Ken Cox, an entrepreneur and author, offers a profound exploration of addiction, recovery, and personal transformation. He shares his harrowing journey from a debilitating alcohol addiction, which culminated in a life-threatening liver disease diagnosis at the age of 39, to a life characterized by resilience and purpose.

Ken emphasizes that addictions serve as armor that shields us from confronting our true selves, yet shedding this armor is essential for genuine living. He discusses the uncomfortable yet rewarding process of embracing honesty and vulnerability and shares about his new book, "Reclaim Sobriety," which encapsulates his experiences and the core values that guided him toward recovery and fulfillment.

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Find Ken Cox Here:

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His Book 'Reclaim Sobriety': ReclaimSobriety.com

Alcohol for me has always been a calming thing, right? I could sit and drink and work for hours on end. Nobody knew me sober anyway, so nobody knew what that looked like.

Our addictions are that armor that we're wearing out to the field every single day. But when you can shed that and live a life open and honestly, it's wildly uncomfortable at times, but it is the greatest way to live.

Part of this process is you're going to have to learn how to process your feelings.

And unfortunately, you're gonna have to process a bunch of stuff that happened to you years ago that you probably don't even know about to let those things go.

You are listening to the Akkeri Podcast, a show about men and masculinities, the challenges that modern men face, and how to chart a better way forward. I'm your host, Matt Howlett, mental health coach and founder of the Akkeri. In this episode, I'm speaking with entrepreneur and author Ken Cox.

Ken became addicted to alcohol at a young age and was diagnosed with life threatening liver disease at age 39. Ken shares how and why he became addicted to alcohol, how he ended that addiction, and how he now works with others to help them do the same.

If you or someone you know is struggling with behavioral or chemical addiction, I'd encourage you to listen and check out Ken's new book, Reclaim Sobriety, where he shares additional stories from his life and the values that brought him through it. But first, a word from our sponsors. Yeah, that's right, we don't have any sponsors. And that's why the podcast has been somewhat dormant as of late.

It's not that it is ending for those who have asked, it is very much continuing. But the cadence with which we be publishing those episodes is gonna be a little sketchy because your your boys just gotta work. I have a 9 to 5 job.

And to be honest, a podcast does take a fair chunk of that time that I do have. It is fun and the guests have been great.

But apologies to this week's guest, to the others that lie in wait alone on my hard drive and those that are even coming up. It is not something that I can get to right away.

But I hope that you, dear listener, have been enjoying these episodes, have found some inspiration, mainly a source of encouragement, a sense of belonging, something to inspire you in your own Personal growth. That is the whole point of all this. And that is why the podcast is not going to end anytime soon.

With any luck, we will be able to get to a place where we are putting out at least once every two weeks. That would be the goal and we are working to do that. So that's the state of the Akkeri, state of the union.

And we will just shut up now and get to this conversation with Ken cox. Okay. Well, Mr. Kencox, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come on the OCRI podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Matt, if you could just give us an idea of who you are. Where are we finding you today, what it is that you do?

Yeah, so the world has dubbed me an entrepreneur. Not unfortunately, it's a title that I'm gradually accepting. I like to think of myself as a business guy or an owner operator. Right.

So the way I look at it is I don't have. There's no other path for me but than to work for myself or work for venture capital. That's the path that I chose.

It's what I enjoy doing and it's what I've been doing since the age of 24. So I've been in this game for a while. Entrepreneurship is cooler now than it was 25 years ago, so that's good for me.

But moving past that, the businesses that I run mostly is during the day. I run a company called River City Internet Group. We're a data center owner operator in St. Louis, Missouri.

I own a company called Box STL which is a boxing school. St. Louis's largest boxing school. Very, very. A lot of that detail is in my book. That's a lot of my recovery story happens inside that gym.

So that's a lot of the detail in Reclaimed sobriety talks about that as well. And the data center, it's all kind of intermixed. I'm a father.

I've got a beautiful 17 year old daughter that's going to Webster University this next year. So super excited for that.

She's going to TV and film and a father to a non verbal autistic 13 year old boy who is just who has taught me more about patients than anybody on the planet. And my wife is just amazing. She runs our gym.

She's there five days a week managing it, making sure all that stuff is good while I run the data center. And we like to have as quiet, as peaceful time as we can when we get home at night.

Yeah, very cool. But so you alluded to the story that, you know, led to reclaimed sobriety.

Tell me a little bit about your background because you, you're in Missouri now. So you grew up in Missouri, right?

Yeah, born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. From the age of like 16 to 24, I traveled pretty extensively all over the country doing different jobs. I was, I was.

My first career was in TV and film, just like my daughter's going into. So that was my first kind of corporate America jobs thing that I was taking out of college in high school. So I traveled a lot.

By my story goes, you know, we can go all the way to the beginning. My mom was in, you know, a homeless shelter for unwed women when I was born, got moved into a bar, um, met my stepfather.

