Asher Gottesman - Full interview

so asher thank you so much for joining us on the show tonight thank you for having me on so tell us a little bit about uh what brought you to addiction it's a really good question i think i'd like to sum it up in a very interesting story which sums up literally my childhood to today and my father was a teacher and he devoted his entire life to teaching and at my son's bar mitzvah my father since passed away but my son's bar mitzvah i turned to my father and i said daddy my entire life i ran away from you because i didn't want to be like you and i didn't want to not be like you in case you were right little did i know i'd end up doing exactly what you did just for a different population and you gave unconditional love to children and i get the privilege today of giving it to people who suffer and i called suffer because it's mental health it's addiction it's it's it's suffering and so that really sums up and then i actually changed it i was speaking at an event and i said you know dad um he had passed away and i said abba i hope you're hearing me and i said you received unconditional love from those you taught and i receive unconditional love from people who suffer so now that's how i get to the answer to your question and what i mean by that is i for some reason had a pit in my stomach that was unfillable by anything else than service work and it was from a really young age and i tried so hard to fill it from in multiple different ways and i can go ahead and blame my teachers and blame my experiences yet ultimately the gift i have today of working with people who struggle and suffer even though there's a famous quote from rabbi dr abraham torski that says there are two types of people in the world those that are in recovery and those that can be so yet it's the the people in the people who i get to work with today i say the good news is you get to help other people the bad news is unfortunately you have to help other people it's the only cure literally the only cure so you said something very fascinating a second ago you said that you were it sounded to me that you were saying that you were searching for something deep and meaningful and you weren't finding it and it's at the beginning part at some point in your life and so you were feeling that insatiable desire for something with the wrong things did i hear that correctly you heard it absolutely correctly so obviously i didn't know it as a child right right i felt pain i felt um abandonment suffering you know we all have trauma in our lives you come out of the womb you have trauma right so and i tell every parent i get to work with we mess up our children the best way we know how no guidebook right there's no guidebook right you don't quit quit the blaming game right let's stop you know let's stop asking why and asked now what okay that's a really important distinction yet as a child i was the youngest in my family by eight and a half years my sister left when i was five she was my mommy because i had an emo whatever you got it so i was searching and i was and also i grew up in a community where there was a lot of wealth so i thought that would make me happy and i was always running and searching and at first it was lying then it was food my first diet was for my bar mitzvah and then it became you know uh marijuana in high school and then i went to yeshiva and got really you know i got i i went i used religion as a drug for a period of time um and you know and it's the greatest drug in the whole world it's just not the greatest drug in the whole world when you don't use it appropriately right and you know and um because right because the the torah teaches us right the world stands on three three likes torah right learning the torah avodah prayer and gamiloo right and helping other people so it gave me the guidebook to to recover from addiction away before um so yes so to in short to answer your question i was seeking in all the wrong places and trying to fulfill what i thought was an insatiable appetite right because there was no filling it so so where did you find the strength um when you were at that point where you were in the world of addiction where you you were trying to fill yourself up with the wrong things what happened wha what did you find tap into that made you turn your life back around so i say that you know the famous story of the of the guy who he is there's a flood in his house and and then the boat comes along and you know and then he drowns and you know and he says to god where were you he goes who do you think the boat who do you think the plumber was who do you think that was so i had little reminders my whole life to get me back on the path um the good you know i the good news is my heart was always in the right place however the road to um to i don't know if i can say hell on the show but the road to hell is paved with good intentions um and so it's not good enough to have good intentions yet you know so what happened i got very i got successful very young and then i had a major financial reversal and at that moment i felt my only value to the world and to my children was my financial ability and i lost it and i went and i went to therapy and i told the therapist that i'm a true narcissist that i've never done anything good in my life without balancing out the band and he looked at me and he said to me your hardware's fine your software is severely messed up and and i said to him okay great he goes well are you willing to do something about it and i said yes i gave him a temporary time frame i in my mind okay i'm gonna give it this amount of time and um he said to me you have a problem with cocaine at the time and i said no i don't and i literally just stopped and then he said he had a problem with alcohol and i said yeah i do but i can't i'm depressed i'm going through a financial reversal i don't know how i'm gonna pay my bills i don't know how i'm gonna you know look in when i go in in society who's how everyone's gonna think of me and i'm not ready to give it up