Steppin' Out Radio

Black Pain identifies emotional pain -- which uniquely and profoundly affects the Black experience -- as the root of lashing out through desperate acts of crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, workaholism, and addiction to shopping, gambling, and sex. Few realize these destructive acts are symptoms of our inner sorrow.  Black people are dying. Everywhere we turn, in the faces we see and the headlines we read, we feel in our gut that something is wrong, but we don't know what it is. It's time to recognize it and work through our trauma.  Terrie Williams knows that Black people are hurting. She knows because she's one of them.

Leigh Steinberg (@leighsteinberg) Sports Agent to the Stars, wrote a best-selling book, Winning with Integrity, providing insight on how to improve life through non-confrontational negotiation. Furthermore, Leigh's most recent book, The Agent: My 40-Year Career of Making Deals and Changing the Game, details his decades of dominance in the sports industry and sheds light on overcoming his personal struggles to launch his comeback. Leigh has been rated the #6 Most Powerful Person in the NFL according to Football Digest and the #16 Most Powerful Person in Sports according to The Sporting News, and was the only agent that made Sports Illustrated's list of most influential figures that shaped the NFL's first 100 years.

Discovering her daughter's addiction to opioids forced Maureen Cavanagh into the dark work of caring for a child with addiction.  Now, she is the founder of Magnolia New Beginnings, a nonprofit peer-support group for those living with or affected by substance use disorder. She has been recognized by The New York Times, CNN, and other outlets for her work fighting the opioid crisis and the stigma that surrounds it.  Cavanagh is also the author of If You Love Me: A Mother's Journey Through Her Daughter's Opioid Addiction.

Kim grew up in a “beautiful suburb” as an only child of a “severe” alcoholic father. She says he was drunk daily. She remembers as a child telling her father that their lives would be okay if he didn't keep drinking. But in her early teens, she began drinking herself. Kim would steal booze from her friend's parents' liquor cabinet at a party; she became so intoxicated she couldn't go home. From that moment, she had a new favorite activity. It made her feel less uncomfortable in her own skin. It was a relief of emotion – and she kept chasing it. Soon she needed the alcohol just to have the courage to leave the house.

Raymond is an alcoholic and an addict. Growing up in with an alcoholic mother in Brooklyn, he now knows it was booze which killed his mom. As a child, he would sneak drinks but his true drinking began at age 14 when sneaking out with friends. His drinking persisted from that moment on. His drinking took over his life to the point he twice attempted suicide. Raymond would wind up in psychiatric care at New York's Bellvue Hospital, where a nurse told him that he wasn't mentally ill, but that he drank too much.

Tommy was raised in New York's Staten Island.  He was eleven years old when his father gave him his first drink, declaring Tommy to “be a man, now.”  But his regular drinking started age 13 with friends.  His mother beat him when he came home drunk.  Tommy's drinking continued though his teenage years, dropping out of school by age 16 and working for a living.  His job allowed him to save money each week in order to go out drinking.  But his drinking took up too much of his time and he soon lost his job and Tommy wound up homeless.  Attempts to get into a better job, including the New York City police department, where all thwarted by alcohol.

Sophie's problematic compulsive gambling started later in life, when she was 60-years old. She had achieved sobriety from other addictions much earlier but started gambling as an activity and it quickly progressed into a problem. While making beach walks near her home in Atlantic City, she took a liking to slot machines in the city's casinos. But her nickel bets turned into dropping hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours. Her attempts at limiting herself were fruitless, as she she would run home from the casinos to get more money.

Paul's life revolved around gambling from the time he was young. He played poker and flipped baseball cards. Paul always wanted to be a winner and pursued winning aggressively. He worked in a bowling alley at 12 years old and loved to watch the men play poker afterwards. He liked the “action” of gambling. It wasn't about winning or losing. Paul's focus became on gambling and he thought about it all the time. When the game was over, he would feel sad and isolated. At 16-years-old he dropped out of high school. Paul grew up and got married, but his gambling persisted, progressing to the point he was lying to his wife about his whereabouts.

David's first time gambling was at age six.  His father taught him to play poker, making penny bets, and it soon became a family activity.  Later in life, David can see that other kids would enjoy a range of activities but he only wanted to play poker.  Soon his family games went from pennies to dimes.  As an adult, David now knows his father, who showed him how to gamble, had a gambling problem himself.  In his teen years, he would spend his money from his after school jobs to gamble and it consumed his life; if he wasn't spending time gambling he was using it to prepare to make his bets.

