Light Hustler: Making Your Mess Into Your Message

Tawny Lara is an entrepreneur, writer and public speaker. She’s the founder of SobrieTea Party™ and Readings on Recovery™ and an award-winning filmmaker of her recovery documentary, Fixed Up. She's also the co-host (along with previous podcast guest and all-around bad ass Lisa Smith) of the hot new podcast Recovery Rocks podcast. But she's also someone who started documenting her sobriety journey from the beginning. With so many people out there wanting to tell their story but scared to jump into the fray, Tawny serves as the perfect example of someone just getting out there, making her mark and, well...rocking it. In this episode, we talked about growing up as a rocker, what to tell people who are thinking of sharing their stories and our random meeting at a Macklemore concert, among many other topics.

Murphy Jensen is an entrepreneur, former professional tennis player and French Open Champion. He’s also the Founder & EVP of Business Development for WEconnect Recovery, an addiction relapse prevention and real-time outcomes data platform that just raised 6 million (yep). He was ALSO one of my first friends in early recovery, back when we would hang out at our friend Allison’s place and really just wander around trying to make sense of our new lives. In this episode (which was taken from this Facebook Live interview), Murphy and I talk about what it was like to go to meetings in pajamas, realizing you were meant to do more than teach rich people how to play tennis and whether or not those psychic readings we got in 2000 turned out to be true, among many other topics.

As one of the world’s leading recovery advocates, Tim Ryan tirelessly tours the country speaking to addicts and their families. The star of A&E’s Dope Man and bestselling author of From Dope to Hope: A Man in Recovery, Ryan found recovery in prison and is committed to sharing a message of hope after losing his son to an overdose soon after finding sobriety himself. The creator of the 501c3 A Man in Recovery, Tim is a regular subject on national media, a Global Goodwill Ambassador and was an invited guest to the State of the Union address. He has been a featured thought leader on numerous television shows and publications, including Fox & Friends, Varney & Company, Martha MacCallum, USA Today, Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, The Doctorsand The Steve Harvey Show, among many others. A regular on WGN radio, Tim has also appeared repeatedly on CNN and HLN, spoken on TEDx stages and was named one of the top 100 visionary leaders in the world by Real Leaders magazine in January, 2018. But in this episode,

Anna David is, well, the person writing this. In addition to writing in the third person, she's the New York Times bestselling author of six books, a contributor to The New York Times, Time, Playboy and more, a writing coach and the creator of this site/podcast/storytelling show. In this episode, she/I tell a story about living in West Hollywood in the 90s, giving your front door key to every coke addict in the vicinity and calling the cops on yourself when you become convinced that your neighbor is trying to kill you. To find out if you should be sharing your story, go to www.lighthustler.com/quiz.

Darren Prince is a sports and celebrity agent who has represented Muhammad Ali, Magic Johnson, Pele, Joe Montana, Smokin’ Joe Frazier, Dennis Rodman and Hulk Hogan, among many others. He's also sober for a decade after a brutal struggle with opiate addiction. Finally (and most importantly—to me), he's a friend. We've spent the past year working on his memoir, Aiming High: How a Prominent Sports and Celebrity Agent Hit Bottom at the Top, and I'm thrilled to say that it's the first release from the Light Hustler Publishing imprint. Already an international bestseller in four countries, the book has been making waves all over. In this episode, we discuss what role trauma plays in addiction, why to wait until you have some sobriety under your belt before going public and how Magic Johnson saved Darren's life, among many other things.

Bucky Sinister is a stand-up comedian and author of nine books, including Black Hole: A Novel and Get Up: A 12-Step Guide to Recovery for Misfits, Freaks and Weirdos. In this episode (which is from the Light Hustler live storytelling show in LA), he veers from his planned story to regale the audience about what it was like to go to poetry readings completely wasted. To find out if you should be sharing your story, go to www.lighthustler.com/quiz.

Kane Holloway is a Seattle native who resides in sunny L.A. Kane is a nationally touring comedian, podcast host and he has performed on Laughs on Fox. He has appeared on VH1's Walk of Shame Shuttle, FNX Comedy Experience and started the Podaholics comedy network. You can hear his comedy album "See What I Did There?" On iTunes. In this episode (from the Light Hustler monthly live storytelling show), he talks about how funny it was when he drunkenly slapped someone he didn't know (spoiler alert: it wasn't funny at all). To find out if you should be sharing your story, go to www.lighthustler.com/quiz.