You know, eventually I ended up getting adopted by him. And that's where my current last name comes from. Cox. I was born Kenny Schneider, and I was Kenny Schneider until I was 13 years old. Okay.

But my stepfather was a good old boy, right? He was a union baker.

He did his eight hour shift, he poured concrete on the weekends, and he sat on the porch and drank beer every single night of his life. So, you know, I grew up in a time where it was very common to hear Kenny changed the channel. Can he go get me a beer, right? Those are the two.

That's what I thought my names were, right? I thought change the channel and go get me a beer were my last name.

But that really quickly, by the age of three, you know, was, hey, can I open this for you? Can I have a sip? You know, do running that 20 times a night, gets a little three year old. Pretty. Yeah, pretty good up, right?

And then, you know, the old guy sitting around the, sitting around the garage door giggling at the dumb little kid falling over is. Seems like comedy at the time, right? And then when I turned 13, right after the adoption happened, I got in a lot of trouble.

They found me in a car that I didn't own. They caught me with a lot of flour. That was illegal at the time.

No, you know, I, I grew up in a mindset of this is what men do. We, you know, cops and robbers was a real game growing up for us. Like that was a lifestyle, right? This is, this is what we do. This is what they do.

And. And that life. And not until that happened did I start changing my ways. Luckily for me, it did happen. Right. And luckily I didn't get locked up.

Some of the people that I was with spent the next five years in lockup. I was lucky I had. I was just in the car at the time. So I got five years of probation right after the.

Right at that adoption happened and a lot of counseling, a lot of stuff like that. But alcohol was still something that was promoted and accepted across the board.

So, you know, it was kind of some slap on the hands and things like that. Whenever I would get in trouble, nothing significant. Fast forward, you know, in my career. Happy hours, long happy hours, celebrations.

Sure.

You know, everything under the sun. And then alcohol for me has always been a calming thing. Right. I could sit and drink and work for hours on end.

And nobody knew me sober anyway, so nobody knew what that looked like. And that's, you know, going up until the age of 39 when I got my liver disease diagnosis from alcohol.

And it was, you know, told by the doctor, either quit now or. Or you'll have cirrhosis in two years. And. Wow, you won't take it. So that. That's the. Without going to any detailed stories. That's the big run. Right.

And I'm almost 50 years old, and I've got a lifelong life of stories of going out and, you know, drinking every single day of my life.

Yeah, yeah. So you've definitely got a story to tell. I mean, we're gonna definitely jump into that. One of the things that stood out to me first.

Well, you just mentioned it then, but I also saw it in some of the writing that you did.

I believe it's on your website when you're talking about the book Reclaim Sobriety, the tough love program that you credit your growth from 12 to 22 through some of that guidance and counseling. Can you just give me an idea what that was like? Like how.

What was it about that that helped you to turn your life around and did that lead into the entrepreneurship in some way?

Yeah. So, you know, I'll go through a couple of things. Counseling. I started counseling at the age of seven.

Okay.

And by the age of seven, I had become a fairly violent human. And I didn't know how to deal with a lot of things in life. So I started therapy at the age of seven. And that's when I started writing.

My therapist is like, write a page every single day, no matter what. And that's when I start writing. But I'm wildly dyslexic. I can't spell to save my life, okay? But this is where I start adopting technology, right?

Because my mom, for all of her negatives, has been my biggest advocate for growth and equality and all those things my entire life. So, you know, we're talking in the 80s, she was fighting the school board to get me word processors and oral tests and things like that, right? So I.

I'm no. No stranger to therapy. Hit 13, I go into the tough love and the AA program. For you, there's a different. Little different things then, but not.

Not significantly different. For the AA side, Tough love was this concept that you just set very clear boundaries and you execute them no matter what.

So if you're supposed to be home by 8pm and you're at 8pm, the doors lock, right? And you don't come home, which for a person like me, I took extreme advantage of. Right? That was just my permission to never come home again. Right.

I didn't have to go there. If I was one minute late, they'd lock the doors. And that wasn't like a punishment to me. That was. That was go out.

But what that did teach me and where my entrepreneurship comes from is the neighborhood I grew up in.

Within walking distance, there was a gentleman's bar that I could walk to by the age of 10, you know, wipe my hands and see the girls with the tassels in the bar, right? That was. That was the kind of neighborhood that we lived in. Okay, Right. Wrong or indifferent, that was. That's what we had. So it was.

You can imagine the kind of men and boys that were running around that neighborhood. But next to that bar was a slot car track. Right? But like a huge slot car track.

Yeah.

In the 80s, this guy loved this lock car track. And.

And I would go in there, you know, I would cross the roads that I wasn't supposed to be crossing to get there and hassle this old man because these are the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And he just had a passion for tinkering with stuff.

Bugged him so much that, you know, and I'm like, I need a car, I need a car, but I don't have any money. So he taught me how to solder, right?