Sean grew up in a neighborhood in which if you didn't gamble, you didn't belong.  Bets began at a young age with friends, as they would play baseball with each other.  In his early teens, a friend introduced him to a bookie, and Sean made bets on sports games right away, putting up bets of hundreds of dollars that he didn't have.  His losses would have the bookie knocking on his parents' door.  As he got older, he would come to idolize bookmakers, with their fancy clothes and cars but never holding a real job.  In high school, he would work for bookies getting his peers to make bets.  After high school, he started working a normal job but would take his paycheck gambling.  His descent began with a stroke of luck, winning a five-figure bet when he didn't have the money to cover it on the chance he lost.

Compulsive Gambler Joel's first bet was, as it often is, during childhood.  Joel was a fantastic marble player; and not only one the games among the kids, he would up winning all the marbles and taking them home.  But as a teen, his parents took him to the track, giving him two dollar to play with.  Joel won fifteen.  And from that moment, he just knew he could make money his whole life by gaming.  He became a card player, a pool player, and seemed unstoppable.  But Joel could never find satisfaction.  And then Joel began losing; gambling more than he made in salary and ending up in a hole.  He even stole from his parents to cover the bets. Three marriages and fourteen years later, Joel began to relapse despite a long spate of sobriety.  His wife Susan could tell something was amiss; a descendant of a dysfunctional family herself, Susan knew for her marriage to work she also would need to seek recovery.  But she also needed to confront him.

Andy is a compulsive gambler.  His game of choice was poker, but he would gamble on anything he could.  And all he would do is lose money.  He barely if ever won.  Andy's legitimate creditors – namely the bank – would often call his house, speaking with him or his wife, asking for him to get his bills current.   Andy wasn't raised a gambler, but was introduced to gambling by his father-in-law, who later Andy and his wife would recognize also has a gambling addiction.  But Andy's father-in-law took him to the horse track, where Andy made a big winning betting on a horse with the same name as the title of the book Andy happened to be reading.  Andy's wife, Joan, through all of this, had to watch her husband's downward spiral.  But at first, Joan thought Andy's gambling was good for him, as it helped him become more social.  But as his gambling increased in frequency, and he began to hide money from her, she felt into a deep state herself.

Michelle's first drink alone was at age 11. Her family home was complete with a bar that was never locked. She came home from school one day and found an open bottle of wine in the kitchen fridge, and so she tasted it. She felt guilty about taking the sip, but she kept repeating the drink each day when coming home from school.

Jenn returns to re-tell her story of teenage alcoholism.  She had her first drink in her first week of her freshman year in high school, but she had wanted to drink for a long time leading up to it.  Jenn was too scared to drink at home, but found friends a couple of hours away whose parents permitted the teenagers to drink.  Her first drunk was with these friends, at a beachside bonfire.   Jenn found the drinking alleviated the stress of her home life and her parents' divorce.

Brian comes from a culture where drinking and other bad behavior tends to be congratulated.  He was a child when he convinced an alcoholic adult to buy him booze by paying him for it.  Brian can remember getting drunk that night with a buddy, staggering around the neighborhood, and then blacking out and coming too in his parents home late at night.  His boozing got him in trouble while in Singapore, where he got arrested for drinking to excess.   His whole life, Brian remembers that everybody from his parents to the judge in Singapore would shrug off his behavior.

Barbara is addicted to sex and love, and she shares her story in hopes others can begin to understand the difference between normal sex, love and romance, and those who use them as a “drug of no choice.” Barbara asserts that much of this stems from a need to be approved and accepted. Her own issues began in childhood, with a mother preoccupied with sex. Barbara was encouraged by her mother to have sex often as a teenager. But when her mother passed away, she would engage in sex with numerous men, often strangers.

Dave is a sex and love addict. He spent most of his life wondering how he became this way. He still isn't sure. Dave grew up in a upper-middle class home in a family of high achievers. His parents and siblings were very loving. There was no outright abuse. But Dave's father was very success-oriented, and there was a lot of pressure to perform to high expectations both in school and life. And because of that, Dave found his father was putting himself in control of Dave's life. He's not sure why or how that might have translated to his adult dating life, but Dave has problems finding partners with whom he feels he could have loving relationships.

Bob's major use of drugs and alcohol stared after high school, following a bad breakup.  Bob incidentally was taken to a twelve-step meeting which brought him into two years of sobriety, though it ended when he toasted his brother at his wedding.  Years later, he wound up in jail.  Bob was not only an addict, but a serial abuser of his wife and kids.  And in jail, under physical threat by the other inmates, he decided to get sober for good.

