Ken Rideout

I was like a good kid.

I got along with the principal of the school.

Like I was the quarterback of the high school football team.

I just instinctively wanted a better life for myself.

And I was like pretty happy with myself and not arrogant, but I was confident.

And as you've seen in the book, then I get into New York and we'll get to it.

And I get addicted to drugs and all of those positive things that I thought about myself were like stripped away.

And I was like,

really had a negative self opinion of myself to the point where I would ideate on suicide where my addiction was so bad.

I was like, if I don't get sober, I'm not living like this anymore, because I'm not a loser.

But my behavior is that of a loser.

And to your point about the book about giving advice, right?

My book isn't a how to I'm not telling people do this to that I matter of fact, I say to a lot of people don't do what I did.

Like I was a drug addict.

I thought money was the answer.

I got rich.

And then became addicted to drugs because it didn't fill the voids that were really there that needed to be dealt with that I also talk about when I go to on-site trauma healing center.

But what I try to demonstrate in the book is like, hey, here's the things that I've – here are all the mistakes I've made, some of them self-induced or some of the trauma that's happened to me self-induced.

And here's how I fixed it and basically –

the only through line in this whole book is my mindset and believing that i could do the things i wanted to do you see me i'm the most average person in the world i'm 5 10 170 pounds i don't have any natural gifts i wasn't getting division one scholarships i was like a decent athlete but when i as i got older and started to emerge from the addiction i realized that