Steppin' Out Radio

Robert and Tish are an engaged couple who are both in recovery. They met while attending a twelve step meeting. Robert drank and drugged for 36 years. His family comes from cultures that embraced drinking alcohol. He was an anxious child whose parents divorced when was young. And at age 8 he learned alcohol could relieve him of fears. Growing up in south central Los Angeles, he eventually found himself joining a gang. Tish also had her first taste of alcohol as young child; her father gave her sips of his gin and tonic starting at age 3. Her first drunk was on Easter Sunday at age 7 with her father's encouragement. At age 13 she was sent off to boarding school where she also could find access to alcohol but also started abusing amphetamines. Tish's kidneys failed by age 19.

Gail Cole's son Brendan was about to finish his college career when she noticed something was wrong. Brendan would admit to his parents that he was addicted to pain pills. His use of the drugs started, as with so many, by taking opioids as prescribed by doctors following surgery. Thinking back, Gail can remember how she needed to keep the pills away from him to make sure he didn't take too many. Brendan would later develop a heroin addiction that would cost him his life.

Raoul is a 15 year-old young man in recovery. His favorite drug to use was marijuana. He began experiencing marijuana at three; he would get a contact high when his father smoked it around him. At age 11, Raoul and his friend decided to get high by stealing from his father's stash. On his 13th birthday, Raoul got so high, he felt nothing as his friends pelted him with coins. When a therapist learned he was abusing drugs, Raoul was sent off to a rehab, but there he learned from other kids who to defeat the regular drug testing.

Pat grew up in a drinking family. Mom and Dad were always consuming alcohol, and at a very age he saw its destructive nature. He promised himself when he grew up he would never drink at home. And so when Pat did become of age, he did all his drinking in bars. Alcohol cost Pat a number of marriages and it ruined his own family, just as his parents alcohol use ruined his childhood family. Pat even blames himself for his own son's death, being too drunk to realize his son was suicidal.

Bob's use Crystal Meth stems from a desire to be accepted. He is the gay son of southern Baptist blue-collar military parents. They could not understand him, and Bob never felt as if he really belonged with his family. One day with his parents gone, he swiped a drink from the liquor cabinet, which he says made him feel "good." By the sixth grade he was a problem drinker, showing up for class intoxicated. But as an adult, the booze began to not be enough and that's when he tried amphetamines. Bob would later go to work for a record label in the Artist & Repertoire division in which he had nearly unlimited access to drugs of all sorts.

Adam never used drugs as a child due to a strange desire always be a "good kid." But that desire soon gave way to a desire to "be bad." Entering the college years, he and friends at nightclubs decide to take pills given to them by complete strangers. The drugs were the designer pills popular in the nightclubs of New York City, like ecstasy and ketamine. The drug use with his new friends continued, including harder narcotics and an overuse of alcohol. But the worst came when trying Crystal Meth with a sex partner. Adam found it made him insatiable, and very quickly he became a daily user of meth.

Pablo started doing drugs at age 12 with his older brother. He liked hanging out with the older kids, as it made him feel part of a crowd. He used marijuana and moved on to abusing prescription pills. When away from home for the first time at college, he learned to start drinking and soon wound up as a regular in the local nightclub scene. People he would meet in the club would provide him with all sorts of designer drugs like ecstasy and ketamine. And then he tried Crystal Meth, which he says ruined his life. He lost his ambition, dropped out of school, and began life spent chasing highs around the country.

Helaina Hovitz Regal is an editor, journalist, author, storyteller, social media and content strategist, and native New Yorker who has always had the unreasonable notion that she can help change the world. She's the author of the memoir After 9/11 and got sober at age 22. Her bylines can be found in over 50 publications including The New York Times, Salon, Glamour, VICE, Women's Health, Teen Vogue, Forbes, SELF, and others. She has a passion for social good and mental health and wellness, and has been featured on several networks such as CBS, PBS, and ABC.

Dorothy has been sober for 25 years, but even today she'll tell you she is an alcoholic. Her first drink came at age 16 when out to dinner with her friends' family. Her friend's family ordered champagne cocktails with little sugar cubes in the glass. She doesn't remember the movie the family took her to see after dinner. The even also gave Dorothy her first blackout. But her alcoholic drinking didn't begin until her college years. Dorothy hoped to become a nurse, and she did, but she would quit her job to stay home and drink.

Tony Mandarich is a former American football offensive tackle who played in the NFL for seven seasons. He was picked in the first round of the 1989 NFL Draft to play for the Green Bay Packers. He would also later play for the Indianapolis Colts. But his prospects dimmed after lackluster seasons, finding himself down and out and in the throws of addiction. Tony's now written a book, My Dirty Little Secrets – Steroids, Alcohol & God: The Tony Mandarich Story. His story is an inspiration for alcoholics and drug abusers, and offers hope for those trying to help themselves out of the nightmare of addiction.