Fred thinks he used drugs in order to deal with pain, and today in his sobriety, he knows to deal with pain without using.  His first time trying a drug, alcohol, happened at age ten at a party his parents threw; they toasted him with Sangria.  Fred remembers it made him feel “warm.”  He would later recognize his home life was drug-centered.  Fred's father was a drug dealer.

Paul grew up in what he says should be a normal childhood.  He attended a very good school, was a good student and athlete.  But he always had a feeling of being different and inadequate.  At age 12 or 13, while playing on a hockey team, Paul drank when celebrating winning a championship game.  While he drank before, he had never got drunk until that time.  It was a horrifically sickening experience for Paul but it would not be the last time he would drink, as being drunk felt magical to him.  In high school, Paul would begin to use marijuana and experiment with narcotics.  And then he became a drug dealer.

Robert felt like he had a difficult childhood, dealing with an alcoholic father.  For some reason, his father's harshness was directed towards him as opposed to his siblings.  And while he doesn't know why, Robert was compelled to sample his father's alcohol as young as five years old.  By sixth grade, he was smoking marijuana.  He remembers taking a school trip while intoxicated.  It wasn't long after he progressed to cocaine and heroin.

Aaron was always rebellious, even as a young child. At 13 he started smoking marijuana and drinking at 14. He quickly discovered how easy it was to steal pills from friends' bathroom cabinets. Aaron says he was addicted to Oxycontin for a year and a half.  At age 20, Aaron was arrested for writing fake prescriptions for pills.  This led to his bottoming-out,  in 2001, when he entered an in-patient rehab center and has been sober ever since.

Catya's first use of prescription pain medication came at ten years old; she had strenuous physical ailments even at that age.  But she soon learned the pills could “treat” more than physical pain.  By fourteen, she was drinking booze and smoking pot.  A year later, at 15, she first walked into a AA meeting.

Cory started smoking pot at twelve and drinking by thirteen.  But even at the young age of thirteen, Cory had a rule for himself: he would continue to drink and smoke, but that he would never user hard drugs.  It took only two years for Cory to break his own rule.  By age fifteen, he was doing any drug he could get his hands on.

Jeffrey Veatch, a news writer at ABC News Radio for 40 plus years, won a national Writers Guild award in 2007 for ABC's World News This Week.  In September 2008, Veatch's life took a drastic turn when his 17-year-old son, Justin, died from an accidental drug overdose. Justin was an exceptionally talented musician on the verge of recording an album of his original music work. After his death the Veatch family founded the non-profit Justin Veatch Fund, Inc.

Richie Supa is a New York singer/songwriter with over 300 songs recorded and four solo albums to his name. Richie's career was launched via the legendary Long Island Band “The Rich Kids” who were signed by Clive Davis to Columbia records. Richie was a staff writer at EMI Music for eighteen years and went on to a career on Broadway where he had the lead role in the hit musical Hair.   Supa co-wrote several number one rock hits including “Back on Earth”, “Misery”, “Amazing” and “Pink” which won a GRAMMY. Richie's greatest personal accomplishment is his 27 year recovery. Over this time Richie has helped thousands of addicts with his personal insight and inspiring music. In fact, his songs “In the Rooms” and “Last House on the Block” won Best Song of the Year at the 2009 and 2011 Prism Awards.

Jenny started cutting herself at the age of eleven; drinking with boys and smoking their mom's marijuana at twelve.  When she got into high school,  her friends started dying because of alcohol and drugs – this scared Jenny. When she hit bottom at seventeen, Jenny attended an outpatient program for more than eleven months.  Today she is sober more than a decade and continues to go to meetings and has fun in sobriety.

Priest, Retreat Master, Author, Actor, Playwright and Sinner!  Father Roger tells us his intriguing story of addiction and recovery.  Roger says, “By the age of 3 years old I needed to go on the wagon.  If they had Kiddie AA I would have qualified!” Roger's first real moment of clarity, after years of abusing alcohol, happens as he comes out of a blackout, standing on the ledge of the Brooklyn Bridge, ready to jump.  After getting himself down off the cables, he ran looking for an AA meeting. From there all sorts of remarkable things have happened – most of which is being sober for 15 years and having the ability and the desire to help other people.

