Martin O'Toole - Eat Pray Bali

Martin O'Toole - Eat Pray Bali

How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation between psychotherapist Jeff Friedman and breathwork coach Martin O’Toole offers a raw, honest look at how dark things can get – and how life can still turn around. Martin shares his history as a "high-functioning alcoholic" adman, sex and drama addict, and the night he sat with "a bottle of gin, a couple of grams of cocaine" and a loaded shotgun pointed at his face.

The moment his beagle, Macy, walked in and silently stared up at him becomes a strangely tender turning point: as he jokes, he still doesn’t know if she was saying "don’t do it or what’s for dinner," but either way, that beagle interrupted a possible suicide.

You’ll hear how things actually got worse for a few years, including injuries, affairs, and shame, before Martin finally put down his last drink on 9 February 2018 and went sober through “good old-fashioned cold turkey, meditation and rock bottom.” From there, his path runs through ayahuasca ceremonies in Morocco, closing his business, moving to Bali with “two bags, one beagle,” and retraining as a coach.

Martin explains conscious connected breathwork as a way to reach non-ordinary states without drugs or long-haul flights, and talks through Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a practical way to work with inner critics and protective parts. He also shares ideas from his book *How Not to Suffer: A Practical Guide to Losing Your Mind*, drawing on Buddhist wisdom and the clinging mind as a source of ongoing anguish in recovery.

The tone is candid, slightly cheeky, and aimed at people dealing with addiction, trauma, or those supporting them, who like psychological depth mixed with very human stories. It might leave you asking yourself: what parts of your own mind are still clinging to suffering?