unbeknownst to me and you ask for the miracles from the man upstairs he this gentleman had 30 years sober wow and he um he said to me he sent me to in an alcoholics anonymous meeting and i turned to him and i i went to this meeting it was at 10 p.m it was like in a hall that smelled of cigarettes and coffee okay and i i'm you know i came back to him and i said you know you're a real jerk i said not only did i lose my money and my dignity you're going to compare me to i said a junkie on the street you know the narcissism and saying this that person who's devoted his life to recovery okay but that's where i was and the beauty is he looked at me and he goes okay and then i said to him 12 steps if there's really 12 steps because i've been working towards 613 commandments if there's really 12 steps i can save my life i'm in so i actually went to overeaters anonymous because my first drug of choice actually in life was food um that's i used to be 100 pounds bigger than i am today and that was my first challenge and um make it to to make the story a little shorter i about four months into going to this overeaters anonymous i had this moment of clarity was right after purim i was drunk again and i was you know i had this moment where i was like why am i any different than that junkie on the street who who's destroyed i'm just i'm i'm destroying my life i'm doing this you know what and then i went back into this room and what i what i what when i say i had a spiritual experience greater than i walked into a room where for the first time in my life nobody cared who i was what my name was what board of school i was on how much money i had i didn't have they were all in there to get better they were all and i looked around and i was like holy cow no one's forced here no one's told here you know and and to me that was the journey back as i said what an interesting concept that if i could just sort of like in my head crystallize it the idea that you guys are unified in purpose and the purpose was not who you are but who you could be if i can say it that way absolutely that that idea that people just want to get better and no judgment so to speak was what sort of drove you to a place of saying hey i can do this absolutely yeah it's taking out you know ego or works in two distinct planes right it either tells you you're better than you could get away with it or you're worse then and you might as well not try wow it'll never tell you that you're right-sized get up in the morning and do what you got to do right in that room when you look around that room my ego said if that guy can do it and he's here and he where did what did he do i mean you know right stories that you hear you're blown away and you're like oh my god then anybody can do it yeah so so what does what does it look like i mean i know that it's a long process and i don't mean to any way uh suggest you can describe it in just a few minutes but um for those that may be watching and saying yeah i was inspired to do it a whole bunch of times but i'm sure it's it's impossible like what does like what's the the the what's the path of recovery like the details will be different but what does it look like what is what does the journey look like when you are in the mode of recovery it's an excellent question and i hope i can answer it uh properly recovery and judaism are hand in hand and what do i mean by that uh religion and we're we're focused on judaism so i don't want i'm not not to you know 100 percent not and i'm not here to say other religions don't we don't have monopolies okay we're the only religion that doesn't ask people to come over right we're not on monopolies right yet if you look at actually the 12 steps there is something called maimonides wrote wrote a book called right the the laws of repentance and the 12 steps are extraordinarily similar to the rom bombs 12 12 i'm not sure if they're 12 steps quite but ways to actually repent and you know because it's ways to take the shame out of it to put yourself in the same circumstance and why do i say judaism is because judaism requires jews to pray three times a day mo it's preferable in a minion right with 10 people it's preferable they you know so that we're all combined and our unified voice right is greater than our singular voice yet it knows that if we don't pray today we can't be we're not if sorry we can't be clean today it's a clean tomorrow on today's prayers right you got to pray today and pray tomorrow so the road to recovery is also a daily process right it's you made a decision first and that's why in alcoholics anonymous it says the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking right so the recovery in generals let's take whatever ill adaptive maladaptive behavior we have right and therefore if you have a child struggling or somebody's listening you have a family member that struggles look at your own struggles look at how many times you wanted to go on a diet whatever struggle you had want to stop tv overworking we all have something that we can identify with that we want it to stop and know that you can't stop it on a it's not gonna it's not a forever thing so we start today and then we first admit right if you do it the 12-step way you don't have to do it the 12-step way right you have to but you do have to attach yourself to be seen you have to attach yourself to a community you have to attach yourself to a sense of purpose and then the most important thing you have to do is kindness is give it away for free wow if you don't mind i'm asking share with us where are you now because i'll tell you it listen just in listening to you you it feels to me that you are like in control of it that you're you're you're you are whatever you've gone through is now under your control if i can say it that way so the answer is absolutely not but [Laughter] and i say i say this no i i hear you no no firstly i appreciate the compliment and thank you i never want to rob somebody of a delicious compliment right no seriously you know that was one of my ills before was when someone would say thank you to me i'd say nah no big deal and you raw people of their ability to be you know gratitude or people we call knock your toe okay so you asked me i had a therapist friend of mine that said to me you know they call me ashi as a child asher today ah she's a child ashley you know he knows me from a child he goes you know you're really messed up but you really really work hard on yourself i said i'm not sure if that's a compliment or not the short answer is it's a journey it's not a destination and you know so first yes i don't have a desire to drink i had my bar mitzvah year this year i'm 13 years sober i don't think about drinking but there are other areas of my life and my maladaptive behaviors that that are cosmician and that i choose not to give up whether it's simple it'll speak of somebody else whether it's my eating habits whether it's work whatever it may be um you know whether it's my journey with god and and and the commandments that i'm learning that i could utilize all these tools in all these areas and i and at some point you stop fighting it yeah it's not fighting needed needing to know why you know um because there is no why today you know unfortunately i get phone calls i don't know 50 100 200 a day sometimes uh people are struggling and suffering and so if i would start to ask why i will spend my time being depressed and sad on why they're suffering i want to share with you what i think is going in in the minds of some people go ahead please mention you mentioned it earlier that i think it's critical and i want to i want to address it because i want you to address it okay please people feel sometimes that when they stumble and fall then they're off the treadmill of life there's some treadmill that gets placed in society in which if you're not constantly on pace you've failed you're out and if somebody struggles with an addiction somebody struggles with um a certain challenge and they fall off if you will now they feel like everyone's running past me there could be a sense of i'll never make it it's no it's it's too late for me they could be young what would you say to somebody that may be in the middle of their lives and there's there's a real addiction there and what's stopping them from the help and the recovery is they say you know what i'll never be awesome i i i've given up my chance of being excellent get because i failed too miserably i i fell off too hard and so even if i get back on i can never really make it so i often end my in a in a set i'm gonna i'm gonna answer with a story because hopefully people remember stories and it's a story i'm sure you know and i end this in a in a in a room with no jewish people in a completely secular room and everybody gets it and it's the story of rabbi zusha and rabbi zusha was on his deathbed and people he started laughing and his students said to him rebbe rabbi you've been waiting for this moment your entire life this moment and you're laughing and he says yeah because when god asks me zusha why weren't you like moshe rabena moses why would you like abraham i'll be able to laugh and say you didn't create me that way ten seconds later he starts crying and he the student said what do you mean you're going to the highest level of heaven you got the answer what's wrong and he says because when god asked me zusa why wouldn't you like zusha i won't know what to answer and i use that story for a positive because i say each one each human being in this world is give is put on this world with a unique gift that only they can bring the world and as long as you're measuring your insides by someone else's outsides you'll never win it's over forget about it you know that's what the surrender is all about is saying okay whatever you got in store for me man upstairs right it's it they literally say thy will will be done right so right that the same way is is is as i say so once you start to take away that piece and it's not about the rat race because all of us know that we've sat with people who are much older much more experienced much more successful than us and none of them have said that their dollars in the bank or their big company or their successes is what made them a good person right now i still like to fool myself and think that's true but but um you know uh yeah you know so what is that what is this imposed baloney you're giving yourself what are you imposing upon yourself where is this destination you're trying to get to so and what you know so yeah it the the old you is gone and if you recover you have to knew you so yes i'm not the guy who right i'm not the real estate you know novelist that i once thought i would be right that wasn't a billy joel song i don't even know what a novelist is right but okay i'm not the real estate huge mogul that i that i once thought i should be the ones i was then i fell down but i get to help people i get to be patient and you're right on my bad days i i lament those days i was like okay i'd be richer than this and better than this but when i sit down and i have have somebody that i can share my experience strength and hope and then they have hope well boom i i got i got i got something i can take with me beautiful ash what can i say you've inspired me and i am positive that you inspired everyone who's watching the show tonight god bless you for who you are and for just the continuous the continuous hope that's the word the hope that you give people just by the words that you're saying it's inspiring man really really appreciate you being here well thank you so much for having me on and i want to leave with that is any we can never give up hope right we ask that the man upstairs never gives up hope on us and unconditional love doesn't mean unconditional support it still means that always leave your hearts and doors open don't ever give up amazing thank you so much and thank you for shining your light on this world we got a good job thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8 pm eastern at the shabbato.com or right here on youtube you