Steppin' Out Radio

Author and Public Speaker Allan McDougall takes you into the life of an alcoholic with unforgiving detail. It leads you down the tortured path that brought him to the brink of suicide by alcohol and back from that hell into the light of a productive life again. McDougall's book, Breaking Through: Discovering the Riches Within, is the memoir of a hard life, yet one that, more than 20 years after Allan's critical moment on the brink, continues to be fully redeemed. "My intention", says Allan "is never to see through people but to see people through. This book is a dream I have carried with me for twenty-four years." He lives these words daily as head of the United Steelworkers Union's Emergency Response Team, reaching out as a crisis counselor to the families of workers killed on the job. "Every day for 22 years I went thousands of feet under the ground and fought Mother Earth in sweltering heat for her mineral wealth. But, however far inside the earth I went, the riches I discovered when I went deep within myself, the 18 inches from my head to my heart, have proven much more valuable. Those 18 inches were the hardest distance I have ever traveled, yet, after more than twenty years, I am still mining that vein, and I am convinced that it is a bottomless source of personal riches." Many is the book we can't put down, but rare is the story we take with us. Breaking Through is such a story.

John is an Al-Anon member, who found he could not be stable in relationships. After time spent in therapy, his counselor suggested he seek solace in the fellowship, considering both his parents were alcoholics who themselves were undiagnosed but who were also abusive towards him; John's father physically abused him, but his own mother sexually abused him. From this, he adopted a mantra that all people were not to be trusted.

Alex is a returnee to Steppin' Out Radio. This time, he's discussing his experience with yet another 12-step fellowship: Al-Anon. Aside from working on his own addictions through other groups, Alex says Al-Anon assists him in exploring troubles caused by the dysfunction in his own family which he feels jumpstarted his own addictive behaviors. Alex struggled with being gay and growing up in the midwest, but being sexually assaulted by a male cousin caused him to seek acceptance in unhealthy relationships.

Ed's first gambling experience came age seven, playing with his childhood friends, pitching coins and betting on neighborhood sports games. He remembers raising himself, as his father had long work hours and his mother was uninterested in him. His first trip to the racetrack came at age 12, thanks to friends' parents who worked the stables. But he soon moved onto card games each day and heavy sports betting. By his late teens, Ed was hard into bookmakers and had to tell lie up on lie to cover up his losings.

Bob Richards is the President of the National Association of Addiction Professionals, or NAADAC. He advises listeners how to find an appropriate addiction counselor or physician. He says those seeking professional help should do so form people who are not only appropriately licensed by their state, but also one who is practiced and specialized specifically in addiction recovery. He also has advice for professionals about taking patients or clients who are seeking addiction help; that offer to help find the client another professional if the client feels their work is not progressing towards recovery.

Alessandra Rain is a nationally recognized expert on addiction drugs and the founder of "Point of Return" which assists those addicted to prescription painkillers go through at-home withdrawal. Her own story begins when she suffered a horrible car accident, which necessitated thirty-four surgeries. With those operations came doctor-directed use of narcotic pain killing medicine. The drugs mad Alessandra depressed and insomniac, which prompted doctors to prescribe her even more mind-altering medicines. One month she took over a 1,000 doctor-prescribed pills. But her pain never left. She even lost the ability to walk for a while.

John worked as a senior editor in New York City, but Crystal Meth forced him to walk away from his well-paying job only to wind up on public assistance. Going to work took a back seat to securing money and a drug deal for the day. John's drug use began later in life, almost as if a mid-life crisis, feeling he never tried things he should have done in his youth. And so his life became focused on getting high and engaging drug-fueled dangerous sex. He burned through his cash, his savings and his retirement funds.

Guy is a Crystal Meth addict who began his addiction while in recovery from alcoholism. He says the two are completely different. He had been close to eleven years sober from alcohol, but he first thought of meth as an innocuous substance, not realizing how dangerous and devastating meth could be. Like many, he took meth as a club drug and he found it made him incredibly hypersexual. But it also made him detached from people, even himself, forgetting about hygiene and employment.

Ronnie's gambling issues began later in life when she moved, in her forties, to Las Vegas. Her job in New York had been downsized, and so she ventured west to find work, never having gambled before at a casino. Ronnie's family moved there previously, and she hoped to find new luck, so to speak. Her trips to casinos were infrequent, playing tour guide to visiting friends and families and never losing more than twenty dollars. But she never found the job she wanted, never found the boyfriend she wanted, and her brother passed away. Ronnie found the sport of gambling to be a distraction, and within a year was no longer gambling a few bucks, but the car payment.

Gerry Cooney made the leap from amateur boxer to professional prizefighter at age 19. In a very short time, he worked his way up to a 25-0 record. But as quickly as he rose through the ranks of pro-boxing, he fell from greatness into a pit of alcohol. As he boxing career began to fizzle due to fighting less and less and not winning championships, he began to remember the verbal abuse he suffered at the hands of his drinker father; he was told he was no good, and would never succeed. He drank to ease the pain, all while partying hard and chasing women. He would later realize he spent much of his life trying to prove his father wrong.