The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Journey to Freedom serves as an exclusive extension of the Living Boldly with Purpose podcast series—a platform that inspires powerful transformation and growth. Journey freedom is a podcast hosted by Brian E. Arnold. The Journey to Freedom is an our best life blueprint exclusively designed for black men where we create a foundational freedom plan. There are five pillars: Identity, Trust, Finances, Health and Faith.
The Journey to Freedom Podcast
Running Toward Recovery Michael Herbert's Journey to Freedom
A lot of people think recovery ends when the meeting does. We open the door wider.
Michael joins us with a story that moves from crack addiction and quiet shame to beekeeping, ultra running across the Sahara in sandals, and building a nonprofit that feeds schoolchildren in Ethiopia. The throughline isn’t superhuman grit; it’s a simple sequence: choose abstinence, find your people, take honest responsibility, and then create a life you’re excited to wake up for.
We talk about growing up feeling “different,” hiding deficits behind humor, and using drugs to amplify joy or mute pain. A 30-day rehab and an experiential internship flipped the script, revealing that the problem wasn’t intelligence—it was fit. Learning by doing became a method for everything: counseling, ordering hives and learning bees in an afternoon, saying yes to 155 miles and adapting when his shoes failed. He finished in Tevas.
The lesson lands hard and hopeful: momentum beats doubt, and preparation is a kindness to your future self.
Service keeps the engine running. A single promise in an Ethiopian village turned into a $30,000 fundraiser, a fast-tracked 501(c)(3), and a lunch program powered by 300 chickens so kids get two eggs a day. We dig into daily practices that sustain change—three workouts, journaling, meditation—and why nicotine counts as a drug worth quitting. For families, we share boundary-setting questions that reduce enabling and increase real help. Michael’s new book, The Recovery Roadmap: A Guide to Freedom and Adventure, captures the blueprint: abstinence gets you into the room; adventure, purpose, and community make you want to stay.
If you’re ready to reimagine recovery as a path to strength, service, and awe, press play. Then share this episode with someone who needs proof that change can be bold and joyful. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what dream are you ready to start today?
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All right. Well, thank you guys for being here for another episode, just another incredible episode that I believe of the Journey to Freedom podcast. And I've I have so much fun doing this one because I get to meet so many different interesting men. And in this case, uh, we started this one about a year and a half ago now. Uh, and it's Journey to Freedom, and it's been black men uh that have just been able to tell our stories. And I don't believe, Michael, that I've had a beekeeper yet uh on the show. Now I know my grandpa had a whole bunch of bees, and we would move and we he was in uh uh central California, he had a dairy, and then we would have to go to another spot where he had all these bees. Uh and I remember, you know, I would go in there and he would say, roll up the windows of the truck, and he would put on all the stuff and he would smoke, you know, pull out the honey. And oh, it was it was so fun as a kid being able to do that. Uh, but then you're talking about the rain, and I didn't understand that, you know, he was telling me, like, I felt like I was listening to Bill Nyder Tienes guy tell me about the pollen and you know, bees eating up their own honey, and then we don't get any of it if they eat all of it. And you know, I knew a little bit about the, you know, you want to have um uh my grandpa used to tell me that you want to have bees from the area in which you live in because that helps you with the allergies uh from that area. Because if you get if you get honey from, you know, uh Michael is in Florida. If I get honey from Florida and I go out and and I'm rolling around in the grass in Colorado, it's not gonna help me because it's a whole different allergy system and ecosystem. And so that was cool. But uh, you know, Michael is also an author, and uh, you know, I asked him before the show uh in our in our green room, like, what are you most excited about? You know, and he said life. And it's such a great answer in this day and age where people are excited about getting up in the morning, you know, and the things that they get to do, and having good friends, and having food on the table. And uh there's so many things that when you watch like our uh our news or you watch the media and they they give this bleak picture every day of how bad our lives could be. You know, we hear about I I had a guy, um, I went into the grocery store yesterday, and uh he was asking me, you know, I guess he was trying to sell a newspaper. And what was funny is I'm like, newspaper, what's a newspaper? Because it's been so long since I personally have actually read a newspaper, and he was talking about the local paper, and I told him, he said, I said, I haven't watched news in 15 years, and I haven't read a newspaper in at least 20 to 25 years. And he goes, Well, don't you want to get it for$9.99 a month? We have this special. I'm like, I just said I haven't read a newspaper in 20 years, and I haven't, you know, watched the newscast in 15. Why would I want to start tomorrow? And he goes, Well, because you need to know what's going on and able in order for you to act. And I'm like, Do I do I need to know what's going on where? You know, if you tell me what I need to know that's happening in Israel, I can't control what's happening in Israel. I mean, you know, people are telling me, or if you tell me what's happening in Ukraine, or you know, even sometimes with you know our our president that we have, you know, I'm like, I don't know how much of whatever he's saying I have the ability to control or