Steppin' Out Radio

12-Step Radio. True Stories of Real Life. Addiction. Recovery. Transformation

Terrie Williams 07/27/2020

Terrie Williams Black Pain identifies emotional pain -- which uniquely and profoundly affects the Black experience -- as the root of lashing out through desperate acts of crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, workaholism, and addiction to shopping, gambling, and sex. Few realize these destructive acts are symptoms of our inner sorrow. Black people are dying. Everywhere we turn, in the faces we see and the headlines we read, we feel in our gut that something is wrong, but we don't know what it is. It's time to recognize it and work through our trauma. Terrie Williams knows that Black people are hurting. She knows because she's one of them. /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/15362957

Leigh Steinberg 02/13/2020

Leigh Steinberg Leigh Steinberg (@leighsteinberg) Sports Agent to the Stars, wrote a best-selling book, Winning with Integrity, providing insight on how to improve life through non-confrontational negotiation. Furthermore, Leigh’s most recent book, The Agent: My 40-Year Career of Making Deals and Changing the Game, details his decades of dominance in the sports industry and sheds light on overcoming his personal struggles to launch his comeback. Leigh has been rated the #6 Most Powerful Person in the NFL according to Foo /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/13134107

Maureen Cavanagh 01/15/2020

Maureen Cavanagh Discovering her daughter’s addiction to opioids forced Maureen Cavanagh into the dark work of caring for a child with addiction. Now, she is the founder of Magnolia New Beginnings, a nonprofit peer-support group for those living with or affected by substance use disorder. She has been recognized by The New York Times, CNN, and other outlets for her work fighting the opioid crisis and the stigma that surrounds it. Cavanagh is also the author of If You Love Me: A Mother’s Journey Through Her D /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999884

Severe Drunk 01/13/2020

Severe Drunk Kim grew up in a “beautiful suburb” as an only child of a “severe” alcoholic father. She says he was drunk daily. She remembers as a child telling her father that their lives would be okay if he didn’t keep drinking. But in her early teens, she began drinking herself. Kim would steal booze from her friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet at a party; she became so intoxicated she couldn’t go home. From that moment, she had a new favorite activity. It made her feel less uncomfortable in her own skin. /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999890

Hospital Corners 01/12/2020

Hospital Corners Raymond is an alcoholic and an addict. Growing up in with an alcoholic mother in Brooklyn, he now knows it was booze which killed his mom. As a child, he would sneak drinks but his true drinking began at age 14 when sneaking out with friends. His drinking persisted from that moment on. His drinking took over his life to the point he twice attempted suicide. Raymond would wind up in psychiatric care at New York’s Bellvue Hospital, where a nurse told him that he wasn’t mentally ill, but that he drank too /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999893

New York 01/11/2020

New York Tommy was raised in New York’s Staten Island. He was eleven years old when his father gave him his first drink, declaring Tommy to “be a man, now.” But his regular drinking started age 13 with friends. His mother beat him when he came home drunk. Tommy’s drinking continued though his teenage years, dropping out of school by age 16 and working for a living. His job allowed him to save money each week in order to go out drinking. But his drinking took up too much of his time and he soo /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999896

Nickels 01/10/2020

Nickels Sophie’s problematic compulsive gambling started later in life, when she was 60-years old. She had achieved sobriety from other addictions much earlier but started gambling as an activity and it quickly progressed into a problem. While making beach walks near her home in Atlantic City, she took a liking to slot machines in the city’s casinos. But her nickel bets turned into dropping hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours. Her attempts at limiting herself were fruitless, as she she would run ho /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999899

Not About Winning Or Losing 01/09/2020

Not About Winning Or Losing Paul’s life revolved around gambling from the time he was young. He played poker and flipped baseball cards. Paul always wanted to be a winner and pursued winning aggressively. He worked in a bowling alley at 12 years old and loved to watch the men play poker afterwards. He liked the “action” of gambling. It wasn’t about winning or losing. Paul’s focus became on gambling and he thought about it all the time. When the game was over, he would feel sad and isolated. At 16-years-old he dropped out /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999902

Family Game 01/08/2020

Family Game David’s first time gambling was at age six. His father taught him to play poker, making penny bets, and it soon became a family activity. Later in life, David can see that other kids would enjoy a range of activities but he only wanted to play poker. Soon his family games went from pennies to dimes. As an adult, David now knows his father, who showed him how to gamble, had a gambling problem himself. In his teen years, he would spend his money from his after school jobs to gamble and it cons /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661499