So now I'm sitting in this slot car track on tournament nights, getting old guys and people to pay me to solder their parts together. And I made enough money to buy my first car and enter tournaments and do all this stuff.

So he taught me how to Create my own way to earn the things that I needed.

How old were you?

Sorry?

How old were you at that point?

Probably 10.

Wow, that's impressive.

Yeah. Like, you know, just because I'm out in the, you know, wandering around. Yeah, right.

At 11 years old, I got a job at a place called Baker's Restaurant. And totally illegal, but all the. All the dysfunctional kids are working there. Right.

And I was in Special school district, so they, you know, I was in the normal school. I would get there, and then when English would start, I'd go to another classroom, and when math would start, I'd go to a different classroom and.

Right. And I would have, like, gym and recess and stuff with my. With the normal kids, and I would go off with the special needs kids for those classes.

Sure.

Totally acceptable. But we lived in a time that you could. If your mom wrote you a note, you could leave school early. And the school didn't really want me there.

I didn't want to be there. Everybody knew that. So I got a job bussing tables at Baker's Restaurant.

And I would leave school early and go over there and I'd bus tables for the afternoon shift.

And Ray taught me, you know, how to, you know, keep things clean and watch out for problems and, you know, all these things, and really took me under his wing and how to, you know, separate your finances and make sure you're saving money and you got operational costs and if you need to buy something big and inventory and all those things. So I've got the same story about the guy who owned the pool hall. Right.

Like, took me under his wing and I cleaned tables for the money to enter tournaments so that I could win more pool tape and then get some cash from the hustling money from the older drunk guys was always fun. So those are the kind of environments that I grew up in.

And not until years later did I realize the influence that those small business owners had on me.

And, you know, partially why I look up and I'm like, you know, I don't ever want to have a position in life where I have to do things that I don't want to do for other people. Right, right. That hurts my soul in a way that I can't do it.

I get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, obviously there's parts of your story that are.

Are wild and sad and, you know, shouldn't happen and shouldn't have happened.

Yes.

But that's. That's definitely a bit of luck. I mean, I.

I think one of the things that comes up in a lot of the interviews that I've done is this concept of mentoring and how that's a big, big lack, big need. It would solve a lot of our problems with, you know, helping men or helping boys turn into men.

And it sounds like you kind of just found that by, just by sheer luck.

Well, you know, and I have a statement that I tell people now when they ask me about coaches and mentors, and I tell them like, you know, your coach or your mentor, they don't have to know that they're that person for you. Yeah, you just can, you can adopt them and start, you know, be near them and do those things. I didn't know that that's what was happening then. Right.

I just wanted to play pool. I just wanted to drive the cars. I just, you know, wanted to get out of school and, and hang out with other people.

So for me, it was always a means to an end to go and do these things and figure out how to get what I wanted.

Little did I know that I end up being with, you know, small and medium sized business owners and these guys just took me under their wing like it was, you know, probably some of them begrudgingly, but some were like, yeah, come on in and we'll show you around. I'll teach you how to do this stuff. Or yeah, yeah. I don't like cleaning the pool hall tables, so go ahead and take care of it. Right.

I'll let you shoot pool for free.

Yeah. So that definitely grew into a bit of a desire to do your own thing and maybe a work for myself for the rest of my life kind of desire.

Yes.

Yeah.

Or create my own things. Right. More so.

I think it's more about creating my own things for other people to enjoy, which is challenging to create something and then give it to the world. But it's, it's very satisfying.

Yeah, yeah, no doubt. I've been there myself. That's a great way to look at and describe entrepreneurship.

So you, this was like around, you know, 21, 22, where this kind of, that period of change and growth, we'll say kind of ended, I suppose, at least in the description when I was reading for the book. But you mentioned that I didn't come across this until just recently. You, you had an accident with an 18 wheeler prior to graduation.

Was it a car accident?

So I didn't graduate high school until I was 19.

Okay.

And then I went to this school called Broadcast center and it was my final weeks of Broadcast center and I was driving home from school that night, and I don't tell this story very frequently and I was on a road, it was on the highway and the center lane was closed.

Okay.

I know the center lane is close because I drive that every single day. And I just got jammed between two 18 wheelers and the guy behind me had fallen asleep at 80 miles an hour. He hit me at 10.

I was going 10 miles an hour getting into this kind of shoot, little lane, you know, the side lane. And he hit me going about 80. And it was rough for a long time. I fractured my skull, dislocated both shoulders, hyperextended my neck.

I fused my bottom three vertebrae. A slew of different issues. At the time I was still in TV and film and my. I was working at a place called the kiel center in St. Louis.

I think now it's the Enterprise Center. I worked for the jumbotron. I was a camera operator. Lost my camera operator job. Couldn't. Couldn't hold a camera for 18 months, so.

Which created other opportunity for me in a very short period of time. But you know, my entertainment industry start DJing at 16.

Right.