implement in my life. And, you know, if there's something that major comes out, I'm sure there's enough people who will tell me. But it was just so neat to have you, uh Michael, actually say, I'm just excited about life. You know, because I do talk to other folks that are around and they're not excited because they're telling me that their life is over because of something that our president said, or something that you know they think is gonna happen, or AI is gonna take over the world, or all these other things. And so uh thank you for sharing that. Now I've asked Michael to tell his story. I told him it could be it could be uh like I do all of our guests start bay back in the day. You know, he's only 29 now, so you know, 29 years ago when he started life, and uh he could tell us all about that, or you know, wherever he wants in life. And so I can't wait to hear his story. Uh, we'll chop it up after that and have some more great conversation. Uh, Michael, thank you for being on the show. Uh, thank you for being patient with me. And we have some scheduling things that went on and we've rescheduled a few times, and it's just so neat to have people that are willing to say, hey, I get it. That's life. You know, I'm not gonna be upset, I'm not gonna be angry. We'll we'll get this done eventually. And so I appreciate you for who you are and what you do. And please go ahead and take the floor now, share your story, and we'll just kind of talk after that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I um I really appreciate you having me here today. And my answer about um about life, listen, I have a choice. I can be happy about you know my life and where I'm going, or I can be unhappy about it. Yeah, yeah, you you know, but I'm I'm gonna ignore, you know, so so I have a choice about that. So anyone who's choosing to be unhappy, you know, that's their thing. It's not my thing. You know, you also said I was the first beekeeper. I am probably gonna be the first of a lot of things today that I'm gonna talk about. And you know, one of the themes I think in my life and growing up and and through my adulthood is I have been the first in a lot of things that I've done. So I have done things that typically my people, so to speak, aren't that interested in doing. So I wound up having to do it alone, or the first one that looked like me doing it. You know, even as a child, even you know, me and my brothers were the only ones in the neighborhood who swam. So we all knew how to swim, and nobody else in the neighborhood did. Although everybody went to the YMCA, they had the summer program, but a lot of those kids would jump in the pool and they would just be splashing around in the pool. They didn't know how to swim. Um, so we knew how to swim, you know, in a very um in a larger context of how they, you know, the I'm from New Haven, Connecticut. So I'm from a black community. Everyone in my black community, for the most part, not everyone, but a large portion went to Baptist church or Pentecostal and you know, all of those kinds of churches. Yeah, but we were Episcopalian. Uh-oh. So we were the only one in the neighborhood that was Episcopalian, but our church was the largest black Episcopalian church in the United States. Oh, wow. So obviously there were other black people in my church, but on some level in the neighborhood, I felt alone because I didn't go to the Baptist church or you know, those kinds of churches. My family's not from the south. So we never went down south in the summertime. So, you know, there were there was a lot of uh differences growing up. Um, you know, if if you know, just a little bit about my story. I come from a single uh parent household. My mother and father divorced when, you know, I don't even remember my father living in the house. So it must have been. I think I was born when my mother was 19. So my father was gone by the time I was by the time my mother was 21, and I was two years old because I had a younger brother that was born 18 months after me. And I think as a kid, I felt lonely, but it wasn't something that you could really talk. Who okay, you're lonely. Who are you gonna tell? You know, um, my mother worked, she was a nurse, so she was working all the time. I we were babysat or stayed with my grandparents who lived upstairs from us. But my grandmother and grandfather were my grandfather was born in 1898, my grandmother was born in 1902, so they were from a completely another world, and um you just didn't go to them with problems, you know. It was one of those families, stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about. What's set in our house stays in our house. You know, there are poor children in China, so what do you got to complain about? So, what we learned early on was to, you know, keep it in within ourselves and and not talk about it. So I had a life where my communication skills were limited, my fantasy life was large, um, and I did most things on my own. We were also raised to represent the black community, so we always had to be good. So on the outside I was good, but I was doing devious things kind of in the shadows. So what that did for me or how it manifested itself in my life was I wound up being very dishonest. Meaning, if you asked me a question, I would answer you, but I would always give you the right answer versus the honest answer. And that's just how I lived throughout my life. You know, I got involved with drugs early on in life, no other reason other than curiosity. Um, I was curious about what drugs did. I used them. I learned how to use them. So anytime I was feeling something to um enhance the feeling of excitement, I would use more drugs. To dampen the feeling of shame, hurt, and anger, I would do more drugs. So I never learned how to process my feelings in a healthy way. I always used drugs to do that or food. Um, you know, I graduated high school. Throughout school, I was just a, you know, a DC student. I never really did well in any school. I never really felt good about myself as a bright or a smart person. Um, I was labeled as a slow learner. That's what they called it back then. My mother used to think I was deaf because I would daydream so deeply that she when she would call me, I wouldn't answer because I'm thinking about, I'm fantasizing about something. And most of the things that I fantasized about were nature. That's what I was interested in. I wasn't interested in what the other kids in my neighborhood were interested in. I watched PBS, National Grant Geographics, Mutual of Omaha, Wild Kingdom. Those were the shows that I watched, and that's what I was interested in. And on some level, I felt alienated or different from my peers because they were interested in other things. And as a young boy, other things that I misinterpreted, they were interested in black things, and I was interested in white things, and so I developed a negative kind of view of myself around not being black enough. And so there was always parts of me that I had to hide. I didn't want you to see my deficits, so I would have to cover them up. I always kept myself at a distance from others, I used humor, and I would get you before you got me. And usually my get you was something verbal. So how can I embarrass someone? I was judgmental, I was critical, but it was all these techniques that I used to protect myself. Um, you know, long story short, I'm smoking crack. Now I'm a grown-up smoking crack. I had the bright idea. I used to work at the post office, and I was making, this was in the early 80s, and I was making about$28,000 a year. That was good money back then. So I figured out what my drug problem was. I made too much money. So what I did was I marched down to the post office office and I said, I quit. Well, why are you leaving? Well, because I got a drug problem, and if I didn't make so much money, I wouldn't do drugs. So I quit the job and realized I still had a drug problem and now I don't have any money. Um so that was a couple of years of active addiction. Eventually I got into a rehab. Um I got I got clean in the rehab, I got a job, I got an apartment, and my life started to turn around. I did some of the basic stuff, you know. You know, I went to counseling, I went to a 12-step meeting, I got a job, and I did all that. After about two years, I got a letter from the rehab I went to, and they said, Listen, we have an earth internship program. If you're interested in it, we can get you certified as an addiction counselor for this for the state of New York, and it's a 13-month course. Now, I've always identified myself as not that smart because I wasn't so book smart. I wasn't great in math or any of that stuff. But I got this internship. I said, Well, how am I going to do an internship? I got to move upstate New York and do this internship, and they're not going to pay me. So, you know what? I wrote letters to people and I was able to get donations to uh pay for my gas, my food, and my rent for the first two or three months in the internship. And then eventually they offered me some evening work on the adolescent unit. So the internship was two hours of classroom in the morning, six hours of experiential work on the unit. And that is the way that worked for me in learning. And I think the disservice I got growing up in the educational system was how they taught. They taught in a way that wasn't conducive for me to learn. But this internship proved boy, two hours of classroom, six hours of experiential so I can practice what I just learned and know how to do it, versus sit in classroom all day and then they give you homework at night. I was so spaced out with ADHD or ADD that I couldn't remember anything I read anyway. So the only way I got through grade school, junior high school, and high school was basically memorizing or remembering what somebody said and what they did in front of me, and then guessing the answers. And I guessed enough right answers to get a 60 in most things and just barely pass. So um the amazing thing about my life has been if we're gonna look at the dollar amounts, I've made as much money as any PhD or MD or master's level clinician, and I have a high school diploma. But I am a bright individual that's creative, and I don't think things through the way other people do, in that I'm not gonna waste a whole lot of time figuring something out, I'm gonna just do it. Yeah, like you know, when somebody told me about the beekeeping, I just ordered some beehives, got some bees, and talked to this guy. Hey, so what do you think about you know what do I need to do? He just showed me what to do in you know, an hour. So now I've got these five beehives. Most people, and in the instruction around beehives, is you got to process and learn about bees about a year before you even get a hive.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:So Amazon's limited. That's another one of my first things. Another guy, uh, you know, this is about I I don't know, 15 years ago. A guy said, Hey, you wanna um this late, it was late, she said, you want to run an ultra marathon? And I said, Okay. And I I was running, you know, five, 10 miles a day. And and I said, Well, what's an ultra marathon? She said, Well, it's 155 miles, and we're gonna go 155 miles to the Sahara Desert. I said, 155 miles, how do you do that? She said, Oh, we do a marathon a day for for four days and 58 miles on the fifth day. You want to join us? I said, Yes. So I told her yes. I start training for this thing. I said, There's no way I'm gonna be able to finish this race. So we get to the race day, we wind up in Egypt, we're getting ready to run this race. There's no way I'm gonna do 26 miles tomorrow. I ran, I got through the 26 miles. The first 18 miles, my shoe swelled up, my feet swelled up so bad that I couldn't even wear my sneakers anymore. And I just happened to bring a pair of Tevas with me. So for 137 miles, I ran the rest of the way in Tevas. And each day that I had to do the race, I said, I can't do this. But you know what? I got up and did it anyway.
SPEAKER_01:And what's a teva before you go further? What's it?
SPEAKER_00:Tevas are those old man um sandals that have the bellcrove. That um I'm an old man now, but I think in my mind like a young man. Um, so I call it old man uh sandals, yeah. Sandals for for guys like me, you know. Um so I ran that whole race in the Tevas. The the day that we did the the the last day was the 58 miles. And I I told them, I said, listen, they said, Oh, you can rest here. I said, if I rest, I'll fall asleep and I'll never get back up. I won't go.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I won't get back up.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so um I just kept going and I eventually um was able to finish the race. But uh the the organization was the four deserts. They go to Egypt, they go to South America, they go to China. If you do those first three races first, you get invited to Antarctica. And do you know I was the first black person to have ever, and that race has been going on for 20 years, and I was the first black person to ever run it, and we were in Africa, and there was no other black people by the race that time that I did. You know, um back in in the 90s, I was reading GQ magazine and I was reading this article, Boulder Outdoor Survival School, and they were people that were kind of living in the desert, and the only gold was food, food, water, and shelter. And um, I'm reading this magazine and I'm talking, you know, I tell my boss, oh, look at this magazine. These people are in the desert, you know, they're doing this, that, and the other. Boy, that sounds exciting. He says, Well, why don't you do it? I, you know, never thought about doing it. I said, Why not? So I signed up for Boulder Outdoor Survival School. It cost me a couple of thousand dollars. People said, You're crazy, you're gonna pay money to live in the desert, you know, and and look for food, water, and shelter. I said, Yeah, because that's what I'm interested in. You know, I'm not interested in going to Las Vegas and staying at a really nice hotel. Nice hotels come a dime a dozen, but you don't get an experience like this unless you actually do it. And after I did that the following year, um I did a primitive living course with the Terra Meharan Indians in the mountains of Mexico, and that was a great experience. Um, but I'm talking about all of this in the framework of what recovery is. Recovery from addiction isn't just about going to therapy, counseling, and 12-step meetings, it's about recovering your dreams and living them out. And I think if the description of recovery was larger than going to treatment and 12-step meetings, it would be more appealing to people. Now, I know not everybody's gonna want to run an ultra-marathon, 155 miles to the desert. Not everybody wants to be keep be a beekeeper, but most people have dreams that are unfulfilled. And if you have an addiction problem, you probably have a whole pile of dreams that are unfulfilled. And the the only thing you have to get right to begin to live out those dreams is move towards abstinence and becoming abstinent. So abstinence gets you in the door of recovery, and then you get to do whatever you want when you're there, but you have to figure out a way to get abstinent. Now, I did the route of going to a 30-day treatment program. Maybe somebody wants to do something different. The 30-day treatment program, if you have insurance, is probably the easier, softer way of doing it versus trying to do it in your bedroom or you know, going to counseling once a week or something like that. But my second job professionally was in an intensive outpatient program. And half of the people in the intensive outpatient program came there through a 30-day program, and others came in off the street. And I don't know that there was any difference around the success rate for the ones that came from the 30-day program or off the street. The ones who engaged in the recovery process and kind of followed the direction were the ones that were successful. These were the ones that may have been doubtful of what the process was, but you know what? I'm gonna trust these people, I'm gonna trust this guy for a period of time. For me, it was I'm willing to trust this process for a year, and if it doesn't work for me, I'll go back and smoke crack. I was able to put together a year and it worked for me, and I continued on. So I have 36 years clean now, and I have no reason or want to go back, but my recovery process has had some basic ingredients. The first one is abstinence, the second one is I have to get with some like-minded people that have a similar goal, but I also have to start to take responsibility for my life and my recovery, and I can't blame anybody else for me not being able to do the things that I want to do and I need to do. Listen, they say in life, you can be anything you want in life. Okay, I don't want to be an astronaut, so I could never become an astronaut because I have no desire to be an astronaut. But three years ago, I wanted to feed live hyenas and I did that. I went to Ethiopia and I fed live hyenas. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to climb Macha Picchu, I did that. I wanted to climb Kilimanjaro and I did that. I wanted to climb Mount Muru and I did that. So everything that I've wanted to do, I've been able to do. I was in Ethiopia in the hottest place on earth, right? And I met these people in a village, and the guy says, ah, the dust storm came and blew our school over. So they don't have a school anymore. I said, Oh, if I ever come back to Ethiopia, I'll bring you some school supplies. That was in June. Later that year in August, I'm looking at my pictures. I said, I gotta go back to Ethiopia. I'm just drawn to this place. But I said, Oh shit, I told this guy I'm gonna bring him some school supplies. You know, I gotta get this guy some school supplies. So I said, Well, let me come up with a fundraiser. I'll raise$1,800, I'll buy some school supplies, and I'll bring it over to Egypt. I mean to Ethiopia. So I did this fundraiser within a week. I had raised$3,000. Within three months, I had raised$30,000. So I said, without much thought, let me just fill out the application in the IRS for a 501c not-for-profit. Filled it out, it got approved. I got my not-for-profit. So again, it wasn't about me getting a committee and people, let's think about this thing and we're gonna put this together, we're gonna do this, and we're gonna create this not-for-profit. I just, whether I was naive, I said, screw it, let me just find the application, I'll fill it out, and it got approved. So now it's I was there initially in June. By the following December, I'm back in Ethiopia with nine huge suitcases that I'm bringing back to the school. And I was able to bring enough supplies for three schools. But the the the the the one thing that really got me going around this, and I'm gonna tell you this is for everyone. When that guy told me a dust storm blew over his school, and I gotta tell you, I saw these kids just innocent kids, they were dirty, their clothes ripped. These are kids that their parents, their grandparents, their children, their grandchildren, great-grandchildren will never experience in a lifetime a glass of ice water. I said, there is a need here, and I can't ignore this need. My job is to respond to it. And I started that not-for-profit, and I got those kids school supplies. I've been back three other times, and I bought computers, other school supplies, and this last time I got another bright idea. I said, How do we incentivize these kids to come to school? Let's keep it simple. Food. We gotta have a lunch program. Yeah, so we gotta put a lunch, but how am I gonna do a lunch program? What am I gonna keep bringing them food? No, so I got them 300 chickens, so they lay eggs, and every kid, and I made it, I made it very clear to those people at the school. I said, these kids should be getting two eggs a day for lunch. Now, these are the kids that may get two eggs in a year. Now they're getting two eggs for lunch every day, five days a week. And I don't care that the culture doesn't offer that in general, but I made it my request. If I'm gonna help you, this is what I'm asking you to do. Get them that stuff. So I think we as human beings, as people, need to respond to the needs of others. That we're not on this planet alone. And you know, maybe there's some self-caring reasons why I do it, because maybe when I'm down and out, somebody will be there for me and provide something. And I'm I'm thinking, listen, if I get down and out, I hope somebody really lays out the red carpet for me, gets me a nice place to live and this, that, and the other. Who knows what's going to happen? Um, but I respond when I see there's a need versus ignoring it or pretending like I don't see it. And yeah, listen, I'm not handed out. Money on the streets to every homeless person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I'm talking about in a very general way. You know, that's what I do. And so recovery has afforded me the opportunity to respond to my value system. When I was in active addiction, I couldn't respond to my value system. But in recovery, I can. Again, I've expanded my understanding of what recovery is because travel, adventure, exercise, things like that are important to me. Also engaging and practicing spiritual principles, honesty, integrity, perseverance, compassion, all of those things, trust really work for me. Earlier this year, I decided I wasn't going to work and I was going to take some time off to do some things. So I increased my journaling, meditation. I took a permaculture course. I did some grounding work. I'm walking around barefoot so I can feel the earth. I went to Africa and I climbed to Mount Muru. Um and I wrote a book. And I realized, well, I know my life, and everybody's telling me I'm an interesting person, so why not put it down on paper? So I was able to work with a coach and I wrote a book. I started in January, and the book was finished in June, six months. I have a friend that's writing a book. She's still been writing the book now in three years. Um, I used another method that really works for me because sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper, writing 5,000 pieces of paper wasn't going to work for me. So I recorded everything and then had it transcribed into words, and I put my book together that way. Um and it's been pretty successful. I, you know, I've just sold my first 500 copies, um, and the book has been out for a month. And the name of the book is uh The Recovery Roadmap: A Guide to Freedom and Adventure. And for me, recovery has offered me freedom. Recovery is not always from drugs and I also had to recover from my parents and what was taught to me, right? Because my parents and grandparents were from a different time. So, I mean, when I grew up, oh, get a job at the post office or the railroad or the city, you had to get a job with a pension. Well, that was true for my grandparents and my parents because of what was going on with black people then, and they were looking for security. So I went and got a job at the post office. I did not like working at the post office, although it paid me well. It wasn't a difficult job, but it was just boring. The mail came in, the mail came out. As a child, when I was in school, the person that I liked the most in school, I respected the most, that I was most interested in, was the guidance counselor. So I was naturally drawn to counseling. So when the internship came up for me and was offered to me, you know, I jumped on it because that's what I wanted to do. Listen, when I completed the internship, it wasn't like I really knew how to be a counselor, um, but I had the basic uh um understanding of what counseling was. I had the um the personality for it and the natural I was naturally therapeutic. So over time I got really good at it. And um I had been been working in the field now for about 34, 35 years, and have really created a great reputation for myself. But again, this year I really wanted to take a break from that kind of work and find out what else there was for me. People say, Michael, you're crazy. You stopped working for um nine months, you didn't work. Yeah, listen, I worked a little bit, but I cut everything in half and I had faith and I trusted the process that Michael, I've come this far and everything has been okay. Why can't I do a little bit more and trust that things are going to be okay? So over the year I was able to get jobs that paid me a bulk amount of money that was three or four days, so I didn't have to work all the time. I could write my book, I could exercise. People are like, well, what are you exercising all day? Yeah, because I wanted to. And I, you know, um, this body has to last me a lifetime, and I'm not gonna squander it, you know, and put all my effort into showing up for work and sleeping all day. So I made a serious effort into working out. So I work out, I don't know. I do about three different, you know, I do this this strength training once a day, I do yoga once a day, and I either cycle or climb once a day. So I do three separate workouts a day, and I do that six to nine times days in a row. And I don't take days off because I know there'll be naturally days that I don't want to do it. So I don't want to plan a day off. Um, I just, when my body says, Michael, it's time to take a day off, I take a day off. And that's what I do. I started a black men's journal group. So I meet with these guys, we meet every other week and we have a journal book that we use. We review the journal book, we review our journal writings and share with each other to kind of develop a relationship that all of us have agreed we haven't been able to find out in the streets or out in our neighborhoods where people tend to be superficial in your relationships with each other, but you don't really get deep. And especially as a group of black men getting deep. Now, you can go to a 12-step meeting and people raise their hand and share, but you can't really give feedback on it. You can't go back and forth on it. And this group gives us an opportunity to do that. So that's a really um um good thing that I've been able to do. Um, let me give you another first, maybe for your audience. I climbed an active volcano.
SPEAKER_01:Was it hot?
SPEAKER_00:I gotta tell you, that place was hot. I went to the hottest place on earth in Ethiopia. And let me tell you something. It was a hundred and twenty degrees at night. It was so hot, it was just impossible to go to sleep. You could not go to sleep, you couldn't take off any more clothes than you took off, and you're still hot. You know what I mean? It it was it was pretty tough. Um, so um, you know, so I did write this book, and I was really proud to be able to dedicate, acknowledge two mentors that I had um that really they gave me their business in New York. They said, Michael, you run it. And they gave me supervision around it. They were both um licensed uh social workers, they gave me supervision around it, but they let me run it, and they trusted that I could run it. And I ran it, I did a good job, but I didn't always feel good. You know, I felt insecure like an imposter, but I've realized now that we grow over time, and even though you know, you know, I don't know, I'm in recovery for whatever period of time, in my 60s, I'm starting to feel the confidence, the security that I would have hoped for in my 40s and 50s. But you know what? I didn't have it. It was all a front. I don't know if it was all a front, but I wasn't, but I can really feel it now. And I don't say like I got regrets because I didn't do it then. Back then I was doing something else and I was enjoying life, even though maybe if I look at it now, I was maybe I was a phony or whatever in in certain aspects. But now it's all matching up. My insides match my outsides. I'm not perfect, I still have a lot of areas to grow in, but I certainly have come a long way in a short period of time. So um you know, yeah. So that's I don't know, that's my story.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if you have any questions or um oh gosh, I got like I got a big old book of questions and she I mean this is this is incredible. And I thank you for for sharing, especially when you know, I used to run a homeless services um uh 50-bed facility here here in Denver, Colorado. And when we talked about recovery, everybody always wanted to talk about the step plans and the you know what we're gonna do in therapy and the group meetings. And I I am so incredibly happy that you shed some light on recovery, isn't going to a class once a week and then thinking that you're cured.
SPEAKER_00:Let me tell you, the when I went to Colorado um four years ago, part of my recovery was climbing Mount Vale. Okay, but also downtown Denver, I forgot that area, there's a a gym called there's a climber gym there. Yes, yeah. So I I went because I have a climber at home, and I said, you know what? I want to experience it in the live studio. So I went to the live studio and experienced my climber machine. I'm on a um, they have a contest every month, a competition every month, and I'm on the competition this month, and it's usually a 40 or 50,000 um foot climb. And I'm 66 years old. So I'm competing with 30, 40, and 50 year olds, and I gotta tell you, every month, every month, I'm in the top five. So I'm doing good. And last year, I self-identified myself, I labeled myself, I titled myself a professional athlete. So the NFL didn't do it, ESPN didn't do it, I did it. I don't need anybody else to tell me I'm not, I am a professional athlete. And I've never played on a team before, and I've never been paid for my athleticism, but here I am, professional athlete. So maybe I'm your first professional athlete, self-proclaimed professional athlete on your show.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I gotta, I gotta, you know, I gotta reach back into the day because I'm 60 now, so I I gotta go back into my athletic days, but we gotta get you sponsored. When I when I think of um, you know, the the Nike just do it, uh, that is you. You're not like let's think about it, let's talk about it, let's let's analyze it. You're like, let's do it, and you actually do it. I I gotta figure out who I gotta send this video to so that we can get you, you know, some shoes.
SPEAKER_00:But the thing is, if if you don't just do it, there's a tendency to talk yourself out of it.
SPEAKER_01:Of course, of course, and then when it hurts a little bit, it's even worse, right? It's like if I sit down, I'm not getting back up, and uh, you know, we so we gotta get this over to somebody who can can get you some of those that gear, because you should never do 159 miles with some sandals. I don't care who 58 miles or 130, however many you told me you're doing. And I I was just as as you were going through some of these things, and I was thinking about some of my life and the things that that I you know do, you know, because I grew up here in Denver, so you know, I too never traveled to the South. I took I took 18 black men to uh Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery last January, and we did a civil rights tour, and you know, I I went on the tour one year before. I'm like, oh my gosh, I had no idea the South was like like people who just traveled from the north to the south. And I was like, and so I grew up swimming, and you know, I was a lifeguard at a beach and all that kind of stuff, and you know, I I'm just thinking about all the things you do. Then I thought about your book. And you know, I have I have a um, I'm only five years younger than you, so I'm not, you know, we're it's it's like we grew up in the same era, but they labeled me special education or or special needs uh in elementary school because I wasn't reading, I wasn't keeping up, and I wasn't I wasn't doing anything uh that they told me I should be doing, and I wasn't learning in a way they thought I should be learning, and so I was behind, and they put me in these trailers and I didn't go to mainstream classes with the with with everybody, and that's so I wasn't going to college, I was going to go to stunt school. I want to be a STEM man, and so I was gonna do that. I just happened to be a pretty good athlete, and my mom begged me. She likes, if you just go to college, we got scholarship offers here. If you just go to college, I will buy you a Jeep when you graduate from college. And right, you you you can kind of imagine that for me. Okay, I'll go to school for four years just so I can have a Jeep. You know, what else am I doing, anyways? Right? I'll postpone some school, but I went to school in California so I could be close to Hollywood. Uh, ended up going through, you know, an education system, uh, and and I'm doing a talk next week at a at a place in Texas. And part of my speech is I didn't realize that I wasn't this special ed student until I was doing my PhD. And and I'm doing it, and I'm going to the disability office where I've been getting my accommodations throughout all this thing, right? I get accommodations to take longer to take tests, I get, you know, longer to write, I get writing help, all that kind of stuff. And I realized this at the end of my uh when I go to the disability office and they say, We got nothing. We don't have anybody who can help you at this point. You've reached this level where you're at the place of like, oh, I guess I'm really not that special a kid that they labeled me. You know, and then I look at you, Michael, and I go, What? You've done everything that I've done through a system, but on your own. And so, how can we get you that honorary doctorate or whatever it is? I mean, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it, and you know, um, and again, I am a high school graduate that got certified in addiction counseling, and I was good at it. All you have to do is find out something that you're good at. I gotta tell you, I was, you know, when you're telling me about stunt man, I said, boy, that's I wonder if he ever became a stunt man. I mean, I was more interested in you becoming a stunt man, you know, than going to college, you know. Um, that sounded interesting and exciting to me. Um, and you know, like when I was younger, I wanted to be an actor, but I realized that I can't act. You know, um, as soon as you put me in front of a camera in that way, I become stiff and unnatural. But I can do this, I can do this all day long, you know. Um, you know, and how I prep for things like this is I just do, you know, 45 minute or 60-minute workout, and then I'm on fire. I can talk till the cows come home, you know, after a great workout. And also for me, a great workout really helps with depression. You know, I think there there, yes, I have experienced depression in my life, and I have tried antidepressants in the past, they they worked, but I also realize that exercise works. So as long as I exercise, I don't need to take a pill or an antidepressant. I just need to exercise. And again, this body has to last me a lifetime. And um one of the things that one of the things that I'm really understanding and I want everybody to know when opportunity comes, it's too late to prepare. So we need to engage in the preparation now because opportunity and tragedy is right around the corner, and if you're not prepared for it, it will overwhelm you. And so my journaling, my meditation, my exercise, my engagement with people are all my preparation for what's happening next. And um I just really I just really believe that. And I think oftentimes people are not prepared for life and what life has to offer them or take away from them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's like they can't, they're not ready to take advantage of, you know, I have um, you know, I just finished a book called uh Be Do Have, so it's becoming the person that God puts you on this earth to be, you know, instead of trying to do it and have it first. And we spend so much time having it. How do we become like, are we prepared for the opportunity when it shows us shows up and says, okay, we're ready to run an ultra marathon. Well, if you hadn't even been running five, ten any miles at all, now you're not you're not prepared to take advantage of that opportunity that comes out and then to be able to do it. And so much of our time is is so stuck thinking about what we want to do that we don't actually ever get those experiences. Like you talked about those kids in the pool, right? They'd run and jump in the pool, but there was the there's probably the opportunity was the why, right? The why's gonna teach you how to do this right, all you want to do is jump in the pool. Well, I can remember when I was a lifeguard at the at the water park, I had all these little black children jumping in the wave pool, and I'm in there all day saving them because they don't know how to swim, right? I'm like, what the what is going on here? Where why don't you go take a few slips? Then this experience is gonna be fun, and you're not having a near-death experience every time you get in the water, and and you know what it is though.
SPEAKER_00:I listen, I'm not a parent, but I I do have a parent, uh-huh, and my mother made sure we learned to swim from kindergarten to fifth grade. We went to private school. My mother filled out the forms and got us scholarships into the private schools. If I did, I gotta tell you, if I did not go to those private schools, I never would have graduated high school, I would be imprisoned, I would have no teeth, I would be acting and looking like all of those people, not all of the people that I grew up, but some of them. I um part of what gets me in the door in a lot of places is I speak well. Yeah, yeah, and my voice and my speaking ability gets me through the door. Listen, a lot of people talk to me, and just in the work that I do, they call me doctor. They they just assume I'm a doctor. I talk apparently like a doctor, and um, it gets me through the door. And if I didn't have the parent that I had, listen, my mother went to nursing school, she became a nurse, and she worked all the time. She worked 11 to 7 and slept during the day, and my and we lived with my grandparents. So my grandparents kind of helped raise us. My grandmother was tough, she didn't play around with nothing. I'm giving an example of her. Like if we were at our house every Saturday, we had to, you know, clean the kitchen floor. So my grandmother was like, there's only one way to do it. On your hands and knees with a bucket, with Ajax and a scrub brush. Yep, she didn't believe in mops. No, because you can't get to tell you, you can't get a clean. And listen, my grandmother didn't believe in showers. She said you can't you can't get clean in the shower. Your body needs to soak, you know. Um, so you could only she would never she wouldn't get a shower in a house, you'd have to get a bit of bathtub.