To Be The Bookmaker 01/07/2020

To Be The Bookmaker Sean grew up in a neighborhood in which if you didn’t gamble, you didn’t belong. Bets began at a young age with friends, as they would play baseball with each other. In his early teens, a friend introduced him to a bookie, and Sean made bets on sports games right away, putting up bets of hundreds of dollars that he didn’t have. His losses would have the bookie knocking on his parents’ door. As he got older, he would come to idolize bookmakers, with their fancy clothes and car /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661502

Confronting Marbles And Ponies 01/06/2020

Confronting Marbles And Ponies Compulsive Gambler Joel’s first bet was, as it often is, during childhood. Joel was a fantastic marble player; and not only one the games among the kids, he would up winning all the marbles and taking them home. But as a teen, his parents took him to the track, giving him two dollar to play with. Joel won fifteen. And from that moment, he just knew he could make money his whole life by gaming. He became a card player, a pool player, and seemed unstoppable. But Joel could never find satisfa /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661505

She Never Knew He Gambled 01/05/2020

She Never Knew He Gambled Andy is a compulsive gambler. His game of choice was poker, but he would gamble on anything he could. And all he would do is lose money. He barely if ever won. Andy’s legitimate creditors – namely the bank – would often call his house, speaking with him or his wife, asking for him to get his bills current. Andy wasn’t raised a gambler, but was introduced to gambling by his father-in-law, who later Andy and his wife would recognize also has a gambling addiction. But Andy /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661508

Family Bar 01/04/2020

Family Bar Michelle’s first drink alone was at age 11. Her family home was complete with a bar that was never locked. She came home from school one day and found an open bottle of wine in the kitchen fridge, and so she tasted it. She felt guilty about taking the sip, but she kept repeating the drink each day when coming home from school.
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Teenage Sneaky Drinker 01/03/2020

Teenage Sneaky Drinker Jenn returns to re-tell her story of teenage alcoholism. She had her first drink in her first week of her freshman year in high school, but she had wanted to drink for a long time leading up to it. Jenn was too scared to drink at home, but found friends a couple of hours away whose parents permitted the teenagers to drink. Her first drunk was with these friends, at a beachside bonfire. Jenn found the drinking alleviated the stress of her home life and her parents’ divorce.
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Alcoholic Shrug 01/03/2020

Alcoholic Shrug Brian comes from a culture where drinking and other bad behavior tends to be congratulated. He was a child when he convinced an alcoholic adult to buy him booze by paying him for it. Brian can remember getting drunk that night with a buddy, staggering around the neighborhood, and then blacking out and coming too in his parents home late at night. His boozing got him in trouble while in Singapore, where he got arrested for drinking to excess. His whole life, Brian remembers that everybody from his /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661517

Filling Voids 01/02/2020

Filling Voids Barbara is addicted to sex and love, and she shares her story in hopes others can begin to understand the difference between normal sex, love and romance, and those who use them as a “drug of no choice.” Barbara asserts that much of this stems from a need to be approved and accepted. Her own issues began in childhood, with a mother preoccupied with sex. Barbara was encouraged by her mother to have sex often as a teenager. But when her mother passed away, she would engage in sex with numerous men, of /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661523

Control 01/01/2020

Control Dave is a sex and love addict. He spent most of his life wondering how he became this way. He still isn’t sure. Dave grew up in a upper-middle class home in a family of high achievers. His parents and siblings were very loving. There was no outright abuse. But Dave’s father was very success-oriented, and there was a lot of pressure to perform to high expectations both in school and life. And because of that, Dave found his father was putting himself in control of Dave’s life. He’s not sure w /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12661526

Toasted 12/31/2019

Toasted Bob’s major use of drugs and alcohol stared after high school, following a bad breakup. Bob incidentally was taken to a twelve-step meeting which brought him into two years of sobriety, though it ended when he toasted his brother at his wedding. Years later, he wound up in jail. Bob was not only an addict, but a serial abuser of his wife and kids. And in jail, under physical threat by the other inmates, he decided to get sober for good.
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Drug Dealing Dad 12/30/2019

Drug Dealing Dad Fred thinks he used drugs in order to deal with pain, and today in his sobriety, he knows to deal with pain without using. His first time trying a drug, alcohol, happened at age ten at a party his parents threw; they toasted him with Sangria. Fred remembers it made him feel “warm.” He would later recognize his home life was drug-centered. Fred’s father was a drug dealer.
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Celebrating And Dealing 12/29/2019

