How Long-Term Sobriety Becomes Inner Child Healing with Darren Prince

Your life can look successful on paper and still feel like you’re circling the drain inside. That’s where this conversation goes, fast. We sit down with Darren Prince, one of the most well-known sports and celebrity agents, to talk about what recovery actually looks like after years of sobriety when the old script stops working and the real work begins.

We get into authenticity as the highest frequency, and why long-term addiction recovery can’t stay stuck at the surface. Darren shares the daily practices that keep him grounded in a high-pressure world, plus the moment he realized he needed more than “keep taking inventory” and started going after root cause healing. He walks us through powerful inner child work using NLP, the early shame that shaped his identity, and what changed when he finally reconciled with the younger version of himself.

From there, we widen the lens to relationship patterns, codependency, nervous system regulation, and what it means to be sober and aligned with your values. Darren also tells unforgettable “God shot” stories, what his friend called God-managed coincidences, that turned random moments into guidance and service, including an Uber ride that led directly to treatment. If you care about trauma-informed recovery, relapse prevention, the 12 steps in modern life, and building a life that feels true, this one will land.

Subscribe for more honest conversations about addiction recovery, share this with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review with the biggest insight you’re taking from Darren’s story.

To book a FREE discovery call with Dr. Sam, click the link below:

https://calendly.com/drharte/free-discovery-call-w-dr-harte

Transcript

Welcome And A Different Start

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Welcome back, everybody, to the truth about addiction. The level of excitement for this conversation is hard to express fully. You'll understand it once we get into it. But I have somebody here who I had the very good fortune of meeting a little bit after my book came out through a mutual friend. And he's been so gracious at sharing his wisdom as a businessman and more importantly as a sober man in recovery. And taken me under his wing. We did some work together, and we're just homies in recovery. And the the story is unbelievable. We're not going to talk traditionally about how it all started. We're just going to get right into the thick of the here and now. I have Darren Prince beside me, who you're going to meet in a moment, one of the most known sports and celebrity agents that ever existed. Unbelievable professional success with an even more profound personal story of rising up from the ashes with what he's overcome. And Darren, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Same here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

I mean, it's not the full bio at all. They're gonna get it, but it's it's what I did off the top of my head. He's also an amazing author of a book called Aiming High. So, Darren, I I was thinking intuitively the other day, getting ready, and and all the podcasts. I just said this to you before the show, that we've both been on. And when people ask, so what's your story? It's this we have what where do we start? I mean, it's an impossible question.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

And I thought, I am so not gonna do that to you. What I want to start with is, you know, I'm about to turn 17 on February 28th.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Amazing. And you are 17 and a half.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

Okay. We have trudged this road together, right? And and I I can't speak for you, but God, how things have changed. I have a book out that is all about modernizing the 12 steps because ultimately, fair fairly early in recovery, that's what saved my life. And I recently had a fight with my husband. Something came up and it triggered him in a way that hasn't happened in a long, long time. And to be fair, I had been keeping something from him that I just felt like he was gonna really judge me about. And we've been together forever, and it's unlike me to do that. So it activated everything that happened on the front end of our relationship, right? When I was lying and cheating, because we've been together for 23 years and I've only been sober for 17. And in his anger and in his fear, he was saying things like, You haven't been to a meeting in so long, you're working in empty program, blah blah blah bah, right? And it really stopped me in my tracks because I thought, no, I'm not. No, I'm not. And under the indoctrination of AA, which I grew up in in recovery, it would look like I'm not working a program.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Right.