Eddie Pepitone is the subject of The Bitter Buddha, the critically acclaimed documentary about his life, and is also occasionally a part of his stand-up act. As a comedian and actor, he’s been on WTF and Conan repeatedly, as well as on The Last Comic Standing, The Sarah Silverman Program, Happy Endings, Flight of the Concords, 2 Broke Girls, It’s Always Sunny and so many more. In this episode—which is from the Light Hustler live storytelling show in Los Angeles—he (hilariously) talks about why having commitments in AA is silly, how love went out a long time ago and so much more. To find out if you should be sharing your story, go to www.lighthustler.com/quiz.

Amy Dresner is a former professional stand-up comic, having appeared at The Comedy Store, The Laugh Factory, and The Improv. Since 2012, she has been a contributing editor of the online addiction and recovery magazine TheFix.com. She’s also written for the Good Men Project, The Frisky, Refinery 29, and has been a regular contributor to Addiction.com and PsychologyToday.com, where she has her own addiction blog entitled “Coming Clean.” Her first book, My Fair Junkie, was released in 2017 and is now available in paperback. In this episode (from the Light Hustler live storytelling show in LA), Amy talks about one of her visits to the psych ward—explaining what group therapy was like, what other residents had as goals for the day and the fellow patient who was smarter than the doctors, among other things. To find out if you should be sharing your story, go to www.lighthustler.com/quiz.

Kristi Coulter holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. She is a former Ragdale Foundation resident and the recipient of a grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Awl, Glamour, Vox, The Mississippi Review, Longreads, and elsewhere. Her debut essay collection, Nothing Good Can Come from This, was published by MCD Books/FSG Originals in August 2018. She lives in Seattle, where she is working on her next book.  We talked about Nothing Good Can Come From This, being a high-functioning alcoholic and what happens when a story you write goes viral, among many other things. To find out if you should be sharing your story, go to www.lighthustler.com/quiz.

Dr. Jamie Marich is an EMDR bad-ass. Sure, that's a kind of crazy way to identify someone but it's what our medical consultant (and previous podcast guest) Dr. Josh Lichtman (not to mention everyone else) says about her. Her are her stats: she travels internationally teaching on EMDR therapy, trauma, addiction, expressive arts, yoga and mindfulness while maintaining a private practice in her home base of Warren, OH. She is the founder and director of The Institute for Creative Mindfulness, developer of the Dancing Mindfulness practice and co-developer of the Yoga Unchained approach to trauma-informed yoga. She is also the author of five books on trauma recovery, most recently EMDR Therapy and Mindfulness for Trauma Focused Care (with previous podcast guest Dr. Stephen Dansiger). She's also over 16 years sober. If you’re asking yourself at this point, “What in God’s name is she talking about and what is this EMDR thing,” EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and while it doesn’t tend to

Today’s episode features a very special guest: me. Since I’m releasing episodes that contain stories from my live storytelling show and I perform in this show, sometimes these episodes are going to feature—well, me. The story I tell here is about the journey I took from two-pack-a-day smoker to the most self-righteous ex-smoker the world has ever seen. If you want to feel better about your own self-righteousness, I highly recommend giving this a listen.

Gayle Saks-Rodriguez has been a writer since filling her fourth grade diary with such perfectly crafted sentences as: “Ricky is getting confirmed tomorrow. Since I’m Jewish, I’m not really sure what it does. I should congradulate [sic] him though.” She has graduated to being published in places like The Fix, The Huffington Post, Thought Catalog and Salon and has appeared on HuffPost Live. Now she's working on her memoir, You Ain't No Soccer Mom, about her work with female inmates and at an all male sober living. She was also a contributor to Light Hustler's first anthology, Darkness Before Light: 12 Writers on Addiction, Sobriety and Recovery. In this interview (which originally took place over Facebook Live), we talk about being the only contributor to the anthology who's not in recovery, shelving one book proposal to work on another and her experiences in my coaching program for writers, among many other topics. We also—spoiler alert—had a lot of fun. Listen here.

Dr. Lauren Casey has a fascinating story. The international recovery coach, award-winning author and public speaker specializing in sex industry work, women’s health, substance abuse and trauma hasn’t just learned her area of expertise by studying. Now sober, Casey is a former high-end escort who found sobriety and then, to her utter surprise, found herself falling in love with a prisoner she began writing in prison. They’re still together decades later and now Casey has a book coming out about her entire story. I’m proud to say that she wrote the proposal for Breaking the Chains: Drugs, Millionaires and the Prisoner Who Set Me Free in my All the Write Movescoaching program and that the book will be released by Zephyr Bookshelf in 2019. This episode is from one of my Facebook Live interviews and it’s a juicy one.

Brian Finkelstein is a writer who has been nominated for two Emmys. He is also a regular performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and is a host/storyteller for The Moth. You can read his story “Perfect Moments” in the Moth’s first book, 50 True Stories. He has performed eight solo shows in a variety of venues, from the HBO/US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen to the Summer Nights Festival in Perth, Australia and New Zealand. Brian’s told stories on public radio shows including Good Food, The Business, UnFictional, Marketplace and many more. At the Light Hustler storytelling show, he told a story about wild nights at a Brooklyn speakeasy called Kokie's where you could buy cocaine, a roommate named Babyface, dating a Muslim girl and quitting hookers, among many other topics.

Ken Garr is a graduate of Second City who has performed at The Laugh Factory, MGM Grand and Hollywood Improv, among many other places, and has been seen on Hulu, Playboy and Funny Or Die. His comedy album, So I’m Sitting in Jail, is now available on the DASH Radio app. In this episode from my live storytelling show, he talks about competing in the Special Olympics, feeling all your feelings in sobriety and burying an idea three levels into someone’s head, among many other topics.

Today’s episode features the one and only Ally Weinhold. Ally is a Los Angeles-based comedian, writer, and alcoholic. She hosts a monthly stand up show at Bar Lubitsch, called Awkward & Aggressive and recently co-produced a pilot called Murder Roommates with her sketch team, BadAssKnitties, and WhoHaha. This story is about the time she realized she needed to get sober and so she did the most logical thing she could think of to bring on the spiritual experience that she thought getting sober would require: she took a bunch of acid. Want to know what happened next? You best listen.

In a rather short period of time, Joe Polish has become one of my favorite people around. The genius marketer (who presides over The Genius Network) and I met in early 2017 and connected over the fact that we were both trying to change the message around addiction. (Related: we also connected over the fact that we were both once active drug addicts.) And so we partnered with Hal Elrod and Honoree Corder on creating a book in the Miracle Morning series that focused on addiction recovery. You can get it here! If you're not familiar with The Miracle Morning, it started as a book written by Hal Elrod. Published in 2012, it quickly became one of the highest rated books on Amazon, with over 2500 five-star reviews. The premise: changing your life starts with following certain habits and tactics every morning. I'll be honest: when this opportunity first came up, I thought, "Look, I already meditate and pray in the morning. What could this book tell me that I don't already know?" Well, here's what I learned: the day a

You could call Tina Alexis Allen an actor. After all, she recently starred in the hit WGN series Outsiders. You could call her a playwright. After all, she wrote and starred in the critically acclaimed solo show Secrets of a Holy Father and the 12-character one-woman show Irresistible. You could also call her a writer. After all, she's the author of the un put down-able new release Hiding Out: A Memoir of Drugs, Deception and Double Lives. But really the most interesting thing about Allen is her life story: the last of 13 children from a religious Catholic family, Allen ended up becoming her father's greatest confidant. This started with them each acknowledging that they were gay, moved on to wild notes out doing poppers at all the gayest clubs of DC and ended with...well, you've got to read the book to find out.

Today’s episode features a very special guest: me. Since I’m releasing episodes that contain stories from my live storytelling show and I perform in this show, sometimes these episodes are going to feature—well, me. (By the by, the show, which takes place every other month in LA, has been an LA Weekly pick of the week and is being developed into a video series.) The story I tell here is about the three cocaine dealers I had during my using days, the different signature moves they had and how I ended up in rehab with one of them.