Celebrating And Dealing Paul grew up in what he says should be a normal childhood. He attended a very good school, was a good student and athlete. But he always had a feeling of being different and inadequate. At age 12 or 13, while playing on a hockey team, Paul drank when celebrating winning a championship game. While he drank before, he had never got drunk until that time. It was a horrifically sickening experience for Paul but it would not be the last time he would drink, as being drunk felt magical to him. In high /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999914

Black And White 12/28/2019

Black And White Robert felt like he had a difficult childhood, dealing with an alcoholic father. For some reason, his father’s harshness was directed towards him as opposed to his siblings. And while he doesn’t know why, Robert was compelled to sample his father’s alcohol as young as five years old. By sixth grade, he was smoking marijuana. He remembers taking a school trip while intoxicated. It wasn’t long after he progressed to cocaine and heroin.
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Stealing Pills 12/27/2019

Stealing Pills Aaron was always rebellious, even as a young child. At 13 he started smoking marijuana and drinking at 14. He quickly discovered how easy it was to steal pills from friends’ bathroom cabinets. Aaron says he was addicted to Oxycontin for a year and a half. At age 20, Aaron was arrested for writing fake prescriptions for pills. This led to his bottoming-out, in 2001, when he entered an in-patient rehab center and has been sober ever since.
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Pill Kid 12/26/2019

Pill Kid Catya’s first use of prescription pain medication came at ten years old; she had strenuous physical ailments even at that age. But she soon learned the pills could “treat” more than physical pain. By fourteen, she was drinking booze and smoking pot. A year later, at 15, she first walked into a AA meeting.
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Broke The Rule 12/25/2019

Broke The Rule Cory started smoking pot at twelve and drinking by thirteen. But even at the young age of thirteen, Cory had a rule for himself: he would continue to drink and smoke, but that he would never user hard drugs. It took only two years for Cory to break his own rule. By age fifteen, he was doing any drug he could get his hands on.
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Jeffrey Veatch 12/24/2019

Jeffrey Veatch Jeffrey Veatch, a news writer at ABC News Radio for 40 plus years, won a national Writers Guild award in 2007 for ABC’s World News This Week. In September 2008, Veatch’s life took a drastic turn when his 17-year-old son, Justin, died from an accidental drug overdose. Justin was an exceptionally talented musician on the verge of recording an album of his original music work. After his death the Veatch family founded the non-profit Justin Veatch Fund, Inc.
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Richie Supa 12/23/2019

Richie Supa Richie Supa is a New York singer/songwriter with over 300 songs recorded and four solo albums to his name. Richie’s career was launched via the legendary Long Island Band “The Rich Kids” who were signed by Clive Davis to Columbia records. Richie was a staff writer at EMI Music for eighteen years and went on to a career on Broadway where he had the lead role in the hit musical Hair. Supa co-wrote several number one rock hits including “Back on Earth”, “Misery”, “Amazing” and “Pink” /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999932

Cutting 12/22/2019

Cutting Jenny started cutting herself at the age of eleven; drinking with boys and smoking their mom’s marijuana at twelve. When she got into high school, her friends started dying because of alcohol and drugs – this scared Jenny. When she hit bottom at seventeen, Jenny attended an outpatient program for more than eleven months. Today she is sober more than a decade and continues to go to meetings and has fun in sobriety.
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Father Roger 12/21/2019

Father Roger Priest, Retreat Master, Author, Actor, Playwright and Sinner! Father Roger tells us his intriguing story of addiction and recovery. Roger says, “By the age of 3 years old I needed to go on the wagon. If they had Kiddie AA I would have qualified!” Roger’s first real moment of clarity, after years of abusing alcohol, happens as he comes out of a blackout, standing on the ledge of the Brooklyn Bridge, ready to jump. After getting himself down off the cables, he ran looking for an AA m /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999938

Shyness 12/20/2019

Shyness Mike’s first time getting high was at 14 years old. He had already been drinking with friends when he (and they) tried marijuana, thinking it would lead them to having more fun; he never intended to embark a disastrous path of alcohol and drug abuse. Looking back, Mike thinks he was drawn to drinking drugs as away to overcome shyness. Although Mike, still struggles with being shy and feeling isolated, he finds fun in sobriety by expressing himself through his music and playing in a rock band i /episode/index/show/steppinoutradio/id/12999941

Thirteen 12/19/2019

Thirteen Brianna started drinking with her cousins and friends at the age 13; getting alcohol from the Head of Police’s liquor cabinet. She always hung out with older people and dated older guys. Brianna says drugs sped up her bottom, which led her to Alcoholics Anonymous at the age of 21. New Years Day of 2007 is Brianna’s sobriety date.
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