On Good Authority: Publishing the Book that Will Build Your Business

Recovery coach and one of the stars of the A&E show Relapse, Patty Powers has led what in any context or circles would be called an interesting life. Growing up in Canada, she experimented first with acid but when she moved to New York City at the age of 17, graduated right to heroin. And rest assured she was doing the whole underground New York deal: living at the Chelsea Hotel, hanging out at CBGB's and even working with Andy Warhol. Of course, the fabulous life had to unravel at some point and unravel it did—to the point when Powers was living in an abandoned building, getting robbed by her homeless friends and planning to kill one of her abandoned building "housemates." Now sober 26 years, Powers has managed to build up a massive business as a recovery coach, traveling the world with musicians and other clients and helping them to stay sober while also working on more creative pursuits (including writing for AfterPartyChat). In this episode, she and AfterParty's Anna David discuss how hard she had to try to get someone to shoot her up for the first time, changing limiting beliefs we have about what our lives can be and combining creative work with business pursuits, among many other topics. Photo courtesy of AfterPartyChat  

Actor and director Ronnie Marmo may be a soap star but the truth is he's so very much more. Sure, he played Ronnie Domestico for three years on General Hospital (yeah, the character was written for him) but his main passion is directing theater. The Artistic Director and Cofounder of Theatre68 (which has an outpost in New York as well as LA), Marmo has produced over 30 plays, including the critically acclaimed Bill W. and Dr. Bob (in which he's also played Bill). He's also been in numerous feature films and guest starred on Jag and The Young and the Restless, among others. But more significantly, he's been sober over two decades after years of crack addiction and drug dealing led to him coming to at a San Diego 12-step picnic (you gotta listen to get the whole story). In this episode, he and AfterParty's Anna David talk about hating the taste of beer, why the whole world could benefit from 12-step and always imagining dying young, among many other topics. Photo courtesy of Cinesnatch

Us Weekly TV critic John Griffiths is on the public awareness task force for the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention and is the founder and president of the Gay & Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association. Yet the 51-year-old Angeleno wasn't always such a do-gooder. After having his first drink at five (!), little Davy Griffiths (as he was known then) eventually ended up at USC, dreaming of being a TV programming executive a la Brandon Tartikoff but spending more time being the guy who talked about wanting to be a network executive while actually being the life of the party. Despite the chemical chaos racing through his system (alcohol! pot! ecstasy! meth!), Griffiths was able to build a successful writing career, first at People magazine (where he and I first met) and then as a contributor to such magazines as Cosmo, Redbook, The Advocate and In Style, among others. In this episode, he and AfterParty s Anna David talk about how fussy kids can turn into alcoholic adults, discovering hookers and crystal meth in one night and being able to recite our character defects, among many other topics.   Photo courtesy of LinkedIn

Actress Mo Gaffney was on the seminal show Absolutely Fabulous and rest assured she is absolutely fabulous. After launching to stardom with the off-Broadway show The Kathy and Mo Show (which she created with friend Kathy Najimy), Gaffney went on to: a) Win Obie awards for it; b) Make it into an HBO show; c) Work non-stop, on everything from That '70s Show to Friends to Mad About You to Mike & Molly to pretty much every other show you can name. It may be inappropriate to say this when you're writing about a recovery podcast but it's clear Gaffney was what's known as a fun drunk. Still, after becoming a mom and noticing, increasingly, how drinking was negatively impacting her life, she sobered up—joining five other siblings and her mom in recovery. In this episode, she and AfterParty's Anna David discuss martinis, pretending to take ecstasy, missing smoking and craving a companion to read with, among many other topics. Photo courtesy of AfterPartyChat

Yoga and recovery expert Tommy Rosen is, despite his serenity, not a man who sits still very long. The Hatha and Kundalini yoga teacher (who's been sober for 23 years) has been one of the pioneers of the yoga-recovery model (in short, practicing certain types of yoga can help your recovery—a lot). He's also created a new movement called Recovery 2.0, which launched as an online conference series that featured such luminaries as Dr. Gabor Mate and Richard Branson (as well as AfterParty's Anna David). Now he's published the remarkable Recovery 2.0 book and is touring the world sharing the principles from it. He does all this, by the way, when not hosting retreats with his wife Kia Miller (also a yoga teacher). In this episode, he and David talk about getting addicted to sugar before drugs, discovering (and being saved by) the Grateful Dead and acting out in sobriety (girls! gambling!), among many other topics. Photo courtesy of HuffPo  

