The Drunkalogues

Ryan King moved to Los Angeles as a toddler when his father, Commodores co-founder William King, moved here for work.  He was a pretty straight arrow through high school earning himself a coveted spot in the highly competive baseball program at Long Beach State.  But booze became his way of belonging and soon his undoing as his alcoholo habit compounded a case of the "yips" that kept him from thro...

Paul Summers grew up in Las Vegas Nevada where he had a "eureka" moment at an early age which made him realize that all he wanted to do with his life was play guitar, write music and perform for live audience, and for a while…. That's exactly what he did. But booze and meth and oxy led him off his path, and it was only when his ex-wife disappeared with his toddler daughter that he realized everyth...

Clancy Martin is the author of the recently published, highly acclaimed memoire - HOW NOT TO KILL YOURSELF - which is also an enlightened and practical guide to suicide prevention.  Clancy speaks from experience as he is the survivor of at least ten attempts to take his own life.  And as a recovering alcoholic, he looks at suicide - at least in part - through the lens of addiction.  I found the bo...

I loved this episode because I just had no idea what I was getting into, and Lauren was so raw and honest and her story is - in a lot of ways - tough.  Especially as a parent!  And I loved the way she created a higher power for herself and how it worked!  I think about it all the time......  Here are the original notes:   Lauren Morelli is a costume designer who grew up in South Florida experiment...

I recorded this episode at Sundance right before the pandemic.  I was feeling pretty blue as sometimes happens there, and I went to an AA meeting where I met Kosha Dillz, and he and I went out on a fun, funny night around Park City and recorded this episode the next day. Here are the original notes... Rami is a rapper who performs under the stage name Kosha Dillz.  He grew up in New Jersey and spe...

I met Jono Hart when we were both climbing the Hollywood ladder in the 90s, and we traded small talk and jokes at innumerable cocktail parties before both getting sober at about the same time.   And while I have used the 12 steps as a model, he has largely followed his own heart. Weirldy, both paths share a lot of similarities. We recently re-connected over our shared love of the mountains and he...

I love this episode b/c David is so damn articulate and wise and he recognizes patterns in his own behavior that prove insturmental in changing it.   It's also a great story... Orignal notes: David G was raised in a religious cult where he learned early on to keep his family's membership secret.  It was a lesson that would serve him too well as his alcoholism deepened and yet he still managed to k...

Sean grew up in Long Beach where he was the son of a single mom and absentee dad.  He discovered crack and meth at an early age, and when he graduate from high school he went off and joined the circus - Bread and Puppet - the experimental theater group based in Glover, VT. The skills he picked up at Bread and Puppet led to a very successful career in light design, but his crack and meth habit gave...

I loved recording this episode.  I didn't have a clue how to record music and I was terrified that I was going to disappoint Zander with my audio and it felt like magic to listen to him play in my daughter's bedroom which seemed like it maybe had the best acoustics in the house. Original notes: This is a very special episode. Zander Schloss - the bass player for the seminal punk band The Circle Je...

I've fantasized about having every guest back to catch up with them and hear how they've changed and how their recovery has evolved, but it hasn't yet happened... until now!  Annie appeared on an early season of the podcast to talk alcohol recovery, and now she is back - 4 and a half years later - to talk about her journey through sex and love addiction.  They say if you've been sober long enough...

The daughter of Inidan immigrants, Sonia grew up in Toronto and went on with her husband of 18 years to form and expand a multi-location orthodontic practice.  But when they realized their dream of selling the business, Sonia had to ask herself: what next. The first thing she did was quit drinking, but when her husband then suddenly left her she had to really re-evaluate who she was and what she w...

Apologies for another rerun!  I've had trouble booking guests so if you have a story you'd like to share or know someone who would... hit a boy up!   Dixie Perkinson is an actor who has appeared in commercials for just about everything.  She is also a comedian and storyteller whose blog - Eat My Prune - focuses on the kinds of stories people are uncomfortable telling.  Her empathy and openness and...

