Steppin' Out Radio

Ray remembers as a child sneaking into the bazaars held by the local volunteer fire department, and just becoming intoxicated by the gambling action that the adults engaged in. The spinning of prize wheels and the awarding of prizes was just musical to him. In school he would flip baseball cards and as a teen wiggled his way into a family football pool. His father kicked him out of it when he doubled bets but kept losing. In college he lost money on weekly sports betting. But Ray's innocent infatuation with local gambling progressed into an isolated and destructive adulthood disease.

Paul likes to joke that he's "achieved" a trifecta: He's an alcoholic, a drug addict and a gambler. Drinking and drugging, however, were not the two diseases in which he first sought help. Paul's gambling was his life's excitement. As Paul puts it, he "gambled to escape and escaped to gamble." But his gambling career came to a halt the day federal agents showed up at his house, exposing his problems to his family who insisted he seek recovery.

Randy always had to be in on "the action" – the games, the gambling, and the excitement. It began in childhood. When arriving early to school he used to flip baseball cards with buddies and he felt no greater rush than coming to the game with five cards and leaving with a hundred. Living in New York's Long Island as a teenager, he had easy access to the casino town of Atlantic City, NJ. One night he gambled so much he had no money to pay the tolls for the drive home. As an adult, he quit his jobs to gamble full-time. He planned vacations only in casino towns. He got in deep. He even had to warn his mother to be careful of debt collectors sent by bookies.

Born in Europe, Reva's childhood was an unhappy one. Depression set in so badly she tried taking her own life at age thirteen by swallowing a hundred aspirins. She survived her suicide attempt, but upon waking from a deep sleep she learned nobody in Reva's family noticed she had tried to kill herself. Reva didn't start drinking until she was 21, while away at college in New York City. Instead of class, she was at any open bar she could find. Booze helped quell Reva's anxiety. When Reva would later achieve her sobriety, her newfound clarity would allow to her realize her mother, too, was an alcoholic.

Ron grew up in a normal household. His was not a family of addicts. Rob's family did drink, but they didn't abuse alcohol. He was introduced to alcohol at an early age, and from that moment he liked the way it made him feel. Ron would drink whenever he could. It lead him to drug use and he became a self-described "burn out." That's when his parents noticed his out-of-control life. Ron agreed to counseling when his mother issued an ultimatum; her own brother committed suicide while in the throes of addiction.

Francine hails from a family of alcoholics and drug addicts. Her painful childhood lead to teenage drinking starting at 15. Drinking, she says, took away her shyness but often left her in worse positions. Francine remembers falling down drunk in the street one night. Her alcohol abuse continued into her college years when she became a topless dancer. Francine's lifestyle and her disease prevented her from having healthy relationships. Her marriage ended in divorce, and it wasn't until a later boyfriend told her drinking was out of hand did she start to seek help and transformation.

Leidos is a global scientific and technology company with more than 30,000 employees working actively in defense contracting, aviation, information technology and biomedical research. But after the son of one employee died from an opioid overdose, Leidos CEO Roger Krone committed his company to do its part to fight what is now widely regarded as a public health crisis in the United States.

Leidos' CEO Pledge to End the Opioid Epidemic

Growing up, Sean Hindman loved to swim, skateboard, hang out with friends and most of all, play soccer. When Sean was a teenager, he became addicted to prescription opioid painkillers, and spent the following decade in and out of rehabilitation. On Sept. 19, 2016, Sean Hindman fatally overdosed on heroin. He was thirty years old. Sean's father, John Hindman, has been a Leidos employee since before Sean's birth. Not long after his son's tragic death, John spoke with a young man who, thanks in part to Sean's encouragement, overcame his own battle with addiction. This conversation reaffirmed John's decision to become an advocate for preventing drug addiction, a crisis he rightly describes as "a tsunami threatening the very fabric of our society." As it turns out, John is not the only member of the Leidos family affected by the opioid epidemic—far from it. As the news of Sean's death spread across the company, John realized he wasn't alone.

Leidos' CEO Pledge to End the Opioid Epidemic

Howard C. Samuels is the longtime founding director of The Hills Treatment Center in Los Angeles. He's also an addict himself; for 16 years his life was controlled by alcohol, drugs and even illicit sex. Not bad for the son of a prominent politician from New York State.

Anthony says he was hooked on gambling the moment he put five dollars into a slot machine and it gave him back $1,000. Slot playing lead him to spend days at the races. He denied his problems, but in doing so found himself isolated and out of control. Finally, his father made him confront his disease.