a picture.

It's painful to talk about, but so, so, so I start working in finance and very quickly I go from making no money to making millions of dollars.

I'm flying on the Concorde back and forth, London to New York.

But in my, my, my mentality is still that of a poor kid.

So I'm buying like my Armani suits, Rolex watches.

I'm trying to fit in.

And I'm suffering with this horrible fraud complex or imposter syndrome.

And he looks 20 years younger than his license age would suggest.

Mais oui, c'était un combat incroyable.

Mickey était un gardien et Dicky Eklund, joué par Christian Bale, était un ennemi à l'époque.

Je dis ça pour donner un contexte à comment j'ai grandi et comment fou c'était de travailler dans une prison à Boston, parce que tout le monde connaissait tout.

Tous les gardiens étaient une décision loin d'être des ennemis eux-mêmes.

break and it was hard it was a horrible horrible job not just for the fact that obviously the guys are in prison but just the mentality like none of the guys seemed happy with their station in life not everyone obviously but for the most part people were pissy they weren't very nice and it was just super hostile tout le temps et je travaillais là plein temps l'été en jouant au football et au hockey à l'école et oui, une fois que j'ai réalisé que ce n'était pas pour moi, j'ai commencé à paniquer et à me dire que je devrais me concentrer sur le travail à l'école parce que je vais devoir obtenir un travail réel et je n'avais aucune idée de ce que j'allais faire et j'ai finalement obtenu un travail de vendeur pharmaceutique à New York C'est comme ça que je suis arrivé là et puis je suis tombé dans des enfants qui faisaient beaucoup d'argent au gym.

Des enfants que je travaillais avec d'autres gars au gym.

Et je les regardais comme ces gars sont des idiots.

Est-ce qu'il y a une mémoire spécifique où tu te dis que tu ne peux plus faire ça? Je dois changer.

Yeah.And, and as much as you talk about this, like this relentless mentality, there came a point in the race where you're racing with somebody and you could have just blown past them, and you actually stopped to help them.

Oh, many times.

I've done that in many races, though, when someone stops, I'll be like, "Yo, do you need help?" Because again, like we were talking about before we started, reputation and integrity are very important.

Yes, I wanna kill people in the race, but not at the cost of my, uh, my conscience and my integrity.

The guy who he was talking about, Hugo Reinhold, who was a Swiss mountaineer type guy, very stoic, didn't say much, and was good.

Like, if we raced 10 times, he's probably winning nine of them.

But the one day on the 50-mile stage, he just kind of fell apart, and he was struggling and was like, "I gotta..." You know, was sa- W- we-- He was walking a lot, and I, i- He didn't ask me to walk with him, but we were alone in the desert, like way off the front of the r- the race, and it's dangerous.

H- how has, uh, I mean, just reflecting on that, how has your definition of success evolved? Like, how would you define it today?

What, how did that affect you, and then how did you break through it?

Yeah, I mean, it destroyed me.

It destroyed everything that I thought and believed about myself.

It crept up on me.

I was taking the pills every g- you know, a couple times a week, then quickly, like every night, and then I was, like, so hungo- feeling [beep] in the morning from taking drugs the night before that I'd take them in the morning.

Once I realized that they would give me a little pick, pick-me-up in the morning, then I was taking them in morning, lunch, and after work.

I would, but I would always exercise, and I always treated the drugs as, like, a reward in this, like, crazy system that, that I had in my brain.

Hard to be around

Okay.

So I worked there full-time in the summer and then a few nights a week while I was in school.

And, um, you know, it was exactly what you would expect, like an aggressive environment and, uh, a very steep learning curve.

But again, most of the people that I knew in there, prison's very segregated.

So I knew most of the white guys going in there.

Matter of fact, there was a, one of the other corrections officers was a guy called Micky Ward.

They made a movie called The Fighter about him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But what I am suggesting is that your health, mental and physical health, is your top responsibility in life.

It's more important than your children and your marriage, because without your health, you're useless to anyone.

Would you, I, I couldn't think of doing something worse than neglecting my mental and physical health and having my w- wife and children have to care for me i- before it's absolutely necessary.

You can get in an accident and something happens and you're married, y- you, your family will do anything to take care of you and, and I would expect and hope that that would be the case.

But if you're out there smoking cigarettes, eating junk food, not exercising, and putting yourself in a compromised health position, and then you develop some ailment, now your children are, like, having to worry about you.

Just like for a parent, you're never gonna be happier than your saddest child.

Yeah.

... yeah.

It's, yeah, that stuff is embarrassing.

Like, I...

E- eventually I talked about it so much and it, it was so prevalent in my mind that eventually I was like, I just had accepted it.

But when friends were reading it, they were like, "Dude, I can't believe you had the guts to write all this stuff." And I didn't even...

I was so taken aback, I wouldn't even ask them what they were referring to.

I was just like, "Oh, you know, it's just my story." But I remember distinctly one, one of my friends being like, "Man, I would never have had the guts to talk about some of those things." And I'm like, "Oh my God, is it that bad?"

Yeah.

Yeah.

A new habit, seven days.

But it only takes seven days of sobriety to get clean.

The problem is, by day two, three, four, you're sicker than you've ever been, and you know you can stop it at any time by taking the drugs again, and the balls that it takes to get to that seventh day is, was, took so much effort that I didn't have the balls to do it for 10 years.

By the way, the whole time I'm doing this, I know...

Can I curse on here?

Yes.

I worked there during 9/11, and I was in London.

How accessible is the shit in the beautiful life? Like, how often are you flashed with where you came from?

Dude, you're, you, you c- clearly have incredibly high emotional intelligence, because you, you understand.

That's part of the struggle.

It's like you don't get to do all these hard things without some of the bullshit that goes with it.

And some of that bullshit is it's very hard for me to enjoy the moment, because when you have something...

When you never have something, it's hard to, like, understand what it would feel like to lose it, because you never had it.When you have success and have money, the fear of losing it and going back to the old life is so overwhelming that I spend a lot of time hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.

So I'm always in hyper, hyper defense mode to the point of being unhealthy, which is why I, two years ago, went to on-site workshops, like an, a trauma healing center, because, like, I know, like you described it perfectly, like, I'm not enjoying these things as much as I should.

Ev- everyone listening, pay attention now.

Can you give us, like, the CliffsNotes version of Ken Rideout, and particularly a, more about when you first started to run?

Yeah.

Well, you gave a really good summary there.

That is, uh, I don't think you missed anything at all, although I would say now a big part of my life is being a husband and a dad.

My wife is just getting over breast cancer, which we can get into later.

But it's very much in line with the book of Everything You Want's on the Other Side of Hard, because no matter what you've done or where you are in your life, if you think that the challenges of life stop because you make some money, have some kids, like, the challenges and, and the difficulties never stop.

It's...

It's so high intensity.

Like in your experience, why is fitness so useful for recovering from addiction?

Well, I think it's like a great natural serotonin or – whatever the feel good chemicals in your brain, it's like a natural outlet for those drugs.

And it's funny, people always think like a runner's high, like you start running and you feel great.

I'm always like, no, no, no, I feel great the second I stop.

And that's when I get the dopamine and serotonin, that's the word I was looking for, dopamine.

That's when I get that feeling and it's the only thing that I have found that can make me feel good that's in my control.

And as a drug addict, one of the dangerous things about addiction is you get this synthetic dopamine rush that's not deserved.

What's this process been like with your wife, with you? Yeah.

So can you share a little bit about that? Because when it finally happened, when you were actually gonna get to adopt your daughter, you went through something incredibly traumatic and i'm saying this because your wife still didn't really know the magnitude of your addiction yeah until that moment happened

yeah well my wife knew eventually in my relationship that i was struggling with like drug addiction my wife grew up like very straight laced like she had never done drugs so eventually in our relationship she figured out like oh something's up with this guy he's like too unstable it's too inconsistent and um so She eventually like found drugs, you know, like I was just naive.

And she eventually looked through my stuff, found the drugs.

I was like, why do you have all these pills? And cause at one point I'd have the whole entire like pharmacy bottle, like a thousand pills.

And I just have them in my medicine cabinet of like thousand, 10 milligram Percocets that I would just buy on the street.

And so she knew that, but I didn't tell her the depths of the addiction, and she didn't really have experience with addiction enough to know that I was physically deep in this.

And when we got married, before we even, when we first started dating, I told her I want to adopt some kids because when I think about my own childhood, I was like, I'd love to take someone out of that environment and not that...

But, you know, can you talk about some of those early races that you got involved in and just your mindset and, and, you know, the process of going through that?

Mm-hmm.

I literally wanted the life that I've created for myself.

And if anything, I would say the obsession, i- it, or the torture that I deal with is feeling like if I let off the gas and stop obsessing over continuing to succeed, it's like I said.

Every time something good happens, I can easily convince myself that that was lucky and it's never gonna happen again and I have to stay on the gas.

And that's something that I'm hyper-aware of and have worked on, like, extensively and spent time.

You know, I spent almost a week at the On Site workshops, which, for people who don't know, is like, uh, like the Hoffman Institute or Bridges.

It's like a trauma healing center, and it was, like, an intense five-day eye-opener for me.

We've got the addiction, we've got the bullying, and the childhood abuse, and the opioid addiction, but beneath it all, like, what is the thing that is animating you and that needs to be repaired?

Heck, yeah.

Okay.

And, uh, I'll try to keep it to a minimum so my kids can watch.

Um, and I was like: Man, these guys seem like idiots, but they're all making tons of money, and I'm, like, broke as a joke.

So anyway, when this guy said they had a role, they were looking for a junior trader on this t-r- trading desk, I was like: "Hell, yeah, I'll do that." And long story short, I started there, and about, you know, two months in, they were basically hazing me.

If anyone's worked on a trading desk, it's very much like being on a sports team, and the older guys, the experienced guys, are, like, hazing the junior guys.

And, uh, one day, I just had had enough of it, and I slapped a guy across his face, which it was crazy to me that they were even trying to haze and bully me.

Yeah

Heck yeah.

Okay.

And, uh, I'll try to keep it to a minimum so my kids can watch.

Um, and I was like, "Man, these guys seem like idiots, but they're all making tons of money, and I'm, like, broke as a joke." So anyway, when this guy said they had a role, they were looking for a junior trader on this tr- trading desk, I was like, "Hell yeah, I'll do that." And long story short, I started there and about, you know, two months in they were basically hazing me.

If anyone's worked on a trading desk, it's very much like being on a sports team, and the older guys, the experienced guys are, like, hazing the junior guys.

And, uh, one day I just had had enough of it, and I slapped a guy across his face, which it was crazy to me that they were even trying to haze and bully me.

I, like, boxed for the New York Athletic Club at the time.

Yeah

[laughs]

And, uh, I'll try to keep it to a minimum so my kids can watch.

Um, and I was like, "Man, these guys seem like idiots, but they're all making tons of money," and I'm, like, broke as a joke.

So anyway, when this guy said they had a role, they were looking for a junior trader on this tr- trading desk, I was like, "Hell yeah, I'll do that." And long story short, I started there and about, you know, two months in they were basically hazing me.

If anyone's worked on a trading desk, it's very much like being on a sports team, and the older guys, the experienced guys are, like, hazing the junior guys.

And, uh, one day I just had had enough of it, and I slapped a guy across his face, which it was crazy to me that they were even trying to haze and bully me.

I, like, boxed for the New York Athletic Club at the time.

Yeah

[chuckles]

And, uh, I'll try to keep it to a minimum so my kids can watch.

Um, and I was like: "Man, these guys seem like idiots, but they're all making tons of money," and I'm, like, broke as a joke.

So anyway, when this guy said they had a role, they were looking for a junior trader on this t-r- trading desk, I was like: "Hell yeah, I'll do that." And long story short, I started there, and about, you know, two months in, they were basically hazing me.

If anyone's worked on a trading desk, it's very much like being on a sports team, and the older guys, the experienced guys, are, like, hazing the junior guys.

And, uh, one day, I just had had enough of it, and I slapped a guy across his face, which it was crazy to me that they were even trying to haze and bully me.

I, like, boxed for the New York Athletic Club at the time, and I g- I, I practically had a black eye for, like, three straight years.

Yeah