What Recovery Looks Like Today

SPEAKER_04 3:40

Because I don't regularly attend AA, right? And and the truth is I have internalized these steps in a modern and trauma-informed way, such that they land safely in my nervous system and I can practice them. They are woven into the fabric of how I live and how I love. Do I get it right all the time? Of course I don't. But they are one element of my personal development journey, and there's a gazillion other things that I do today that keep me not just sober, but as best and as often as possible, aligned with my values and my integrity and a channel of love and a child of God. And I wanted to kick this off by saying, all these years into recovery, when you think of where you started in traditional 12-step and where you are today, where are you today? What does it look like today for you to be quote unquote in recovery?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Well, for me, um, I think the most important thing, I think the highest frequency is authenticity. Um, it doesn't get talked about enough. And there's just another way for me to be. And because for so many years I was numbing with the Potsdis syndrome, and to finally get to a place where, you know, we realize when you get this gift and you're blessed to become a voice like you have, like I have. Um, you know, if you've heard live recovery out loud, I I I think it's um it's so so important um to take our experience, strength, and hope, and let the rest of the world know that something's out there that exists that actually works if you follow these steps, if you read the literature, if you find a power grain in yourself. And I'm not even talking about, you know, I know the 12-step fellowship isn't for everybody. I know A and N is not for everybody. Um there's there's plenty of people out there that have found their own path, and God bless them, and that's great that it worked that it works for them. But you know, I know how you always say, I say it differently, that you know, you're trying to 12-step the whole world. Everybody could use it. You know, you just take out uh the word alcohol in the first steps and put in there whatever you're struggling with to make sure your life unmanageable. But I think for me to stay in the highest authentic version of myself, as we talked about earlier, I have a personal development routine that's just unbelievable. I mean, three weeks ago I came back from CABA, I got stem cells done for no other reason outside of anti-aging and longevity and uh brain fog. Uh I I feel amazing from it. But you know, my day starts with meditation. I've got my spiritual healer laundry. We do probably two to two to three live sessions a week, but then he updates audio uh apps for me throughout the week, uh, whatever's going on in that certain situation in my life. Um I do my cold shower or ice bath, I've got my grounding mat, I've got breath work, um, I've got frequency, you know. We go in with my boy Brian's uh place sports IQ after this, which you've been, um, because I feel as great and as beneficial as this 12 steps are, a lot of it is surface level and a lot of it is connected through spiritual beliefs and then of service, but nothing really gets to that root cause. You could go back into a time machine and um, you know, connect with certain moments that happen. And that's when I started discovering real NLP, real neurolinguistic programming. And my boy John Evelino is like a master tech, like at the Tony Robbins level, Louise Hayes level, studied under, you know, all of them. Uh people have to be careful. That's why I say that there's a lot of quote NLP practitioners out there. You pay for what you get, you know, it's not it's not cheap. Uh, I know there's a lot of apps out there, which I've heard are great, because to me that really is gonna take you not to the surface level, but really deep back into your younger self where you can actually talk to her now, yeah, telling her where life is gonna be, uh, to forgive herself back then. Um, and that was just so profound for me. I don't need to do them often. I probably do maybe two sessions a year as a tune up early on when my book came out. Um I I was finding out more about it because I was engaged at that time to my now ex. We're still very close, my ex um Priscilla, and uh you might have met her at one of the mastermind events, and um she I sent her to Louise Hayes uh down in Tampa for a two-week seminar to get certified. And sadly, Louise passed like two months later of like natural causes. I know you're probably a fan and this woman or and so when I was telling her about my buddy John and what he does, and he started it for athletes, and you know, always getting caught up in those pressure moments pro-athletes where they just couldn't deliver, and he found a way to kind of specialize in that marketplace. She goes, 'You know, I want to meet him. Let me. I know he's like your personal trainer, nutritionist, and yeah, she was like, 'This guy's gonna take you places that you never even thought were possible because we still have the character defects, even though working on the steps. And I don't want to keep hearing the tenth step, continue to take your personal inventory when you're wrong, promptly admit it. I'm like, why don't I want to continue taking the same inventory for the same mistake and just admit it? I want to get to the root cause of the problem and have I'm not having to do a tenth step. And you know, like I said, all that put together for me, working out, dieting, it's just been it's magical. And and if I miss one or two components um throughout the day, I I actually feel like I I feel it, it's like not complete if I only do eight of the ten. Everything keeps me right side, especially for the business that I'm in. You know, it's such a high pressure back grinds with with you know some of the mega clients that we have that you know it's it's almost like that's my training.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Like I need to make sure, as uh, you know, my guy David Goggin says, you know, you gotta go back to the lab every day. So if I miss any one of those things, I'm off.

SPEAKER_04 10:05

Okay, so we're we're talking about root cause, which is my absolute favorite thing. I mean, it is why I broke off as a cash-based practitioner in physical therapy. It's why, even though I was treating the body and I saw the soul sickness in the patient, I thought, I'm not there yet. I'm not actually helping them get to the full root cause. What does that mean? What does that look like? And so before I give my two cents on what I feel like that is, I would love to know sort of a two-part question. The first is if you can recall maybe an instant, is there a time where you were not doing all these other wellness things? It was mainly 12-step. And you just hit a spiritual wall where you were like, I'm circling the drain and I'm staying at the surface, and this isn't getting to the heart of the matter. What was that? And then what was the first experience beyond the 12 steps where you were like, Holy shit, this is the heart of the matter?