Mike's first time getting high was at 14 years old.  He had already been drinking with friends when he (and they) tried marijuana, thinking it would lead them to having more fun; he never intended to embark a disastrous path of alcohol and drug abuse.  Looking back, Mike thinks he was drawn to drinking drugs as away to overcome shyness.  Although Mike, still struggles with being shy and feeling isolated,  he finds fun in sobriety by expressing himself through his music and playing in a rock band in New York City.

Brianna started drinking with her cousins and friends at the age 13; getting alcohol from the Head of Police's liquor cabinet. She always hung out with older people and dated older guys. Brianna says drugs sped up her bottom, which led her to Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of 21. New Years Day of 2007 is Brianna's sobriety date.

Daniel says he led a sheltered childhood in a Midwestern town and raised an evangelical Christian.  At the age of 15 he “escaped” to another town, leading to his first drinking experience in addition to his first driving experience!  When pulled over by police that night, he was able to talk himself out of trouble.  Daniel graduated high school at 16, went to college, where he started drinking more and doing drugs. The next year, Daniel got married, only to divorce while still aged seventeen.  He would hold this pace until he felt, at age 20,  his alcoholism had gotten the better of him.

Nicole's father was a heroin addict and her mother left him when she was only 3 years old. For the first 10 years of her life, Nicole watched her father struggle to get clean and sober. At 15, Nicole started drinking and using cocaine. She says she had a long and painful bottom and eventually found the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in her twenties. Nicole has 13 months clean and sober now and is a high school teacher.  She's pleased today when she's able to pass the message of hope and recovery onto her students when necessary.

Roberto thinks that his proclivity to clutter started as a child, where he could organize his possessions and had no help from parents or siblings.  Often his grade school textbooks would be scattered about his home as he would do his homework in an erratic order.  But the next morning, before school, he's be in a frantic search to gather his schoolthings.  As an adult, he would hoard magazines, knick-knacks and VCR tapes.  The magazines were often trade publications, and he would hold on to them thinking he would need to keep them for reference.

Bob can look back in his childhood and see he had a problem with collecting clutter.  His room was a mess, his toys and other childhood possessions were often scattered and piled.  His parents never enforced a ‘clean room rule' and that might have been what started his lifestyle as a clutterer.  As a young man, living on his own, his apartment was packed with everything; every item, every paper he ever touched, every piece of clothing, every magazine he read, etc.  He even couldn't part with a pair of shoes that didn't even fit him and would hurt his feet.

Guests Wendy & Roy, both who are active members of Debtors Anonymous and who spend large amounts of time in their lives in crushing debt, addicted to spending or earning not enough, share some more tips and wisdom from their lives as well as those as others in recovery.

Roy is a compulsive debtor and under-earner.  His first debts were incurred during his childhood, as he would borrow a couple of dollars from his parents who never required him to repay these “loans” to their child.  And Roy now thinks that's how his bad relationship with money began.  But things got worse after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  He worked freelance and after 9/11, in New York City, many of his accounts he neglected collecting went bankrupt.  Soon, Roy found himself without income and behind on the rent.

“I was a hard case, and it seems like I needed to learn my lesson the hard way,” writes Cameron Douglas, son of actor Michael Douglas, in his affecting memoir of crime and punishment.   The author grew up between well-to-do households where it was a party trick for him as a child to pass a joint among the beautiful people.  By the age of 25, he was injecting cocaine three times an hour while realizing that “the worst-case scenario has already happened,” his opportunities in the show-business world long since tossed away. The worst case, though, had yet to develop: in and out of rehab, as well as the penal system, proceeding from juvenile detention to time in a federal prison full of warring racial factions, all brought on by a fierce addiction to heroin and a drug-selling operation meant to support it.

Wendy woke up one day to find herself in more than $19,000 in debt, months behind in rent, and reliable on her parents' generosity to pay for her most basic needs. She began her adulthood in New York, surrounded by a city which she feels promised affluence and success, but she often sought jobs which paid little and credit cards which loaned too much too easily. Her life was unbearable come the first of each month, but she felt entitled to buy things she couldn't afford. Wendy's eye-opening moment came when asking her parents again for money, and they told her she was draining their retirement assets.

Dan is a member of Debtors Anonymous.  His path to fiscal sobriety came after many years of spending more money than he had, and earning less than he needed on which to live.  As an actor, Dan had trouble earning a decent living while hoping for his big break in Los Angeles.  He would borrow money in order to live as he wished.  Dan wound up homeless, living in his car stuffed with his possessions.

