all people, no matter what their addiction is, they're all under one roof. We're all in the same meeting, and we're finding a lot of commonality of connecting more about causes and conditions, and a lot of the dots are connecting for us. We didn't, it turned out, in order to get sober, int to thrive in life, we didn't have to be only with alcoholics if we were an alcoholic, or we didn't have to be only with you know, a drug addict or you know who is a drug addict or a sex addict, or a food addict, or a gambling addict or a cigarette addict or whatever it is. Like, everybody was welcome under one roof. We found a lot of power there. Y, I'm just named maybe one more thing. It's really important for us. I mean, one of our core beliefs is that nobody can tell you what to believe. That your belief system has to be based on your own direct experience in life, and that our job, anyone's job as a teacher, or anyone's job as a guide or a mentor or a sponsor, is to point you towards your own experience so that you can extrapolate the meaning from that for yourself. You come to a belief system based upon your direct experience, it becomes very authentic, very powerful to you. So whatever that is for you, it's legitimate and it's authentic. And so that's that's a really beautiful and powerful teaching. I love that that's a part that's written into the DNA of the work that we're doing. And then, of course we advocate for morning practice when you wake up, very important morning practice, morning yoga practice. It doesn't have to be a long ninety minute practice. It could be eleven minutes, but there's a practice that we do every morning when we wake up to set ourselves for the day. We believe strongly in that. And then we advocate for yoga meditation. And finally, we think that our diet has more to do with addiction than anybody else seems to be paying attention to. We think it's so important in understanding how to help people heal. They can't be overstated. So that's a bit about recovery. Two point on some of the things that we are proponent self. You shared so many amazing things today in so many, so many gems, and it's even got my mind spinning. And I know it's got somebody who's thinking about going about recovery, um stuck in a place. I know this has got their mind churning as well. UM. And they may have a vision for like, Okay, this is this sounds like the life that I want to live. He has something that I want to have. What would you say to that person that it wants to make that shift, but they're focused on putting one foot in front of the other, just trying to get through that first day or that first week. What is there anything that you would say to them to encourage them along the way. Yes, it's very important to understand that that different people need different things at different times. So at the beginning, it's it's all you need to concern yourself with. At the beginning, is I just need to go to bed tonight, clean and sober. That that that's the job that like, it's very simple. You don't got to get confused by all these things I'm bringing up and all this this is for later on in recovery. For the person at the beginning of their journey. Just put a day together Tomorrow when you get there, put another day together, and so on. Get to a meeting every day, a meeting of the twelve steps. There's some form or another you can come to. There's Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Codependency Anonymous, there's adult Children of alcoholics, there's alanan There's so many different programs for different things. So fine and connect with people in recovery. That's very powerful. And then work with a sponsor and work the twelve steps. Your life will change if you do that. And then you know, little by little, as you get your feet underneath you, you can start to introduce some of the breathwork and some of the meditation stuff, and you can start to be eating better, and you can start to be sleeping better, and life gets really powerful at that point. For somebody who's already on the path of recovery and they've reached a thought in their mind, and the thought is what now? I'm sober. I thought there was something more waiting for me. I'm a little bit concerned here. I had hoped there was more to life, you know, and I'm not feeling it yet. Please just come visit us at Recovery two point out see what we're doing. We'll plug you into some practices and some community and some things and meetings and stuff. We'll give you a language that we're all working with, and we can we can. We like to try to answer the question what now for people who have reached that point. If you're in twelve step recovery of any kind and your life's going amazing and things are really working out, man, just keep going, Just keep going, do what you're doing. Just keep going. You don't need another teacher another way. If it's working, let it work. And when the questions arise and you need to address something new, then you come and ask for help from from whoever is in your per view, whoever you're called to. You do that. You you you reach out. And if you're suffering in in in you you're what we would call curious and you don't know if you're going to make it. If you're wondering should I stop using drugs and alcohol? I want to tell you here's a truth. Here's a truth, universal truth. If you have the thought should I stop using drugs and alcohol? The answer is yes. It's never known. If you have that thought in your mind, the answer is yes. Let it go. Find a way step onto the path of recovery and the most extraordinary things await you. Hear. I mean, I've always loved your approach to recovery and the recovery two point zero, And I really resonate being a practitioner, a student of yoga, and a teacher of yoga and just believing that, yes, the twelve steps have been the foundation for me, but there is that missing piece of that mind body connection, and that our issues are in our tissues, and all the guilt and the shame and the resentment and all of that stuff is in there, and the only way we get through it is to truly go through it and move, move with purpose, and move with the breath, to move that stuck energy. And you know I've heard you say before, like, at what point do we do we transcend this disease? At what point do we become a human being on the path of discovery and not just like a member of a fellowship, Like how do we move beyond that? And I think I listen to the way that you articulate in your words, and it's just so inspiring. I always anybody that has something that I want, I try to get close. And so to have you on this podcast and just sharing your profound wisdom's it's amazing. Man. I'm grateful to have you in my life. Thank you, Thank you so much, Donnie, and and thank you Darren. I'm grateful to you both for the work you're doing. And I mean, you guys are far reaching with this incredible podcast right now and big numbers coming in and not surprising that people are attracted to both of you and and what you're putting out here. So I'm super grateful. And we are all on a path of discovery. How could we not be, And we sit shoulder to shoulder and we walk side by side down this path together, and that's that's the deal. That's how it is. I think absolutely, I feel like we've had so many of the similar life experiences. You just sharing your story and your journey, I feel like it's and honestly, an older version of me talking back to me. That's how That's how crazy today has been for me. So I'm grateful to have you, know, listen to you and to seeing you and to hear what you have to say, on top of reading about you in in preparation for this. It's been an amazing experience and something I'll never forget. Man, So thank you for sharing today. Thank you so much. Darren. I want to say to you both, I was just planned a seed for the future that I'd like to take you to India. We go every years. It's a really profound journey, a spiritual journey like no other, and I want you both to come. We'll make it really easy for you to be there. So come and be with us in India sometime. I'd really want to share that with you both. Hard to say no to that. Yeah, yeah, got me in. Okay, thank you brother, Love you man. All right, lots of love. Guys will speak again soon, I hope. All Right, we're out. What's up? Comeback stories, family, It's Donnie dropping in here. So did you know that Darren and I's relationships started by me being his personal development, mindfulness and mindset coach. I want to let you know about both my one on one coaching program, The Shift, and my group Mastermind Elevate your Purpose. These coaching programs are specifically designed for people who are ready to take the next step in their purpose and level up their career, personal finances, and have more connected, deep and meaningful relationships. My gift and part of my purpose is to help others take that next step in leveling up their lives so that they can have a greater impact on the lives of others, create success that sustainable yet evolves and grows, and help build a legacy that will outlive your life. If this is calling you, just go to Donnie Starkins dot com and apply for either one of my programs.