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah. That's a great question. And I'd say it's probably around the time my book came out, Aiming High. My father passed away a year earlier. I was living in New Jersey. Uh I was so eight years ago, I would have been 48. And um So you were well well into sobriety. Yeah, well, well into sobriety. I was I was 10, probably 10 and a half, yeah, 10, 10 and a half years. And I thought I was doing it all. Um helping the biggest treatment center in New Jersey raise money. Uh at that point it was turning point. I'm sponsoring people, um, being vocal, um, you know, as often as possible, helping people around town on Facebook. You know, back then that was, I don't even know if Instagram was around. And I just thought I was so dialed. And I think it's like kind of when I wrote my book, Aiming High. Um I think it was like Priscilla that noticed at the time, and there was just it was just a certain level of, I don't want to say boredom, but you can get complacent and certain traits of mine that were still there. And then going back to the NLP, what happened was when John put me in that first session, he asked me, he asked me a couple questions because what uh when I was out in a hypnotic state, he asked me what's the first moment of my early childhood, and I specifically saw myself sitting in our family therapist office. Her name is Rhoda Gold with my mom, my dad, and my sister. And it's like a ping-pong batch of north of the hyper energy, except my dad, my mom, my mom and my sister are fighting. My sister, you know, ADHD at a very young age, and I'm riddled with anxiety. And um, she asked me, Do I know why I was there? And I said, Yeah, because I'm stupid. And um, she goes, Oh, honey, you don't believe that. And um, he's like, What's your next memory? And I was like, probably 12, 13 years old walking down the hallway in grammar school, and I was in the special classes with six or seven people while my friends were in the classes with 50. And uh I heard somebody say that goes one of the idiots, and I look left and right, and I'm the only one in the hallway. And so that brought me to obviously the drug use and substance abuse that at 14 when I started it, it finally made me feel just as equal, just as smart, just as popular. And then you take a multimillion dollar baseball card company that I started that same year. You know, by the time I'm 15, 16 years old, I'm making free for a hundred thousand dollars a year in 1985, 1986. It was a recipe for disaster because now I'm the man, I'm the king, no one's making fun of me, people want to work for me with me. Um, it was all there. It was all suppressed. I never got rid of it. And then I leave that industry, I start booking autograph signings, eventually get out of that one and become an agent. And, you know, it's Magic Johnson and Chevy Chase and Rodman and say they with the bulls and Larry Bird and Pamela Anderson and Smoke and Joe Fraser and Mohammed Allah in the biggest names on earth. And it's still in me. I never got rid of it. So then, because the morality clause is now, you know, I've realized I can't do illegal drugs, but I had sciatica from working out a lot and physical pain. So I I I was an easy subject to go to any doctor and get all the opiates that I needed.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

So it was opiates and then informatic events, opiates and drinking, you know, and and it and it worked for a while, like any every other addict story until it turned, I don't know when it happened, but was once living to use turned out to using to live. And that stuff is still there. It's still there, it's still the root cause for all of it because I never spoke up.

NLP And Healing The Inner Child

SPEAKER_04 14:52

So when was that moment? Was it when he asked you that and you realized that the imprint in your nervous system at these tender ages was such that I'm not worthy of love and belonging, I'm a piece of shit, and that you had been carrying that with you even at 10 and a half years of sobriety? Was it a session?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Well, I I think it's uh it's not, it's it wasn't the love part. I was smothered with love from my mom and my grandma and my father. But you didn't feel like my best friend the love wasn't the motivation. I think it was like it might have been a worthiness of how and why is this all happening tuning in for me. That even though I was secure with my recovery, that there was always that I I didn't do this to get notoriety, I didn't do this for people to praise me. I did this for me, you know, and and I wrote this book to help save lives, and all of a sudden it's you know, Chris Cuomo and Tucker Carlson and Fox and Friends and Good Day New York and Jay Shetty and you know, I mean the biggest atlets in the world are are reaching out to me. And you know, I think knowing that all this was about to happen, that's when I really had to heal that inner child. I had to get to that broken Darren.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Um I remember John in the second session, I got very emotional because I was I was crying. He had me hold little Darren's hand and it was something like look at look at him with the big brown, big bushy brown hair and those beautiful blue eyes, and tell him they're not gonna be good calling you that when you're 49 years old. And it was like the little Darren like looked up.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

