Before Crude Conversations existed, Alaska journalist Ammon Swenson produced a podcast called CrudeCast. It lasted for about four episodes, and among those episodes was a three part series called Outrun Your Demons. In it, Ammon tells a story many of us can identify with. It involves our friend Ryan Earp—a guy with a heart of gold, but at the time had a tendency to get in his own way.

This episode originally came out in 2015, and Ryan has since turned his life around—he’s clean and sober, happy and recently married.