Apologies for the radio silence.  I got busy with work and this little side project took the back seat.  Here's a taste from the vault to keep you engaged!    John Lehr is an improvisational actor and comedian out of the Chicago Improv scene who has created and starred in a number of TV shows including "Quick Draw" and "10 Items or Less." Here he talks about his unlikely path to sobriety. He's fun...

Marci Hopkins grew up in an alcoholic home where she was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her step-father. While she managed to escape that world and chart a successful path for herself in television, she suffered from a persistent sense of victimhood that she treated with alcohol abuse. When a DUI finally forced her to re-evaluate her choices and get sober, she reinvented herself comple...

I heard Adam K share the tiniest snippet of what it was like to grow up as a child of deaf adults (CODA), and I just wanted to hear more. His parents were not saints: they were all too human, and he struggled from an early age under the weight of the immense responsibility they thrust on him to care for them.   Growing up in West Covina as the only jew in an ethnically diverse community, Adam even...

Shaking off some rust here as I get ready to do some new interviews...  This is a wild and interesting story told with great humor and zero pity. From stripping to sex work to sobriety.  This delights me...  Adele Hare is a food service manager here in Los Angeles. She works in the fields of mental health and addiction and is currently studying to get her certificate in substance abuse treatment....

Patrick McCartney came of age in the Chicago improv scene in the early nineties where he worked with the likes of Del Close and toured with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey in the Second City Touring Company. But it wasn't long before his early exploration of drugs and alcohol blossomed into a full blown heroin problem and rules like "I'll never use before going on stage" became "I'll never go on stage if...

Larry Clarke is a writer, director and actor whom you have almost certainly seen in one of the many, many roles he has played in mainstream studio tv and films from "Law and Order" to Steven Soderberg's "The Laundromat." His story is interesting, in part, because he stopped drinking about 5 years before he actually discovered the world of 12 step meetings, but it was really in the rooms of recover...

Hannah Sward grew up in a commune in Santa Cruz where her father was a prolific poet. Her parents split when she was young and a lot of her early journey was shaped by a quest to reunite with her younger sister in Los Angeles. That quest that took her first to Chicago where she quickly became a call girl to raise enough money to pay the tuition at an acting conservatory that did eventually bring h...

Phillip Dane has been a serial entrepreneur since his early teens and has started companies that do everything from rest room marketing to pay phone manufacturing.  In his early twenties, he founded the world famous Melrose Flea - almost on a whim - and currently runs the Loz Feliz flea as well as Odd Night at the Autrey.  The journey from Melrose to Los Feliz took him thru a dark, circuitous path...

Patrick O'Neil's new book "Anarchy at The Circle K" - chronicling his life as a tour manager for punk rock bands like The Dead Kennedys - is out now.  He is also a teacher and a substance abuse counselor. But before all that -- he was a bank robber -- responsible for a series of hold ups in the bay area with a gang of guys known as the "Men In Black."  This episode is such a powerful exploration o...

Kim O'Hara went to film school to act and produce and then became a film producer in NYC where she always managed to assemble a strong social network of friends and family to keep her drinking and using in check. But when her second marriage collapsed and she no longer had any guard rails to keep her on track; things started falling apart. While sobriety gave her a new system for living and also o...

I've wanted to interview Joe Hart from the moment I started making this podcast as he has always exuded a powerful empathy for everyone around him even when things in his own life were clearly not going his way.  He grew up in New York in a house his dad built with his own hands and eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career. And it was only after enduring a series of confouning d...

Love the radical turn this second half of Mark's story suddenly takes.   Really did. not. see it coming. I haven't seen Mark since he recorded this.  We traded emails during the pandemic.  He'd had an accident of some sort and was in a Motel in West LA and needed a ride to the doctor.  I couldn't take him but offered to send an uber but his phone was dying and I haven't heard from him since.  Mark...

Mark Christopher grew up in a world of extreme privilege and then parlayed his connections and street smarts into a thriving weed empire.  Despite multiple brushes with death and the law, a wildly inflated sense of self kept him convinced he could manage an addiction that would eventually rob him of everything.   You can support this podcast at my Patreon Page:   https://www.patreon.com/thedrunkal...