He said, No, he goes, they're calling you super agent, but that's not the important part. They're gonna be calling you recovery advocate, game changer, lifesaver, uh, a chosen one by God. And I just felt it kind of just go through me in that session. I felt like I took that eight-year-old boy and got aligned with me, and it was just this sort of explosive how my friend Joel Olstein says, like, it was like this bomb erupted and just kind of came out of me. And I think ever since then, the comfort in my own skin has never been greater. Um not from an egotistical place, you know, just from a humility space. Um, I put God first in everything that I do. Um and that was just magical because you know, we all still have self-doubt at times. There's insecurities, there's patterns that we don't know why we do it, but that really just took me to a place that and people saw it. It's almost like there was like an aura around me that was very different. There was a swagger that came to it because I went deep into that inner child, forgave my mom for stuff. There wasn't much on my dad's side. Um, and I think that just took me to a whole nother level. And then I realized there was more once I came to LA. Had a bad relationship or two, uh, my engagement ended. Um I said a midlife crisis, but went back to being the single guy, which is never good as an addict. Um because patterns can, you know, before, no, it's not dating one girl, it's dating three or four, you know. Um because that was an issue too. Another woman didn't come into my life until the money became my body got developed, my looks got developed in my early 20s. So I had a little bit of a difficult time um in high school with that. And so I realized, no, no, no, no, no, this this isn't, you're not your my sponsor would say you're switching seats in the Titanic. You might be sober, but this isn't, you know, somebody that um you know is really favored by God. You know, you gotta you know, just get time to you and shut it down. And you know, that took a while, I think until about three years ago. I told you my guy Londre, yeah, we uh we really got into that because it was something that he was like, look, you have an amazing career success, you have amazing personal success. Don't you want to get this whole woman thing figured out? You know, divorced, broken engagement, um, you know, a couple relationships that didn't work out. And um it wasn't really a priority. And then um after my last relationship ended, that took me to another layer of healing that inner child because I wanted to sit with sense of self. I never did that before. I did that for about six months. A lot of meditation, a lot of meetings, a lot of service work, uh scholarshipping as many people as I can, being very vocal on social media, but I don't think we take time to sit with sense of self uh enough. I know it's hard when you're a parent and whatnot, but there's still no reason we can't find time to be still and stay within us because we have to be selfish um in order to be selfless. So if we're not taking that time for us, um and then you know, ironically, like I didn't do any of it outside of the fact that I wanted to elevate my frequency even higher of my healing because healing's an ongoing journey. And then Knutsa moves in who's a client, you know, for three years and never thought in a million years that, you know, I have a big place, a big penthouse down in uh in LA on Wilshire. So my girls are there all day. She she's in like one end of the unit and had her own private space. And five weeks later, I guess God had other plans because fast forward we're now engaged. Um, you know, but I think when you sit with sense of self and we don't you lose a job, I understand you might have to get another one whether it's tented because the money is needed, I get it. But like we don't do enough of why something happened. What was the root cause within that situation? Why did we pick that situation? Could be a falling out with a friend, it could be a bad relationship, could be a job that was just toxic, and why do we stay in a certain way? There's always a root cause for all of it. And so now I'm so consciously aware and so hypersensitive. Like I feel people's energies that are around me. I feel when somebody's off. I feel somebody was in alignment to me, like every time you and I talk, and then I feel when somebody's not. I can tell when somebody's completely full of shit. And uh, you know, and and I know some of the wealthiest people in the world that are miserable.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

And um, I see it all the time, and I try to call them out from time to time without naming them on social media because like I I've got more success than I ever dreamed of. But I don't need to be this guy flashing, you know, mansions and private jets and yachts and you know, five hundred thousand dollar bling down necklace like. What what does that do? You're searching. You're not fulfilled.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

You know, and I want to just let people know, especially the young generation, um, include my fiance, Nudse, because you've seen her, you've met her on social. I try to explain, like, I get it, it's exciting now. Yeah. But ultimately it's not what's gonna bring you, you know, the real happiness. It's it's being a place of service. It's it's helping other people, it's using whatever gifts that you have to inspire and motivate others. I mean, that's wealth and abundance beyond anything I could imagine. And having Miami High Foundation, having the ability to raise the money that I do to be able to scholarship, you know, a few dozen people a year is the greatest gift in the world. I could lose the entire business tomorrow and have to move into a studio the size of this place. If I had a bed, a TV, and a pillow and a refrigerator, I'd be good because I found me. I found me at the highest level, the most authentic level that the stuff and the life, it only means something for me so I can bless others. I'm very low-main and you know, for the most part, I'm in sweatpants all day. And you know, it it it it it takes, you know, giving me some notice to get ready to go. Even this for you, I wear jeans today, which is rare on a Monday. And um, I don't I don't require much. I I just to be able to get to that place knowing who I used to be, where it used to be about the flash of my twenties. Let everybody go, look at me, look how good I did. It's embarrassing when you look back at it. That's not what success personally and professionally is for. Like you're meant to um bless others when you have it. You know, Magic Johnson and I talk about it all the time because there's some months where business, you know, fortunately, knock on wood, is just unbelievable. And I'll be like, man, I'm so overwhelmed. And I'll tell him, like, sometimes I just want to take a break from the life for a little bit, and he'll always tell me because boy, he goes, What did I tell you? When you live in the way that you do service-wise, to help bless other people, especially because you're not doing it for any other reason, because it's the right thing to do, and it fills your cup, God just can't help but to bless you back with abundance.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Because you know what you're doing with that abundance.

Service, Success, And Relationship Patterns

SPEAKER_04 24:14

That's right. You know what I'm saying. You build the vessel to receive it. Yep. