Steppin' Out Radio

Black Pain identifies emotional pain -- which uniquely and profoundly affects the Black experience -- as the root of lashing out through desperate acts of crime, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, workaholism, and addiction to shopping, gambling, and sex. Few realize these destructive acts are symptoms of our inner sorrow. Black people are dying. Everywhere we turn, in the faces we see and the headlines we read, we feel in our gut that something is wrong, but we don't know what it is. It's time to recognize it and work through our trauma. Terrie Williams knows that Black people are hurting. She knows because she's one of them.

Leigh Steinberg (@leighsteinberg) Sports Agent to the Stars, wrote a best-selling book, Winning with Integrity, providing insight on how to improve life through non-confrontational negotiation. Furthermore, Leigh’s most recent book, The Agent: My 40-Year Career of Making Deals and Changing the Game, details his decades of dominance in the sports industry and sheds light on overcoming his personal struggles to launch his comeback. Leigh has been rated the #6 Most Powerful Person in the NFL according to Football Digest and the #16 Most Powerful Person in Sports according to The Sporting News, and was the only agent that made Sports Illustrated’s list of most influential figures that shaped the NFL’s first 100 years.

Discovering her daughter’s addiction to opioids forced Maureen Cavanagh into the dark work of caring for a child with addiction. Now, she is the founder of Magnolia New Beginnings, a nonprofit peer-support group for those living with or affected by substance use disorder. She has been recognized by The New York Times, CNN, and other outlets for her work fighting the opioid crisis and the stigma that surrounds it. Cavanagh is also the author of If You Love Me: A Mother’s Journey Through Her Daughter’s Opioid Addiction.

Kim grew up in a “beautiful suburb” as an only child of a “severe” alcoholic father. She says he was drunk daily. She remembers as a child telling her father that their lives would be okay if he didn’t keep drinking. But in her early teens, she began drinking herself. Kim would steal booze from her friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet at a party; she became so intoxicated she couldn’t go home. From that moment, she had a new favorite activity. It made her feel less uncomfortable in her own skin. It was a relief of emotion – and she kept chasing it. Soon she needed the alcohol just to have the courage to leave the house.

Raymond is an alcoholic and an addict. Growing up in with an alcoholic mother in Brooklyn, he now knows it was booze which killed his mom. As a child, he would sneak drinks but his true drinking began at age 14 when sneaking out with friends. His drinking persisted from that moment on. His drinking took over his life to the point he twice attempted suicide. Raymond would wind up in psychiatric care at New York’s Bellvue Hospital, where a nurse told him that he wasn’t mentally ill, but that he drank too much.

Tommy was raised in New York’s Staten Island. He was eleven years old when his father gave him his first drink, declaring Tommy to “be a man, now.” But his regular drinking started age 13 with friends. His mother beat him when he came home drunk. Tommy’s drinking continued though his teenage years, dropping out of school by age 16 and working for a living. His job allowed him to save money each week in order to go out drinking. But his drinking took up too much of his time and he soon lost his job and Tommy wound up homeless. Attempts to get into a better job, including the New York City police department, where all thwarted by alcohol.

Sophie’s problematic compulsive gambling started later in life, when she was 60-years old. She had achieved sobriety from other addictions much earlier but started gambling as an activity and it quickly progressed into a problem. While making beach walks near her home in Atlantic City, she took a liking to slot machines in the city’s casinos. But her nickel bets turned into dropping hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours. Her attempts at limiting herself were fruitless, as she she would run home from the casinos to get more money.

Paul’s life revolved around gambling from the time he was young. He played poker and flipped baseball cards. Paul always wanted to be a winner and pursued winning aggressively. He worked in a bowling alley at 12 years old and loved to watch the men play poker afterwards. He liked the “action” of gambling. It wasn’t about winning or losing. Paul’s focus became on gambling and he thought about it all the time. When the game was over, he would feel sad and isolated. At 16-years-old he dropped out of high school. Paul grew up and got married, but his gambling persisted, progressing to the point he was lying to his wife about his whereabouts.

David’s first time gambling was at age six. His father taught him to play poker, making penny bets, and it soon became a family activity. Later in life, David can see that other kids would enjoy a range of activities but he only wanted to play poker. Soon his family games went from pennies to dimes. As an adult, David now knows his father, who showed him how to gamble, had a gambling problem himself. In his teen years, he would spend his money from his after school jobs to gamble and it consumed his life; if he wasn’t spending time gambling he was using it to prepare to make his bets.

Sean grew up in a neighborhood in which if you didn’t gamble, you didn’t belong. Bets began at a young age with friends, as they would play baseball with each other. In his early teens, a friend introduced him to a bookie, and Sean made bets on sports games right away, putting up bets of hundreds of dollars that he didn’t have. His losses would have the bookie knocking on his parents’ door. As he got older, he would come to idolize bookmakers, with their fancy clothes and cars but never holding a real job. In high school, he would work for bookies getting his peers to make bets. After high school, he started working a normal job but would take his paycheck gambling. His descent began with a stroke of luck, winning a five-figure bet when he didn’t have the money to cover it on the chance he lost.

Compulsive Gambler Joel’s first bet was, as it often is, during childhood. Joel was a fantastic marble player; and not only one the games among the kids, he would up winning all the marbles and taking them home. But as a teen, his parents took him to the track, giving him two dollar to play with. Joel won fifteen. And from that moment, he just knew he could make money his whole life by gaming. He became a card player, a pool player, and seemed unstoppable. But Joel could never find satisfaction. And then Joel began losing; gambling more than he made in salary and ending up in a hole. He even stole from his parents to cover the bets. Three marriages and fourteen years later, Joel began to relapse despite a long spate of sobriety. His wife Susan could tell something was amiss; a descendant of a dysfunctional family herself, Susan knew for her marriage to work she also would need to seek recovery. But she also needed to confront him.

Andy is a compulsive gambler. His game of choice was poker, but he would gamble on anything he could. And all he would do is lose money. He barely if ever won. Andy’s legitimate creditors – namely the bank – would often call his house, speaking with him or his wife, asking for him to get his bills current. Andy wasn’t raised a gambler, but was introduced to gambling by his father-in-law, who later Andy and his wife would recognize also has a gambling addiction. But Andy’s father-in-law took him to the horse track, where Andy made a big winning betting on a horse with the same name as the title of the book Andy happened to be reading. Andy’s wife, Joan, through all of this, had to watch her husband’s downward spiral. But at first, Joan thought Andy’s gambling was good for him, as it helped him become more social. But as his gambling increased in frequency, and he began to hide money from her, she felt into a deep state herself.

Michelle’s first drink alone was at age 11. Her family home was complete with a bar that was never locked. She came home from school one day and found an open bottle of wine in the kitchen fridge, and so she tasted it. She felt guilty about taking the sip, but she kept repeating the drink each day when coming home from school.

Jenn returns to re-tell her story of teenage alcoholism. She had her first drink in her first week of her freshman year in high school, but she had wanted to drink for a long time leading up to it. Jenn was too scared to drink at home, but found friends a couple of hours away whose parents permitted the teenagers to drink. Her first drunk was with these friends, at a beachside bonfire. Jenn found the drinking alleviated the stress of her home life and her parents’ divorce.

Brian comes from a culture where drinking and other bad behavior tends to be congratulated. He was a child when he convinced an alcoholic adult to buy him booze by paying him for it. Brian can remember getting drunk that night with a buddy, staggering around the neighborhood, and then blacking out and coming too in his parents home late at night. His boozing got him in trouble while in Singapore, where he got arrested for drinking to excess. His whole life, Brian remembers that everybody from his parents to the judge in Singapore would shrug off his behavior.

Barbara is addicted to sex and love, and she shares her story in hopes others can begin to understand the difference between normal sex, love and romance, and those who use them as a “drug of no choice.” Barbara asserts that much of this stems from a need to be approved and accepted. Her own issues began in childhood, with a mother preoccupied with sex. Barbara was encouraged by her mother to have sex often as a teenager. But when her mother passed away, she would engage in sex with numerous men, often strangers.

Dave is a sex and love addict. He spent most of his life wondering how he became this way. He still isn’t sure. Dave grew up in a upper-middle class home in a family of high achievers. His parents and siblings were very loving. There was no outright abuse. But Dave’s father was very success-oriented, and there was a lot of pressure to perform to high expectations both in school and life. And because of that, Dave found his father was putting himself in control of Dave’s life. He’s not sure why or how that might have translated to his adult dating life, but Dave has problems finding partners with whom he feels he could have loving relationships.

Bob’s major use of drugs and alcohol stared after high school, following a bad breakup. Bob incidentally was taken to a twelve-step meeting which brought him into two years of sobriety, though it ended when he toasted his brother at his wedding. Years later, he wound up in jail. Bob was not only an addict, but a serial abuser of his wife and kids. And in jail, under physical threat by the other inmates, he decided to get sober for good.

Fred thinks he used drugs in order to deal with pain, and today in his sobriety, he knows to deal with pain without using. His first time trying a drug, alcohol, happened at age ten at a party his parents threw; they toasted him with Sangria. Fred remembers it made him feel “warm.” He would later recognize his home life was drug-centered. Fred’s father was a drug dealer.

Paul grew up in what he says should be a normal childhood. He attended a very good school, was a good student and athlete. But he always had a feeling of being different and inadequate. At age 12 or 13, while playing on a hockey team, Paul drank when celebrating winning a championship game. While he drank before, he had never got drunk until that time. It was a horrifically sickening experience for Paul but it would not be the last time he would drink, as being drunk felt magical to him. In high school, Paul would begin to use marijuana and experiment with narcotics. And then he became a drug dealer.