SPEAKER_01:Dirty water, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and dirt dirty water because she wasn't gonna waste water either. So whichever one of me and my brothers got in the bathtub first, got the clean water, and the rest of them just soaked in the dirty water. Yeah, but there was a rigid way to do things, and I gotta tell you, that rigidity also saved my life because it prevented me from doing some of the things that I could have would have done in my active addiction and in my young life that I just didn't do because she deemed those, she deemed she knew what was right and what was wrong. And I there were some things I just couldn't bring myself to do because of her teachings. So I give a lot of um um reverence to to my grandmother in in literally saving my life.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that is so cool. Michael, I want to I want to uh we got about six or seven minutes left, and I want to make sure we talk about some of the things you want to, especially your book. I have a community that I'm starting, it's called Becoming the Person Universe. And if you go to becoming the person.com, if you're here and watching it, uh go there. We're gonna talk about these. I'm gonna do a fireside chat that I would love to have you on, and we just talk about recovery and we talk about your book and the things that you've learned from recovery. And there's so many people that are out there that are that are believing that maybe if I just do a little bit of therapy, if I just, you know, you like you said, you were able to go, it's cheaper, you know, I'm making too much money to have this addiction, and you know, and then you realize it has nothing to do with the money, it has to do with my mindset and what I'm doing. And so maybe we can come back and circle back and just have people be able to ask us questions, and you know, I'll put you on the spot here because I'm gonna make you come on, anyways, because I can't wait to have that conversation with you. But before we leave today, uh, how do people get a hold of you? How do they get to your book? How do they what else do you want to make sure that we get uh in our time? This has been so amazing. So thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you can go on Instagram, coach Michael Herbert on Instagram and TikTok. I'm also on Instagram as Michael A. Herbert. I'm on recovery guide on Facebook. Um, my book is called I don't it'll probably show up backwards here, but it's got a um it's the recovery roadmap, a guide to freedom and adventure. And you can get that on Amazon or um or Barnes and Noble. But I would ask if anybody gets it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble that you'd be willing to write a review. Yeah, so and and just let me know your thoughts about it, but let other people know because this is an important book for people to read and get a deeper, broader understanding of what recovery is and what life has to offer after drugs. And let me also include in my drug thing: nicotine is a drug, and if you're smoking and vaping, it's more people die of nicotine-related deaths than crack or heroin. So don't get it, don't get fooled by, oh, I don't want, you know, I can't give up everything at once. You can give up everything at once, it gets out of your system in about three or four days, and then the rest is all psychological. And one of the things that I also have learned psychologically, it is painful to not do something you want to do. And this is where meditation comes in. Meditation will help you deal with difficult things without having to take a drag off a cigarette or a vape or take a pill over. But meditation will help you to tolerate the pain that's gonna come in life on some level, anyway. We can't hide from pain, we're gonna experience it at some times. And sometimes a 10-minute meditation, some deep breathing, and focusing on the here and now is all you need.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for you know bringing that up. And one of the other things I'd love to just kind of talk about just for a couple seconds is if you are a person who has somebody in your life who is struggling with addiction, and you're under you can't understand the why, you can't understand what's going on. You can't, well, I can't believe he just does that. I tell him to quit and he does just doesn't quit. Or we we send him to you know a 10-day recovery and he doesn't he comes out and he gets going again. A book like this and having conversations with Michael like this will help you understand what it truly takes and the mindset of somebody who is in addiction and why it's so difficult, right? And especially for people that are on it, have addictions, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right, and and we have to allow people to experience the consequences of their choices. So if they go to rehab and they get out and go use again, maybe the best thing isn't to take them in. Yeah, you know, maybe let them don't do for others what they can do for themselves, and don't think so little of people that they can't figure it out because there are hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to help your loved one. It doesn't have to be you, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:So let them go to a 12-step meeting, let them go to a community center that has free counseling, this, that, and the other. Let them go to a homeless shelter, let them go to a food kitchen, you know, you know, let them experien you know, let them experience they made that choice.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And until they can show some consistency in change, maybe you don't take them back in. But here's the other thing that I will say I cannot tell you what to do. Of course. You have to do what you think is best. I think one of the things that scares people the most is if I don't save them, if I don't do this or that, they're gonna die out there, they're gonna kill themselves, or something really bad is gonna happen. If that were true, half of the population would be dead. Yep. So the worst case scenario probably isn't going to To happen, here's what I ask people to ask themselves: what's the worst thing that'll happen if you don't help? What's the best thing that would happen if you don't help? And what's the most likely thing that'll happen if you don't help? I love that. And then you can come up with the answer for that, you know, of what to do next.
SPEAKER_01:Perfect, perfect. Well, thank you so much for being part of uh the Journey Freedom podcast today. If this is your first one and you're going, wow, this is good stuff, go ahead and hit the subscribe, hit the notifications. We have so many shows with just incredible people uh that are talking just like we are. I'm having Michael back. We're gonna be part of the fireside chat. You want to check out Becoming the Person uh universe and the becoming the person.com. I'm telling you right now, it's gonna be something that's gonna help you uh just go down that journey of, hey, maybe you haven't been hitting your goals, or maybe there's things that you've been wanting to do uh that you just don't know how to do it. Like, hey, maybe you wanted to run an ultra marathon. Hey, let's talk to somebody who's done it and says this is what this is what it took. Now, I'm not saying you need to do it in sandals, and I'm not saying you need to do it in the desert, but at some point, you know, it's something you want to do, you know, it's something that absolutely you should have the ability to be able to do. And so, Michael, it's been a pleasure, it has been so fun to have you on. I can't wait to go back and check. I got all my notes here. I'm thinking of all the things I gotta go do now uh in my life because I have till I'm 66, so I'm your age, in order to get all the stuff you've done so I can show you up a little bit, but it's crunch time, it's crunch time three out three workouts a day and all that kind of stuff I gotta go do now. Yeah, so that's crazy. You have any one final thought that you would love to just share with everybody before we before we leave?
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, there is a solution, there is hope. Um, you know, you just have to find it. And um, there are people who are willing to help you. I'm certainly willing to help anyone who asks, um, and do the best that I can to maybe put someone in the right direction.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Hey guys, don't forget you're God's greatest gift. He loves you, Lounge. I can't wait to see you on the next one. You guys have an amazing, awesome, just incredible day. Hey, remember how Michael told us at the beginning he's in love with life, and you can be too. So just make sure you check out his book. Uh, and we'll look forward to talking to you again. See you soon. All right.