How Many Versions of Yourself Have You Created? Austin's Journey from Addiction to Identity (Ep. 195)How Many Versions of Yourself Have You Created? Austin's Journey from Addiction to Identity (Ep. 195)
Genuine Life Recovery with Jodie Stevens
Austin shares a candid story of addiction, repeated relapse and extreme experiences, including time under cartel watch in Mexico, while he and Jodie discuss how shame, childhood wounds and people‑pleasing shaped his identity. Their conversation focuses on emotions, honesty and vulnerability as central pieces of long‑term recovery.
40:11•29 Jul 2026
From Cartel Chaos to True Identity: Austin’s Path Back from Addiction
Episode Overview
- Addiction began long before Austin’s first drink, rooted in shame, anxiety and feeling like an outcast child.
- Alcohol and drugs acted as a “hot wiring” of connection, giving temporary relief without requiring vulnerability or authenticity.
- People‑pleasing and achievement led Austin to constantly reinvent himself based on others’ reactions, leaving him with no stable sense of self.
- 12‑step recovery reframed alcoholism as the feelings and state of mind when sober, shifting focus from substances to the underlying condition.
- Honesty, emotional awareness and the willingness to drop old ideas became crucial tools for rebuilding identity and forming real, intimate relationships.
“We connect in the ways that we aren’t perfect, not in the ways that we are.”
Austin describes growing up with severe tics, weight struggles and a deep sense of being the “outcast”, saying alcohol and drugs felt like “the solution to a problem I didn’t know I had.” He explains how people‑pleasing and performance turned him into “the wearer of many masks”, summarising it with the line Jodie highlights from his book: “I recreated myself so many times I didn’t even know who I was.” The episode walks through his escalating addiction: early opiates, crack in high school, burning down his family home, overdoses, and long stretches of sobriety followed by devastating relapses.
What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol, drugs and constant shape‑shifting? This conversation follows Austin, author of *One Last Hit*, as he talks with host Jodie Stevens about how addiction, identity and childhood wounds became tightly tangled for years.
One of the wildest stretches is his time in Mexico, spending huge sums on crack and benzodiazepines while living under the watch of cartel members, even recalling a night sitting on a couch with a gun pointed at him over a perceived insult to a dog. Yet the heart of the conversation isn’t the drama; it’s the emotions underneath.
Austin and Jodie talk about growing up in homes where feelings were dismissed with lines like “don’t feel that way,” and how that taught them to stuff everything down until it exploded as rage, self‑destruction or relapse.
Austin shares how 12‑step ideas, therapy and honest reflection helped him see that “we connect in the ways that we aren’t perfect, not in the ways that we are.” If you’ve ever felt like you had to be someone else to be loved, this story might leave you asking: what would happen if you dropped the mask and showed up as your real self, just for today?
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