Comic Lisa Sundstedt has not only written on and produced such TV shows as Girls Behaving Badly, The Chelsea Handler Show and Chelsea Lately but she’s also the creator of the longest-lasting all female comedy show in the country. Yep, that’s right; Pretty, Funny Women has featured everyone from Chelsea Handler and Margaret Cho to Natasha Leggero, Maria Bamford, Stefanie Wilder-Taylor and AfterParty’s own Danielle Stewart. But it’s not all pretty, funny performances for Sundstedt: she’s also a bipolar alcoholic who speaks openly about these issues (including the fact that she lost her Chelsea Lately job because of one of her bipolar episodes). In this episode, she and I talk about the way your scores can change when you take quizzes to see if you’re alcoholic, how depression and pot smoking is prevalent in the comedy community and being a non drug taking alcoholic, among other topics. Photo courtesy of AfterPartyChat  

Comedian Sarge Pickman is less a comedian who talks about his recovery and more a recovering addict who incorporates his comedic gifts into the work that he does. While he started off working the comedy circuit in LA and still does plenty of comedy gigs, Pickman's main career path these days is leading groups at treatment centers, doing what's known in the recovery world as in-the-trenches work. The Sarge story, in short, is this: Florida-born and dwelling, Pickman was adopted by Jewish parents and raised on Long Island where, as a mixed race youth, he suffered from plenty of identity confusion. Drugs and alcohol helped him to handle these feelings and all that led where addiction can lead—to homelessness, hanging out under the Manhattan Bridge and feeling hopeless. In this episode, he and AfterParty's Anna David talk about smoking angel dust, realizing that chasing stardom is an empty goal and realizing an ultimate purpose, among many other topics. Photo courtesy of DPreview

Comedian and entrepreneur Claude Shires is no ordinary comedian or entrepreneur (um, to start with, you don't see that hybrid too often, amIright?) The Florida-reared husband and father was sent to a year-long treatment program at the age of 17, after which he enrolled in the military—where he stayed for five years. Moves to Boulder, Colorado and San Diego followed before he relocated to LA to pursue stand-up comedy. (While he didn't end up staying sober consistently that entire time, he's now been sober 17 years.) While becoming a working comic, he started an editing company, UnReel Media (which he still runs), and is also now the co-creator of TubeStart, a Kickstarter for TV and film. Have I mentioned that his dad is one of the doctors who invented Gatorade? In this episode, he and I discuss unemotional fathers, whether or not drinking non-alcoholic beer is a slippery slope and why women love men who are in therapy, among many other topics. Photo courtesy of UnreelLA  

Writer Alice Carbone has not been afraid to explore the dark side—in her blog, her podcast and her essays for AfterPartyChat. But as her more recent pieces have shown, she explores the lighter side just as poignantly. Carbone's story in brief: after moving to California from her native Italy in 2010, she lost everything and found sobriety—and eventually happiness. The author of The Sex Girl (due out this May, 2015 from Rare Bird Books), Carbone is currently working on her second novel and developing her podcast and blog as a TV show. In this episode, she and AfterParty’s Anna David discuss what Carbone’s bottom looked like, the mentors who have helped her along the way (Leonard Cohen!) and how to tell the difference between serenity and external circumstances going well, among many other topics. Photo courtesy of AliceCarbone  

For reals, what is there to say about Moby that hasn't already been said? (Well, there's one thing that's at least never been in print: How f-ing psyched are you that he agreed to do AfterPartyPod?) The legendary musician, who burst onto the scene with his fifth studio album, Play, is also a DJ, photographer and soon-to-be memoirist (we all know he's a descendant of Herman Melville, right?) And it's not just his own music he's had a hand in; the active animal rights supporter has remixed, co-written and produced music for many of the other greats. But we can find all that out everywhere so let's talk about his sobriety. After a bout with sobriety when he was a Christian, Moby developed this reputation as something of a puritan. But he was actually boozing it up, as well as taking plenty of recreational illegal substances, while he brought the party back to his place. It wasn't until he got to his 40s and the hangovers started to get debilitating that he started to look at the possibility of sobriety. Now he's years into the sober game and growing all the time. In this episode, he and AfterParty's Anna David talk about deciding to get sober, relapsing, how unappealing the thought of having just a drink or two is and the fact that people still come up to him on the street to thank him for the epic parties he used to have, among many other topics.