From an early age Kate thought being an alcoholic and junkie were cool. Her first drink was at a Saint Patrick's Day family gathering at the age of 13 or 14. By 16, Kate started snorting and smoking heroin and fell in love with it immediately. After a couple stints in rehab, Kate received what she calls “the gift of desperation” and got clean and sober at the age of 19. She's remained that way for 2 years now and is a fine example that recovery can happen no matter how young you are.

Adam's mother was an alcoholic. At 13 he started manipulating her to buy alcohol for him. When Adam was 19 he had to make the most difficult decision of his life after his mother had an accident and went into a comma: he had to sole responsibility of taking her off of life-support. After his mother's death, Adam drank with even more intensity to bury his feelings. This type of drinking went on for several years. After encouragement from his mother in a dream, Adam was able to attend his first AA meeting at the age of 27 and has been sober for over a year now.

Sarah believes she was born an alcoholic because alcoholism runs in her family. The second time she drank she blacked out. Sarah says she was suicidal since she started drinking at the age of 16. Within 4 years of drinking, Sarah hit bottom and with the help of a school councilor she attended her very first AA meeting and has been sober for over 2 years.

Nancy McCann Vericker is the co-author with her son, JP, of their book, Unchained: Our Family's Addiction Mess Is Our Message, the true story of JP's descent into opioid and alcohol addiction, homelessness, violence and now long-term recovery as a co-founder of a Massachusetts treatment program.  Their book recounts how through faith, tough love, and twelve-step program, the Vericker family helped their son return home to a renewed life.  Unchained provides hope for families grappling with addiction.

Justin's drinking and drug use started increasing during college where he established himself as “the party guy”. A week-long binge on LSD led him to his first psych ward and treatment center. Eventually Justin was arrested and kicked out of school three times, which led him to a 3-month outpatient treatment center and sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. Justin is 25 years old and 3 years sober.

In this very special Roundtable Discussion, we hear from young people in recovery who have already spoken on Steppin' Out Radio, but now discussing such topics as what to expect when you first enter a 12-step meeting, getting a sponsor, the Twelve Steps, and having fun in sobriety.

Complete with feather boa, Nickoleta grew up idolizing glamorous actresses in older movies. Nickoleta's drinking didn't start until college, but looking back she can see how her characteristics led up to her becoming an alcoholic even before she started drinking. Within a few years of drinking, and just beginning to experience blackouts, she crashed and burned with alcohol rather quickly. Nickoleta has been sober since January 2007 and is an amazing example that there is life after alcohol!

Ahmed grew up in the streets of Washington, D.C., where he sometimes had to fight for his life. He started drinking “Cisco” at the age of 13 or 14 to escape both himself and his environment. Having blown his money on alcohol and various drugs including cocaine and Ecstasy, Ahmed filed for bankruptcy at the age of 29. Soon after, Ahmed was to become bankrupted mentally, physically and emotionally, until he found a Young Peoples' meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Bethany started taking sips, or more, from her father's Gin & Tonic drinks when she was a little girl. Her parents divorced when she was 10 and her father committed suicide when she was 17. At the age of 19 Bethany started her road to recovery and has been sober for over 5 years now.

In this special segment of Steppin' Out Radio, a few of our previous guests sit down to discuss tips they've felt worked for them in maintaining sobriety during the winter holidays, a time of year which can be trying emotionally and when addicts can find themselves most tempted to use.

Growing up in Manhattan, in New York City, Alana went to all the best schools.  She and her friends all came from affluent families residing on Park Avenue.  Alana thinks her first drug was food; she ate to feel good about herself, but her weight gains caused her to binge-and-purge and try cigarettes to lose weight.  Her drinking started with those friends during teenage years; despite being underage they were all able to get into bars.  One night, she and her friend stopped at every bar they could find on one street in New York.  Miles later, she was vomiting in the streets.  Despite the gross feelings at first, Alana felt great after.

Bob remembers his last New Year's drink.  He remembers all the drinks he had that New Year's.  He was a young husband and father, and attended a neighborhood celebration.  He doesn't remember much besides the drinks, and the fact he became “very inappropriate.”  His taste for alcohol started in childhood, as his father was a drinker, and the family lived in what was rural land that often got cold in winter, and in a home with no heat or indoor plumbing.  Alcohol helped him feel warm.  In his teens, he started working with father painting houses.  But one day. his father suffered a stroke.  It was the same day the plane carrying three superstar musicians crashed, killing his heroes.