I, I'd love to hear a little bit more about that if that's okay with you, that, that period of time post accident, because I think not specifically a physical impairment, an accident where you get hurt in some way. But I think a lot of men hit that type of thing in their lives where it's like something pulls everything to a halt.

You know, for me, it was when I was going through a period where, you know, I was separated and I was really questioning my beliefs. I grew up in a really religious context and I was a pastor for a while. So that both of those things were very difficult, especially at the same time.

And that just like it really brought me to a place where I, I didn't really know what to do. I was kind of relearning who I was, what I wanted out of life. What was that experience like for you? Because you, you stayed in entrepreneurship.

It looks like you might even have dove harder into that out after that period.

Yeah, so. Because I couldn't do the things that I, I couldn't. I knew that I couldn't do what I wanted to do right at the time.

I really wanted to be a, a live action camera operator. That was.

That was really what I wanted to do, and I was good at it, but with my shoulders gone, my neck not being right, that was not going to be an option. And those formative years for developing. Developing your career in that specific realm are wildly important.

So I couldn't do that anymore on the religious and spiritual side.

So if you read the book, I get into this, and I didn't realize until after somebody came back to me and said, hey, this is really, really interesting stuff, Ken. Thank you for talking about it. And quite honestly, after I wrote the book, I didn't go back and read the whole. So there's some. I.

You know, I wanted to put everything out there in a way that was genuine and authentic. So I spent a lot of nights as a young child begging if there's a guy to take me. If there's a guy to take me. Right. Please. I don't.

I did not like this life. I did not want to be on this planet. I thought that everything about life was a punishment. I just didn't. Did not understand my existence at all.

And that accident did not help at all. Right? So now I'm in. You know, I'm strapped to a bed. I'm in a neck brace. They've got little dots on my forehead to drill holes into my skull.

I've got brainstem swelling. And I'm in a hospital called St.

Anthony's Hospital, and I'm laying strapped to the bed, looking at a crucifix of Jesus, you know, begging him to just end this right now. Because I can't, you know, because at the time, one of my arteries had slipped between two of my vertebrae in my neck when it hyperextended.

And they thought that my neck was severed. It wasn't. Thank whoever. Thank the universe for my neck not being severed.

Yeah.

So that's why they're prepping for the halo and all that stuff. Turns out it was just the artery. So they still had to keep me there for a long time because they had to move that.

Get that artery out from between there. So it didn't. My spine got back together. Didn't want to sever that, you know, puncture that artery either. Yeah. So I'm laying there thinking, man, I.

Like, I might not even be able to kill myself after this, like, if I don't have my arms. And that night, I couldn't. I couldn't even move my arms or anything. I was temporarily, I guess, if I wasn't paralyzed.

I was so drugged, and they literally had me tied to the bed. I'm like, man, I can't. I'm not even gonna be able to do that. So I was really angry at if there was a God, if there was a Jesus.

I was very, very angry at those concepts at that time in my life.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I. I'd love to hear how you rebounded, because that, that is a mindset that can get in pretty, pretty deep pretty easily. And I mean, I've been there.

I've had moments like that. I mean, I don't know how much you, you know, creep to figure out who this random guy is, is asking to be on his podcast.

But, like, I went through a couple things in life, you know, lost my mother at 56 to a surprise cancer diagnosis, the separation and an eventual divorce. You know, I almost died when I was 13. Had a similar, like, pretty tragic out of the blue accident. But it's a.

It's a hard mindset to get out of thinking that life is more of a punishment. And it can feel like that even if you've got a more positive outlook.

Because life can change, you know, drop of a hat and you can have a series of events that just seems like there's some kind of force, you know, out there working against you and you can't get anything right. Like, how. What was that? Like, how did you get out of that?

Well, I mean, I drank a lot for a long time and I did drugs and I partied and I was promiscuous. And I. You know, one of the worst things that anybody has ever told me that I.

That I took to heart was, oh, there was billions of years before your life. Your death is going to be just like that. So I really thought there was no meaning to life at all.

And I kind of just like, well, if there's no meaning, then I'm just going to. I'm gonna be a heathen. Yeah, right. I'm gonna do everything I can on this planet while I'm here. And then when I'm gone, if I'm gone, I'm gone.

And that's okay. I know I know different now, right? I know I know different things. And I don't know if this is age. I don't know if this is my spirituality.

And I talk about some of my transcending in the book, in my life now, I've seen. I have seen Jesus save lives. Like, if it just the belief of Jesus, I've seen it save lives. So I can't take that away from anybody on the planet.

So that power of Religion and all those things I think is really, really, really powerful and absolutely real. I'm now to the point, and I talk about this, too. I'm trying to understand pantheism a little bit because I've seen Jesus.

The idea of Jesus changed somebody in a profound way and literally saved their lives out of cocaine and heroin addiction. That didn't help me, but I've seen it help other people. I've seen Buddha change lives. I've seen Muhammad change lives.

I've seen Allah keep people on the right path. I've seen all of these things happen. And they're real. They're really, really happening, and they're. And that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, right.

And, you know, I go more along the lines of everything is always. Everything is always happening, and we have. Existence is existence, and we will. We have always existed, and we will always exist.

And that voice in your head has. Has been here for eternity, and time is just an illusion that man has created.

I'm reading an interesting book right now about time that one of my guests suggested. 4,000 weeks just started. I can't think of the author's name right now, but it's about letting go to an extent of our concept of time.

Because we get so caught up in hustle culture trying to get so many things done that we focus on getting all these things done and we actually think that we can. You know what I mean? If I can just make more time or make better use of my time. You know what I mean?

I'm liking the idea of letting go to an extent because in the end, if you have an acceptance, I suppose, of what can get done and accept the fact that some things won't get done.

Yeah. So I've got a couple of quotes, and I heard this one literally last night.

And I don't know the lady's name, but she said humans are an interesting species. They're the only ones in the universe that have found a way to measure something that doesn't exist.

Sure.

And that's time. Right. The other one that I really love is Bashir.

And, you know, he says that as long as you're acting on your most passionate desires at all times with no expectations of the results, that that's really the only thing you have to do in this life to be happy. And the time also does not exist in that. So if you are truly acting on your. Your wildest passions, you know, time doesn't really exist.

Then talk to me a little bit more about how you came to.

To write the Book Reclaim sobriety and what that is all about for you, because obviously, it's where you've been, you know, wanting to share your story to an extent, but also wanting to kind of pay it forward, pass on what you've learned, help others. Because obviously the gym is like that.

Yes. So I. I did not want to write the book. I tried not to write it, like, but it kept coming out, right? So in the gym for. So really, the.

Where the book comes from is when I got my liver disease diagnosis, I. I moved my addiction from alcohol to Xanax, which was another whole bad thing. But during that time, I started the doctor's like, you got to exercise.

I hate exercise. I don't want to do it. I hate it. But I like fighting, or I liked fighting. I'm a little indifferent at the moment.

And I told my wife, I'm like, I need to find a boxing gym somewhere just to try it, right? I. I'd never found a boxing gy, and I found a couple, and I'd go. And none of them were quite the right fit for me.

And I found one that I really, really enjoyed. It was just a heavy bag class, right? So go in. You hit the heavy bag. The instructor yells at you.

And I got home that night, and I told my wife, if I can do that. And I did not do it for the full hour, right? I fail. I did not get a full hour in. At the time, I was very, very sick.

I was jaundice, about 300 pounds roughly. Very, very sick, man. And so if I can do that for an hour a day, I can do anything. Like, nothing in the world's gonna stop me.

So I start going to this gym every day, right? And getting a little bit better, getting a little bit better, getting a little bit better.

And I'm noticing that bathrooms aren't quite cleaned all the time. They're out of inventory quite often. The. The kids are kind of running the place. There's no. Doesn't seem to have any adult supervision at all.

And I started asking questions, and, you know, they're like, oh, yeah, the owner's got some problems, and he got pulled away. So I got in contact with the owner. I'm like, what are you doing with this place? He's like, man, I really don't know.

My wife got sick, so I got to keep my corporate job to pay for her insurance. So the things just kind of dwindling and burning cash. So I said, why don't you give it to me? Let me have it and run with it, he didn't.

But we worked out a really great deal to move forward. And I took over the gym and quite frankly got it to break even. And then it was just a place that I could go and exercise every day, right?

So I secured my position to. I have this thing that I really love and I get to go there every day and it's not costing me any money and it's giving a couple people jobs.

Win, win for everybody, right? But even a break even business isn't a good business because something breaks and now I got to pull money out for more, okay.

And all this other stuff. So what I wanted to do then, after I was getting healthier and healthier, was create a boxing school for men my age.

Going through stuff that I go that I went through. That's what I wanted to do. I thought it was a great idea. I'm like, well, this was here for me and let this be here for other people.

Well, men my age, most that have never boxed, it's a bad business plan. You know, they, they get one black eye or broken nose or, you know, and they go home and they're a little bit beat up.

And the wife's like, you're not doing that anymore, right? So it was this constant turning of new, you know, get the client in, they're here for a couple of weeks, couple months maybe, and then leave.

But these kids are showing up at my door and I'm like, I've always loved kids, I'm like working with them and stuff. But I didn't know how, and I sure as hell didn't know how to teach him how to box, right? Not that good of a boxer. I'm a great fundamental trainer.

But you know, my, I'm a two in one boxer, right? Is my, is my career, is my record career. So I won two fights and I've lost one. So it's not like I'm, you know, I'm qualified to teach these kids.

But the business wasn't doing great and I've got all these kids coming to the door. So I'm like, screw it. Just show up on a Saturday and let's figure out what happened.

Changed my life almost instantly when these kids were coming to me and I saw them gaining confidence, losing weight, getting fit, changing their mindset. And I had one of the kids, moms come to me and said, you know, this boy has been coming here for a while. And his doctor asked me what changed.

And the doctor started sending me kids like so doctors are prescribing me, I'M like, this is so bizarre.

That's a good referral program. Yeah.

Thing that's happening. And so I start going to schools, right? I start. I. Well, I get my obvious. My. My USA boxing certificate. I get my coaching certificate.

I do all that stuff. I get some. So I start going through life coaching programs and flow coaching programs.

I'm trying to learn everything I can to help these kids do the things that they want to do. Probably should have did that early in my career as a manager anyway. But this is a different case, right? These kids are going to not.

They're telling me they want to compete, and I know that that's one of the more challenging things on the planet to do is to step into a ring for a fight in front of thousands of people screaming. You know, some of them are for you, some of them are against you. At least half are against you, and half are for you.

But you're going to win or lose, and if you lose, it's probably going to be embarrassing. So I had to figure out how to do that. One of the things that I did was come up with these core values.

I did a whole bunch of stuff, but the core values are really important, and we read them every single day. And I started writing the book about those core values and about these kids and how they've transformed and all those things.

But my story kept leaking in, and my editor's like, this is confusing. I don't know what I'm reading. It's got to be either all about boxing or all about the liquor. And I'm like, well, I don't. I want it to be all of it.

I wanted to write this bigger kind of encompassing story, right? But it wasn't flowing well, so I. I finally just gave in to the editors, and I'm like, okay, let's see what this.

Let's just commit to this topic and see what comes out. And I wrote it and I read it and I'm like, this is good.

You're surprised?

I've never. I never say about my work, right? And 99% of my work I do and I never look at again, right? It's gone. It's out of my head. It's there.

And probably it's incoherent to most of the planet. But, you know, this was. I was working on this thing specifically for this, and it was good. So we did it. We did it. Redid it. We did it. Redid it.

Still not perfect, but it's. It's where it's at. And it's I think it's a really great tool set for people that have tried programs and they found gaps for themselves.

I'm hoping that it can fill some gaps or rephrase some things in different ways for people that they can maybe accept it a little differently than they've been presented them in the past. Right.

Yeah.

So that's really what it is. It's structured as the weigh ins is chapter one taking mental, you know, about ourselves. And then we got 12 rounds of the chapters.

Right.

And then the press conference at the end, so, you know, you get to tell everybody all about your stuff. I did my best to correlate the 12 steps AA, which I love the program.

There's some gaps in it for me, and I'm assuming there's gaps in it for other people that I tried to associate as many of those steps to my 12 core values as possible and kind of have fun that way. Each chapter, each round is a personal story, a tool on how I used it to get through that personal story, associating with those core values.

The 12 steps from AA. A lot of smart recovery stuff. Smart recovery has been a huge spend my community through a lot of this and a lot of recovery.

Dharma thought process in there too. So that's the resources that I use, the tools across the board that I found to help me get on the other side of this thing.

So hopefully it's a shortcut for somebody else.

Yeah. What's your favorite story? You said each chapter is a story and tool. What's the favorite combination?

Oh, boy. Wow. I have not been asked that question, nor have I considered it. Don't talk about it, be about it.

I think is the biggest one, my biggest core value that I like. And it's just, I think actions speak so much louder than words.

You know, just moving forward and doing the work every day is more important than talking about it.

Yeah.

Outside of that, you know, way too towards the end. My last two core values are imagine where you want to be in life and believe that you can get there.

I have a fundamental belief that if I stand up one day a week, one day a month, or one day every day, and I stand up and I exclaim to the world, my name is Ken and I'm an alcoholic, that I will be an alcoholic for the rest of my life. Every time I say that, I'm reaffirming those things in my head.

And that's the one thing that the biggest thing that I don't like about AA and why I say reclaim sobriety Sobriety, gladiators. Because I. You just have to identify as something different than an alcoholic or an addict. And I understand you have to do that if you.

If you don't recognize you have a problem. I wore my problem. And I know a lot of men that wear their problem like a badge of honor. Right? So acceptance. They've already accepted it. Like, that's.

They've accepted. They're proud of it. You have to change who you believe you are to get rid of this problem in your life.

You have to identify as a different thing than the addict. Addicts relapse. That's what they do. Right. So identifying as an addict that relapses is not a great idea.

After your physical withdrawals are over and you've done some steps and you're coming to the place that you're ready to start healing. That's where you're at.

And then I guess it's important to say that when I started writing the book, I was just at the end of my recovery from pause, which is post acute withdrawal syndrome, which is where I think this book helps the most. If you're in that world, post one month to one year of sobriety, but you're not happy, you can't figure stuff out.

Okay.

You know, I think that's the. I think the book helps anybody on the planet that's going through anything but that.

That special spot of post acute withdrawal syndrome and being lost. And like, man, I was the. My drinking was the problem. I have not drank in six months. But my life is not still a joyous place to be.

I'm still mad, I'm still ang.

Right.

You know, all of those things, right?

Finding a way to. To readjust from letting go of the vice. Is that accurate or letting go.

I mean, to me, it was my best friend. It was my pasture, it was my doctor, it was my savior, it was my parent. It was everything to me. And I had to not do that any.

I didn't have that in my life anymore. So to me, it was, you know, I've only lost. I guess I've never had a biological father. I found out a couple years ago that he passed away. I lost my.

My stepfather at 22 years old. Thank the Lord. I've not met. I've not lost my mother yet, but I will at some point.

And I've never experienced something as dramatic as losing that part of my life. I literally have changed everything.

Who I was as a human, who I saw myself as, and get past that before I could literally live a Day of just from waking up to going to bed and not having any negative effects from my addiction. Right.

For people who are in that period of life, pause.

What is a realistic expectation, you think, for finding a sense of firm foundation, for finding a new mindset or even just days where you wake up and you're starting to feel somewhat different and it persists? I mean, what is a realistic expectation for that person?

So my. My favorite resource for that beside now my book Reclaimed Sobriety is going to be a great resource for that.

But I think part of my awakening and understanding of a lot of this would be the Body Keeps the Score. That's a great book. And understanding that you're really avoiding your. Your addiction is avoiding something else. Right.

And part of this process is you're going to have to learn how to process your feelings, process everything that happens to you.

And unfortunately, you're gonna have to process a bunch of stuff that happened to you years ago that you probably don't even know about throughout this process to. To let those things go. Right. I led. I dive deep into EMDR for this.

On Reclaimed Sobriety, we have a resource for EMDR if somebody wants to learn more about it. I did about 150 sessions of EMDR through this. Throughout that pause session, I was in pause for about six months. It was miserable.

However, I'd been in pause multiple times prior and didn't know it.

Right.

And that was always my, screw it relapse. And. And I didn't relapse like the bad relapse stories. I just gave up on being sober and started drinking again. Right.

I was just like, oh, nope, I'm an alcoholic.

This is what I do, you know, And I would have a couple beers at dinner one night, and the next night I would grab a six pack on the way home, and it was just like, back off to the races again.

Right. Give me an idea of what your life is like now, pre and post, because obviously it took a.

You know, you've got that first 20 years where you were going through a lot of different experiences, a lot of hard experiences.

Probably didn't even realize at the time because, I mean, you were young, you were a child, you know, lots of, lots of things that were happening that you didn't necessarily understand that. But now looking back, like, what does life look like now for you? You've got two kids and a wife, successful businesses, book released.

Like, how is the. The mindset shifted?

Yeah. So totally night and day difference. You know, I'm.

I'm proud of the things that I'm putting out now I can put out more, more product than I've had in the past. I no longer prioritize finance over the things that I'm doing on a daily basis.

And that has been, although challenging at times, has been a huge change in my life. My relationships with everybody I deal with is better or just doesn't exist any longer. Right.

Creating boundaries is, is challenging, but once you get there and you've done those things and, you know, the toxic people are either out of your life or at bay. I mean, days are just filled with, what am I going to work on today? What kind of cool thing am I going to get to do today?

Right. You very much figured out what your passions are and you're following them.

Yeah. I can't, I can't describe the feeling of. If you've ever felt hopelessness, everybody can describe that. Right.

It's like having a being under bricks and rocks. Right. Like you can't get anywhere, you can't move. And then now it's almost like, man, there's nothing, there's nothing that I can't do. Right.

I reclaimed sobriety came out today doing shows like this and all kinds of other shows on a pretty regular basis and just having, you know, for 49 years old, maybe 50 next year, I'm having just the time of my freaking life, man. It's just a whole lot of fun. And, you know, I, I'm doing it at a pretty good rate. I, I enjoy the hell out of life, man. It's.

I, I realize that this is a gift.

Yeah.

That is, that is a rare gift. There's nothing that I, that I can imagine that I want to try to do that I, that I can't at least make that attempt.

Right. Before we end this and close this up, I just want to hear something super practical.

Like what your day to day, even like a weekly routine, what is it that, like, you find the most beneficial of keeping you on that path, Keeping you positive, keeping you focused on what matters.

Living in the moment is the trick. Right? That's hard to do. So breathing exercises are huge exercise. Whatever, whatever you do to exercise doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter if it's walking, it doesn't matter if it's running, doesn't matter if it's boxing or jiu jitsu. Finding something that is, that you get to do physical on a daily basis with no tech. Right.

Phones in a locker for that hour, get away from all of those things and try to be in that moment. Meditation and Breath work are huge for that. Not everybody can meditate very well.

If you can't and you can afford it, I highly recommend the Muse headset. It's about 300 on Amazon. And it's a headset that helps train you how to meditate.

Okay. Never heard of it.

Because I, I had the same problem. Right. I hear all the time. I don't. I don't know how to meditate. Blah, blah, blah. It's important. And, and the Muse helps you do that.

It teaches you how to do it, and it helps give you yourself the grace that you need to try something and that you're not going to be good at. Right. You're not going to be good at meditating for years, probably. Right. But if you keep trying and you get better, those are the big ones.

Like, you know, the. The easy one. The easiest thing that a person can do to help change, start changing their lives if they're. They're stuck in that.

My life is a punishment world is every single morning when you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror and say, I love and respect you. And it's probably gonna feel like a lie for a long time.

Yeah.

But say it anyway. Look, and then hold it. It's gonna be uncomfortable as hell. Right. It's gonna. And it's gonna feel cheesy, and it's not gonna be comfortable.

But until you love and respect yourself, you're gonna struggle.

Yeah. I think it. It also feels a little feminine speaking to the men, you know what I mean? To look yourself in the mirror and try to, like. Because it's.

I think, well, at least in my experience, to an extent, it felt kind of like you're. You're coddling yourself. You're just trying to have sympathy for yourself. But that's not really it at all. It's. It's more about mindset.

It's more about belief. It's more about, you know, taking care of yourself.

So I. I think it's probably the more. One of the most masculine things that a person can do. So if you look. And this is one of the, you know, the.

The term gladiator, I love it so much. And a gladiator, when he starts fighting, he's got all his armor on. He's got big shield, sword and all those things.

But the great gladiators, the ones that make it to greatness, they learn to take all that armor off so they're faster and more agile and they can fight better. Right. And then they're just out there. And the best ones don't even have a shield anymore. They just have two. Two swords. And I.

I feel that that, you know, is very symbolic of our addictions are that armor that we're wearing out to the field every single day. And when you can shed that and you can live a life open and honestly to everybody, a hundred percent, is scary as hell.

And it's wildly uncomfortable at times, but it. I. It is the greatest way to live. It's the greatest way that I found to live. And I think that's really, really important. And it's a lot of work. Yeah.

Yeah. I would agree with you. It is the most masculine thing. My, My comment is just that I think a lot of.

A lot of us men struggle with that idea at first because it. It doesn't seem necessary. Like, we're. We're taught to push down emotions, right? We're taught that we can just push forward.

We don't need to look inside and make sure that we're taking care of ourself and able to. To let go of those. Those vices, you know, that. Let go of that mask, whatever term you want to throw in there. Right.

And I think if, you know, if you feel like it's feminine, then just go back to your pilot and he tells you, put your mask on first. And if you don't love and respect yourself first, then. Then you're not going to love and respect your wife.

You're not going to do that for your children. You're not going to be there for them the way that they need to. They need you to be there for them.

Yeah. Yeah.

That easy.

Yeah. Reaching, like, even the. The best that you can be in each of those roles. You have to take care of yourself. I love that.

I look forward to getting my hands on a copy of the book.

It's out now, Amazon.com right now. If you go to reclaim sobriety.com that will link you right there. But so far, if I go to Amazon, I just type in Reclaim Sobriety.

It's the very first one.

Okay. So awesome.

And before I let you go, you've written other books, one that I just came across before we jumped on the call, and correct me if I'm wrong, who smoked all my weed?

Yes.

And it's like a. Is it a kids book for adults or.

Help me out. It's. It's a joke. Yeah. It's a story about my wife. This is what she says every day of her life. Right. It's a joke. And I just found it really funny.

And so I. And I. I'm trying to. One of the things that I'm doing as I age is trying to add more comedy into my life.

Yeah.

And I needed to write something comedic during all of this, like, stuff that I'm dealing with. Right. And even the book, I mean, I'm putting some pretty personal stories out on the table.

And it's really weird to have people that have read that I don't know come to me and talk to me about stuff that's really personal. So I needed something that gave me that comedy. So I wrote that about six months ago.

But the fun thing is we're making a whole line, a series of these different woodland creatures that get into different hijinks. Tales is what we're calling the series, which has just been a ton of fun for us to do.

And we're trying to do it in a safe, fun way that's not too debauchery, but also a lot of fun.

What was the squirrel's name? Sammy. Sandy.

Sammy the squirrel.

Sandy the squirrel who smoked all my weed.

And that book is $4 or 20 cents for the. But if you hit the preview button, the whole book's there.

Okay. Sneak peek. Right on.

If you want the copy as a joke for your coffee table, I think it's hilarious.

Yeah. I love. I love the COVID Yeah. I'm glad I remembered to ask you about that. Ken. I appreciate your time.

No problem. Thank you so much.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Came in. All the best to you. Grats to the publication of the book.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening. I hope you found some value in this episode.

If you have, be sure to share the Akkeri podcast with a friend and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find the Akkeri on socials at the Ocari and on the web@the ocari.com youm can find Ken Cox at kencox.com that's K-E-N C O X.com and you can find his book at reclaimsobriety.com.