The Comeback Chronicles Podcast
Welcome to The Comeback Chronicles, where raw truth meets unwavering resilience. Hosted by Terry L. Fossum, this podcast reveals the untold stories of remarkable individuals who’ve faced crushing defeats—only to rise stronger, wiser, and more determined.
Through candid interviews, you’ll hear about moments of failure, heartbreak, and doubt, as well as the transformational steps that led to victory. This isn’t just about inspiration—it’s about equipping you with actionable strategies, like Terry’s signature ‘Oxcart Technique,’ to overcome challenges and ignite your own comeback story.
If you’re ready to break free from fear, shame, or self-doubt and move boldly into your conquer zone, The Comeback Chronicles will empower you with the tools, mindset, and motivation to rise above and achieve your next great success.
Get ready to turn your setbacks into stepping stones and reclaim the life you’re destined to lead.
The Comeback Chronicles Podcast
From Maroon 5 Drummer to Mental Health Advocate with Ryan Dusick
Ryan Dusick shares his transformative journey from founding drummer of Maroon 5 to licensed therapist and mental health advocate after losing his music career at the height of the band's success.
• Started Maroon 5 (originally Cars Flowers) at age 16 with high school friends including Adam Levine
• Signed their first record deal at 18, experienced initial failure before finding their authentic sound
• Spent a decade developing before Songs About Jane became a multi-platinum success
• Suffered career-ending physical and mental health issues just as the band achieved global fame
• Fell into alcoholism and depression after leaving the band at their peak
• Found new purpose through recovery and service to others
• Became a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in addiction and music industry issues
• Authored memoir "Harder to Breathe" about his experience with fame, loss and recovery
• Discovered that helping others was the key to rebuilding self-esteem
• Believes staying teachable and curious are essential traits for resilience
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If you've been stuck in fear, self-doubt, your past failures and you're ready to break through your comfort zones to finally reach the pinnacle of success in every area of your life, then this podcast is for you. Here's your host, Terry L Fossum.
Speaker 2:Hey, this is Terry L Fossman. Thank you so much for joining us on a very special edition of the Comeback Chronicles podcast. We have with us today Mr Ryan Dusick. Ryan Dusick, if you don't know, is the founding drummer for Maroon 5. Get this. He finally recorded its first multi-platinum album Songs About Jane. You've probably heard of it. Multiple hit songs, two Grammy Awards, 20 million albums sold.
Speaker 2:Later, Ryan found himself suffering and without direction when his career as a performer came to an end just as it was taking off. So where is he now off? So where is he now? Now he's a licensed marriage and family therapist, a coach, a speaker, author of the book Harder to Breathe, a memoir of making Maroon 5, losing it all and finding recovery. So his life's been a winding road, from aspiring pop star with anxiety to heartbroken alcoholic, to a thriving mental health survivor and messenger of hope and recovery. I'm ecstatic to welcome to the show Ryan. Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Terry, Absolutely so. Tell me about the journey, First of all, before you were famous, so you're knocking it out on the drums. How did things happen? How did things build up to where you got to?
Speaker 3:Well, we started the band that would become Maroon 5 when I was 16 years old in my parents' garage.
Speaker 3:Wow, we were just four kids from Brentwood High School here in LA and just on weekends, commuting across town in my beat-up, hand-me-down Jeep, wagoneer weekends, you know, commuting across town in my beat-up, hand-me-down jeep, wagoneer and and just dreaming of you know the, the rock and roll fantasy that every band that starts out as as kids, you know the, just the, the dream of what being like our heroes would look like. At the time this was the 1990s and we were really into pearl, jam and soundgarden and nvana, all those bands. So it went from us just sort of emulating our heroes and being grunge rockers in our flannel and long, long greasy hair and all that stuff to pretty quickly becoming sort of precocious young musicians and getting interest from record labels. By the time I was a freshman at UCLA, we were already sort of meeting with the big record labels around Hollywood and eventually signed our first record deal when I was about 18 with Reprise Warner Brothers, and so it seemed like this was just a done deal, a fait accompli.
Speaker 2:We were going to be yeah, so you had to be tripping out, man. First of all, you're a high school kid with your, but these were your best friends, right? Adam levine, all those people, those are your best buds in high school, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, adam was somebody that I knew growing up. We had mutual family friends, but he was a couple grades below me and so I, up until that point in high school, I always saw him as this just sort of annoying little brother type. That's funny.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, absolutely.
Speaker 3:You know we're only like a year and a half apart, but when you're 10 and 12 years old it's a big difference, right? Yeah, absolutely. But, adam, I had become sort of the sought-after drummer in the school band because I was playing with my older brother and those guys before they went off to college, and so I had more experience than those younger kids playing around town on the Sunset Strip with my brother's band. But then all those guys, my brother included, went off to college and I was left with no one to play with. So I knew Adam played a little rhythm guitar. I didn't know that he sang until I saw him sing when he was about 14 years old, and I was immediately taken aback and thought okay, well, now I've found the singer for my band. Oh, no kidding, no kidding, eh, yeah, well, it wasn't that he was polished or really a finished product at that point, it was just that he had a very-.
Speaker 2:He's 14.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, it was like you know. I mean, anyone who knows Maroon 5 knows that voice is very distinct and unique. It kind of stands out and cuts through a mix and so I noticed that and it's like you don't find that every day. So he was already playing with Mickey and Jesse and their own band in middle school.
Speaker 2:They were trying to get me to join their band, but I was not convinced they had the chops well, they're in middle school, you're in high school, you've been playing with the big boys out there and everything.
Speaker 3:Big boys at that age, right, of course you're not that interested yeah, but I, you know, I think it was one of those those things where I I denied it until I could deny it no more. There was a moment when we just kind of gelled. We were playing in the school orchestra room as the the pep band at the time and we just we were playing a rage against the machine song and we just noticed that there was a chemistry. It didn't matter, you know, level of experience or playing skill, we just had a chemistry. We were on the same page in terms of what we were trying to do, so we just bonded immediately wow, wow, okay, so you're a sought-after drummer for the for that area.
Speaker 2:At that point you get together with these guys. They're younger than you, but they got some talent. Things are clicking and that's when it sounds like things started building up. Did y'all start writing your own songs at that point, or when did that come in?
Speaker 3:yeah, we kind of skipped over the whole cover band part of the band development. We we were playing covers in the school band but once we started a band we started writing original material. Literally the first night we were we we formed the band, we decided we were gonna. Originally our band was called cars flowers, by the way, not maroon five. Right, there's a whole story behind that but it's probably not that interesting. But the first night when night when we formed Cars Flowers, we were staying up late in my bedroom and just starting to write songs and, yeah, within I would say six months, we were playing shows on the Sunset Strip, playing all original material. And yeah, within a year or two, we started getting some interest from some record labels, which is unbelievable looking back because we were terrible. But you had something, you had something started getting some interest from some record labels, which is unbelievable looking back, because we were terrible, but you had something.
Speaker 2:You had something. You had original sound. Yeah yeah so. So you're going at it and things are going really well. You're getting these record labels interested in you. How did that feel like? Because you know as a kid, like you said, a lot of kids dream about being rockers. Right, they dream about the dream, but it ain't gonna happen. You know, let's face it, odds are it ain't gonna happen for you. It was happening. You had to be tripping out didn't you?
Speaker 3:yeah, I think we were just sort of naive enough to not realize what a crazy lightning strike kind of thing it is to get a record deal and and to have success. We were just like, oh yeah, that makes sense, we're good, we're get a record deal, and and to have success. We were just like, oh yeah, that makes sense, we're good, we're getting a record deal, and next year we'll be big stars. And that's what they were telling us too. You know, this was the old era of the record industry, where it was like we're gonna make you a star, kid, right, so you know? And they would spend a ton of money on your album and your video and promote you. And so we thought, oh, it's just, it's just gonna happen, we're just gonna make a record and then we're gonna become very famous and successful. Unfortunately, it did not work out that way at least not it works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we that first record deal. We spent like a year making the album. It was over bloated in terms of the budget, in terms of everything, and we went out on the road. Finally, the single came out. It did all right for like a week and then it dropped off the charts and then that was it. Basically the record label lost interest. We came home and they didn't want to even release the second single and we essentially got dropped. We'd only sold like two or three thousand copies of that first album and so we had to go back to the drawing board and start over. And it was another five years of development, from 1997 to 2002, when we had changed our name to maroon five, got a second record deal, basically just started over from scratch, found a new sound now I gotta ask so five years of development, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:I mean you know what that means, we. Five years of development, what does that mean? I mean you know what that means. We don't know what that means. What's that mean?
Speaker 3:I'll bridge that gap? Yeah Well, basically, you know, we had to go through an identity crisis after the failure of the Cars Flowers album. That hadn't worked and the era of the music that we were playing in was ending. We realized, okay, part of the problem was that part of it was just that we were young and we hadn't really figured out Certainly lyrically, adam hadn't developed, as he didn't know what his voice was, what it was that he was singing about. We knew we had some musical just ability to make catchy melodies and good arrangements and things like that, but what are you saying as an artist?
Speaker 2:I got cut in because you said something profound there. He hadn't found his voice. And there's a lot of people listening into this that maybe haven't quite found their voice yet. They've got this talent, they've got the good, so to speak, whatever that means for whatever they're interested in, but they just haven't found their voice yet. And you guys, at that point you just went back and you still you're trying to find your voice.
Speaker 3:and that's not bad, that's a good thing going through that journey to find your voice, and it's got to be the journey right yeah, the best advice I could give to any artist or really anyone trying to develop anything in their life of any real purpose, is to admit you don't know, or to admit that you have more learning to do. I think we were a little cocky, or at least just a little bit ignorant and innocent. You get a record deal. You think, oh, we must be good and we don't need to do any more work. But when it didn't work out, we had to kind of face ourselves and realize there's a lot more to learn. There's a lot more work to be done to develop what's going to make us unique, what's going to make our product and what we're putting out into the world something special that people actually are drawn to and want to seek out.
Speaker 2:I hope everybody's listening and applying this to you and whatever you do, because it ain't just music, it's everything. I love this. Keep going. Yeah, it ain't just music, it's everything.
Speaker 3:I love. This Keep going, yeah. So for us that meant we had to explore all of our different influences and really figure out what. It's not going to be as easy as just trying to sound like Nirvana or like Weezer. We're going to have to do something that is unique, that's based upon a combination of influences, what sets us apart, that no one else is doing and that really speaks to us.
Speaker 3:And so we went through a phase where we we tried out a lot of different styles and genres of music and if you listen to any of our demo tapes from that period any one recording you'd be like who is this band? Oh wow, because then we'd have like one song that sounded almost kind of like folky or almost country, and then another song that sounded like swing music and then like jam band, dave matthews, fish kind of thing. It was like very disparate in terms of the influences, but I think that helped us really develop a lot of different ways of approaching music and figuring out what worked for us. And then also just playing live a lot. You know I was booking us. I booked us a weekly show. I was going to UCLA at, you know, the only bar in town that had live music and we were playing there every Thursday night, which was the night that all the sorority girls went out. That was very wise of me to pick that night.
Speaker 2:Indeed it was.
Speaker 3:And we would play two sets. You know we'd play from like 10 o'clock at night till two in the morning. Two sets, two long sets. We had to fill all that time. So we started playing more cover songs, we started jamming and just having fun and trying to figure out basically figure out how do you create a party, how do you put on?
Speaker 3:a show yeah, and and that helped us develop not just our sound but our chops in terms of how to sell it on stage for an audience that's looking to have a good time and they're looking for any excuse to feel good and for you to provide that for them. So you just have to figure out what it is that that audience is looking for. So it was a lot of different things at once. And then, of course probably most most importantly finding our songwriting voice, and that had to do with what was the actual style, what was the the feeling in the music. But then also for adam to figure out how to write about something that was really personal to him.
Speaker 3:I think in the 90s it was okay to be kind of obscure and write just lyrics that were pseudo poetic in terms of, like, just imagery. That didn't really mean much really, and for him that wasn't really going to work. What was going to work was to talk very specifically about what he was going through in his personal relationships. So once he was vulnerable enough to do that in his lyrics and once we were able to embrace that as a part of the sound of the band, like these are going to be relationship songs, this is going to be about a boy and a girl falling in love or having lust for one another, and then all of the problems that ensue after that.
Speaker 2:Which is universal, which is something we all go through, we can all relate to and, again, I hope everybody's understanding the parallels between what Ryan's talking about with music and every other aspect of life. It's finding what people can relate to. But let's move on to you Made it. You Made it. How did that feel? Tell me what all happened. You're screaming, screaming. Things are doing fantastic. Let's talk about that so it was.
Speaker 3:It was 10 years to the day almost, I think, literally to the, to the month or to the years, 10 years since we started in 1994 till 2004, when the album songs about jane went platinum. Wow so, and you, you know, it was the overnight, overnight success that took a decade right, and even that record it wasn't an overnight success. That came out in 2002. We toured for two years just kind of playing clubs and building up to theaters, having a moderate hit that finally crossed over to a pop hit. And it was right at that moment, when it went from a gold record to a platinum record, that our second single came out and blew up on an international scale and that was the song this love, which was our first like top 40 big hit.
Speaker 3:Harder to breathe was our first single that got us there. But then the, the sort of tipping point was with this love, and then we were playing all over the world. We were touring europe and asia and and all over the states and headlining, and it went from playing theaters to playing arenas and we were playing saturday night live in front of 10 million people on live tv. Just everything that you could imagine, the fantasy and the dream of being a rock superstar was was happening all at once, and it was that tipping point, a decade into our career so so many things again, 10 years.
Speaker 2:Folks don't give up. Whatever you're doing, do not quit. Do not give up, keep pushing forward. But now everybody's wondering we won't spend too much time on but give us just a glimpse into what does that feel like? Man? You are a rock star Again. Millions of people playing arenas, crazy, and we won't go into a lot of the lifestyle that probably goes with it, but give us a feel for that man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it was almost surreal. I remember the first time we played an arena. A packed arena was almost surreal. I remember the the first time we played an arena, a packed arena. We were opening up for john mayer, who was gracious enough to take us on tour for a few dates, and this was a little earlier than that. This is before we were headliners, of course, uh. But we went on stage in an arena at temple university in philadelphia and it was about a quarter full when we went on stage and john was gracious enough to kind of move the gates back and wait a little bit so that the place filled up a little bit. We were like, well, this is kind of a festival audience, they're probably going to be paying half attention because they're just waiting for John.
Speaker 3:The lights go down, we go on stage, we play a couple songs and playing in an arena, you can't really see out into the outer because all the big lights are on you and it's just kind of this empty black void. But then we were kind of we were playing the song Sunday morning and we were vamping on the intro and Adam says wait a second, let's slow it down for a second. Can we pull the house lights up, pulls the house lights up and we get our first clip glimpse of 12 000 people, a packed arena, all staring at us, intently and clearly enjoying what we're doing. Wow, that was just a moment where I almost, I almost had to stop playing, because it was I. I was just giddy, I was I.
Speaker 3:A big smile came on my face. It almost felt like I was in a dream, yeah, and I remember looking out at the very back of the arena and there were guys standing up or girls, I don't remember, you know far enough away. They look like little ants at the back of the arena, waving like this and and it was. It was just absolutely surreal to see a place that big with people that far away loving what we were doing. And so it was. It was a dream come true. It was everything that you hope for and everything that goes with it.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. So things are doing amazing. You've got I mean incredible sales, incredible following. You're living the dream that you dreamed about for a long time, since junior high and you'd worked for since junior high. You've got it. It's there what happened.
Speaker 3:So for me, what happened was very confusing. Confusing. I didn't understand it at the time and it's taken me a long time to sort of retrospectively understand it on a different level. Because what? What started to happen? The first presentation was just physical pain. I had an injury that went back to my pitching days in high school shoulder injury, just kind of chronic inflammation and tendonitis in that shoulder, and that was what I was experiencing. But over time and it wasn't something that happened in an instant, it wasn't an injury that happened one night, it was something that happened, it was a chronic injury I started having other symptoms that were very confusing A lack of coordination, my ability to play the drums the way that I had been used to playing, and then what started creeping in a lot was the self-doubt, the negative forecasting, the sort of imposter syndrome and self-doubt that led to becoming almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, because I was adding so much pressure and anxiety on top of the external pressure that we were experiencing of having to perform on such big stages.
Speaker 3:And then just the fatigue of the schedule and the travel, a lot of different elements and factors that went into it. But long story short, my body broke down, my mind broke down in retrospect I think it was a mental health issue as much as a physical issue and I just lost the ability to play the drums to the point where I had to stop touring. I was going to every kind of doctor you could possibly imagine, and after about a year of that, when it was time to consider making another album, a follow-up to Songs About Jane, it was just not feasible for me to continue, and so the band had to move on without me. Wow.
Speaker 2:Can you describe the moment that that happened?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I describe the moment it's the prologue to my book harder to breathe. And I chose that as the opening scene because it's sort of the pivotal moment where my life you know everything that came before it and everything that came after it it all turns on that moment. Yeah, and my choice to do that also I think it was like I wanted the book to be almost like a, like a murder mystery. It's like you open with the scene of the crime yeah, and you open with the scene of the crime, yeah, and you're like, well, how did it get to that? Yeah, and where does it go from there? And then you go back to the start and you backtrack to get up to the moment where the inciting incident happens. So what happened was we were getting ready to, we were writing songs for the follow-up to Songs About Jane. We were writing songs for the follow-up to Songs About Jane. We were in this big, strange, dilapidated mansion in the Hollywood Hills called the Houdini Mansion, which was apparently where Harry Houdini lived back in the teens and 20s. It was made famous in the movie Funky Monks, which was the Red Hot Chili Peppers movie about the making of their biggest album, blood Sugar, sex Magic. So we knew it from that and we had wanted to work there. So another dream come true. But it was the elephant in the room that I couldn't play and that I was. It was not happening. I was not overcoming these injuries or whatever you wanted to call them.
Speaker 3:So the band called a meeting in the dining room of the Houdini Mansion. I went in there. It was a solemn occasion. I knew something was up. It was a solemn occasion. I knew something was up. It was the thing that we were avoiding, that I was compartmentalizing, I was in denial. I mean, I knew this was coming, but I just wanted to pretend that somehow this wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 3:Adam had sort of emerged as the leader of the band by that point. He took the head of the table and he was the one who spoke and he basically just said look, ryan, we're all really worried. Even if you can play on the record and get through that, somehow we're going to have a world tour booked and then this is going to happen again. And what are we going to do then? We're going to have to cancel a tour, we're going to have to find a new drummer midstream while we're promoting an album, and and so basically, I mean I, I just I was in denial, I was, I was very emotional. It kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. At that point I'd like to say I handled it with grace. But you know how do you handle something like that with grace?
Speaker 3:I just started meeting with them and, you know, maybe, maybe my role can change, maybe I can be some other kind of role in the band, or maybe I can produce the album, maybe I could be the band's producer, and everything I said just seemed to make everyone more sad.
Speaker 3:You know, it was like very solemn feeling in the room. Nobody wanted that to be the case. We were brothers, we come up together and we were family and we were supposed to be living this dream together. But it was just not feasible, and and so finally the meeting ended and it was like the disillusioning moment when all of that denial was out the window, and then I went into just a downward spiral. I had to find some way to cope with that reality, as depressing as it was. I just became sort of very nihilistic. I leaned into alcohol as a way of coping and just sort of this alter ego that was pretending like I was still a rock star and nothing bothered me, nothing mattered, nothing bothered me, and so it was just a very it was that escapist kind of.
Speaker 3:And that worked for a little bit, just for a night to go out and pretend like I was having fun. But by the end of even that night I'd be sort you know sort of curled up in the fetal position, crying, and just it was. There was a grieving process that I had to go through that I was just sort of avoiding by self-medicating.
Speaker 2:And let's talk about that grieving process, because I think that's critical for everybody to hear, because everybody listening has gone through things, is going through things, will go through things and to understand the way you're feeling. It is a grieving process. It's something that you have to go through, that you should go through, and I know you're well trained now. Ryan, would you mind talking about that process real quick?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I'd like to say that there's a way to speed up the grieving process. Unfortunately, we all have to go through our process at our own pace and in any way that it sort of forms, because it's not linear. We like to think of it as stages of grief and that first there's denial and then there's a bargaining and anger and eventually you achieve acceptance, which I always found to be maddening. It's like at the end of all of this, all you get is acceptance. You know it's like you, just okay, I just have to accept it. But the reality is, once you finally achieve acceptance, the world opens up to you again. It's not that the reality of the thing you're grieving has changed. Obviously, that thing is still gone. You still have that loss, but your perspective on it has changed and you've been able to file it in a way that you can even see it as empowering, which was the case for me um, how so, how so, how was that empowering to you?
Speaker 3:well, it just so happened that my grieving process kind of culminated right at the moment when my recovery from alcoholism started, and it hadn't occurred to me until later that acceptance is the final stage of grief and it's also the first stage of addiction recovery. Wow, yeah, wow of your life as it is and take responsibility for the ways in which I'm part of the problem, right? So the one thing you can do in terms of the grieving process is not exacerbate it, right? You do have to go through the depths of despair. You do have to feel your feelings. You do have to go through all the stages of different emotions, whether it be anger or sadness, or just the ways in which we process a loss.
Speaker 3:However, you don't have to make it worse for yourself by self-sabotaging and self-medicating. Those were the things that I was doing that were keeping me stuck in a wounded place. So acceptance was the thing that allowed me to step out of that, to recognize, okay, at the very least I can stop being the maker of my own misery. I can realize that there are things out there that might be healthier for me and might allow me to move forward in my life in a more productive way.
Speaker 2:That alcohol will not, drugs will not or any other addiction will not. Because when you've got that addiction, you are stuck in that addiction. You're not moving out. You are stuck at that point. You've got to get rid of that addiction. You're not moving out. You are stuck at that point. You've got to get rid of that addiction to move forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, I had gone to all kinds of therapists. I had tried to do all kinds of things to to feel better. But that work is almost impossible to do when you're in the grips of a dependency, because that dependency is preventing your brain from healing and it's preventing you from growing as a as a person. It's like right when you pick up, for whatever age you were, when you become dependent on a chemical, that's the age you stay at in terms of your maturity, interesting, the entire time that you're drinking or using. So for me it was like my mid-20s or late 20s, maybe all through my 30s, basically until I quit when I was 37, 38, um, I was basically stuck in that same place and I even had like, probably a delayed adolescence because I was in a band, I was a musician, I might have been more like a teenager, really still in terms of my emotional development.
Speaker 3:So until I I quit that dependency, I wasn't really capable of recognizing my potential. I hadn't even given my mind and heart the chance to catch up and find ways of growing through the pain and finding new coping skills and new ways of relating to the world. So once I got that out of the way. Then I started growing by leaps and bounds. I started discovering who I was and who I might be on the other side of that thing. How to close that chapter.
Speaker 2:And that's fantastic. So again for everybody listening, if you're going through this and you have an addiction, you must get rid of the addiction, whatever it is. You're not going to move forward until you do so. Do whatever it takes, but you can get rid of the addiction and you can move forward. You've got to go through the steps. That's what they are. They are stepping stones. They are not stumbling blocks.
Speaker 2:You can do this, and Ryan is a perfect example of somebody who went really high, came really low and we're talking about your comeback. So you got through the addiction, you're building up and you've got some amazing. You're using all of that and I love this too, guy. I told Ryan when we first came on, before we started recording, that I was so excited about this because he's a perfect comeback story for everybody to learn from. So you're doing amazing things now. You're using all of that hurt, all of that pain, everything you went through, to your advantage now and to help other people Share what you're doing right now and how you're using all of those things that happened to you and with you to your advantage now.
Speaker 3:So the amazing thing that happened, the gift of recovery that happened for me, was that I didn't even really have a five-year plan for my career or what my new life would look like. Sure, but life presented it to me just because I was each day doing the next indicated action I needed to do that day to stay on the right track, to keep moving in the direction of recovery and away from the disorder that I'd had before that, in the early days. It was really just what do I need to do today? To stay sober and to try to cope with my anxiety and depression and trauma of the past in a healthy way. That's all it was.
Speaker 3:And very early on, that became acts of service. How do I get out of the sort of misery of self-obsession by serving others? Yeah, so important, it's a huge element, and I think before I went into recovery, I always imagined it meant like you had to work in a soup kitchen or you had to, you know, in AA meetings be just like setting up chairs and doing things to, and that can be part of it. And I was like, well, how's that really going to help me other than just to humble me, I suppose.
Speaker 3:But what I recognized was very early on, just very simple acts of service, just like walking a newcomer from detox to the dorm at the Betty Ford Center, again empowered me because I felt like here I am, two weeks into recovery myself, and I actually have something to offer another human being in a helpful way. That offered something that I hadn't had in a long time, which was self-esteem. I love it. The best way to build self-esteem is to do esteemable acts right. So this was something that really was a change for me, because I've been sitting around feeling sorry for myself and just doing, piling on top of my negative self-image, more, acts that created shame and guilt right.
Speaker 2:Repeat that. I want you to continue, but repeat that phrase about esteemable acts. Everybody needs to internalize that. Repeat that for me, please.
Speaker 3:The best way to build self-esteem is through esteemable acts.
Speaker 2:Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, beautiful, and you can take those actions. Wherever you're at, whatever you're doing, you can take those actions. You can perform esteemable acts. You can do that, whatever that means for you. Beautiful, go ahead, ryan.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much so really just following that because I got it was like a new addiction, right, a healthier addiction it was. It was, you know, the feeling of fulfillment that came from being of service and giving my of myself in a helpful way was leading to a sense of purpose that I'd been lacking since I left the band. So that led to me volunteering at a recovery center and doing peer support and co-leading groups. The feedback that I was getting, the positive feedback, led to me realizing this was something that I was good at and that I had a passion for. And so I. I just again, I didn't have a plan. I just I realized, oh, maybe I should do this for a career and I just started applying to graduate schools. Thankfully I had my BA, but it was in English. I didn't know if that was going to apply to the social sciences, but fortunately I got into Pepperdine University, their master's program in clinical psychology.
Speaker 3:Months later I'm in class studying mindfulness and then I was on the fast track to become a therapist. I had originally intended to be, you know, an addiction specialist or drug counselor, but it kind of opened me up to a lot of things and I just realized psychology in general was a passion of mine Before I even graduated. I realized well, now I have a happy ending to this story that I've been telling myself For the longest time. It was just this tragic tale, but now I had a happy ending. That was, you know, ended with a happy ending, with new purpose and meaning in my life, and so I decided well then, I need to write this story because I have a platform, and what better way to be of service than to reach people on a bigger scale? So I wrote this book, harder to Breathe. I got it published, I put it out and that led to opened up all these doors beyond just being a therapist in terms of advocacy. You know, I've been doing public speaking.
Speaker 3:I started my own podcast, the Harder to Breathe podcast, and I just all of these opportunities keep coming again, not because I had a five-year plan, not because I am some kind of great go-getter who knows how to go out in the world and create things, just because I've been following that addictive impulse towards the fulfillment that comes from service and purpose. You know, having a mission in my life that has to do with getting out of self-obsession and finding things that feel fulfilling, and usually that means something to do with helping others with their mental health, and as long as I follow that impulse, it seems to lead me in directions that create opportunities for me, and so it's a win-win situation. And here I am now a fully licensed therapist, promoting my book and my podcast, doing more and more speaking gigs and working more specifically again. It's like they keep pulling me back in.
Speaker 3:I didn't know I was going back to the music industry, but I have a lot of clients in the music industry. I talk a lot about mental health in touring and in the music industry in general, and that was not something I planned, but, given my background, it just it'd be silly, I think, to deny the experience and wisdom that I gained from all of that. So it's a part of what I do and, yeah, that's the bigger picture at this point in my life.
Speaker 2:Man. That's amazing. You stopped looking down, which is what you were doing for quite some time. You started looking up, looking around, and it's amazing what you can see and what sees you. You're now a beacon of light, and people look for a beacon of light, and that's not just to brag about you, but for everybody listening in. You are a beacon of light. You don't realize it, but you are. People look at you for advice, they look at you for good things, they look at you for inspiration and even if you're thinking no, nobody looks at me, I guarantee you they do. You just don't know it. But so many things that Ryan covered here you can apply to yourself. That's why I was so excited about this interview. You can apply to yourself and do it right now. Do esteemable acts. That's something you can do to start building yourself up right now. Ryan, we're at the end of our time, I'm sorry to say. What would you like to leave everybody with?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, there's that one question that I always love. It becomes, I suppose, cliche at a certain point, but for a reason it's like what would you tell your younger self if you could go back? And I think it's relevant because it's something that I tell people all the time that are stuck in some of the same ways that I was, and that is that a lot of times, what prevents us from growing and from finding ways through the pain in our life and finding resilience is the pride of youth and, for some people, the pride of middle age or even later years.
Speaker 3:Old age yeah, old age. That prevents us from recognizing what I said earlier, which is that we always have more to learn right, and so stay teachable. Have more to learn right, and so stay teachable. I think the biggest regret I have in terms of why I may have ended up in the hole that I did was that I was a very precocious kid. I had a lot of things go my way without having to try that hard, so when things went bad, I wasn't really prepared for them. I didn't have the resilience and I didn't have the mindset of growth right.
Speaker 3:If I could go back and learn that even if things are going well for you, even if you're naturally talented, even if you have a lot of blessings, there's always more to learn. It's always helpful to recognize that you don't have all the answers, and I see this a lot in any industry people who are very driven, very motivated and even have a lot of success, but they have that imposter syndrome because it's like well, who am I to be doing this? Clearly I'm doing something right, but I feel like I don't even know what I'm doing. Or I don't feel like this confidence is just something I've created as an external sort of ego mechanism to go out into the world and create things or accomplish things. But until you address that inner insecurity, until you are humbled enough to recognize like I don't have all the answers, I don't have to pretend like I have all the answers. I can say I don't know, I can say I'm unsure, and then that's when I'm actually going to learn something Curiosity. Curiosity is the key, not just curiosity for other people or for more knowledge, but curiosity for self, getting to know.
Speaker 3:Because the things we run away from the most the wounds, the insecurities, the anxieties those are the things that come back to haunt us if we haven't addressed them. So if you get curious about those things, you're going to heal in ways and grow in ways that are going to allow you to address them and grow through those insecurities and those anxieties. And so that when that inevitable time comes which we all do face at some point, when you have to deal with disappointment or loss or something in life that is tragic, you have the skill set to be able to work through it and actually eventually turn it into something empowering and to grow through it. None of us want to go through a time when we suffer through tragedy or pain, but but life is that way, those things come up.
Speaker 3:So it's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's when it's going to happen. And what tools do I have to work through it and actually become a better person and more effective person in the process. So that's what I have now, having gone through it. I learned it the hard way, but it's possible to learn it in less painful ways if you do that work earlier on or before. It's proactive as opposed to reactive.
Speaker 2:And I think that's fantastic and I think it's important for people to understand. It's these kinds of things that you go through, that hurt, that are hard, that tear you down sometimes, but it's all of those things that truly end up building you up to make you the strong person that you are. Because, as far as being able to really move forward in life, really help people in life, really do things in life, it's not the silver spoon imposter that people are going to listen to. It's the person that's been through the muck and the mire. They've gotten dirty, they've gotten bloody, they've gone through it and only then are they tough enough to help other people get through whatever it is as well. So, ryan, thanks so much for joining me and sharing that story and for everybody listening. Go back and listen to this one. Go back and listen to this one, take notes on this one, because then, when you apply all of these things that Ryan has taught you about with his journey, then you can get out there and have your own Comeback Chronicle. Thanks, Ryan.
Speaker 3:Thank you, terry, appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So that's it for today's episode of the Comeback Chronicles. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP date with Terry O Fossum himself. Be sure to head on over to ComebackChroniclesPodcastcom and pick up a free copy of Terry's gift and join us on the next episode.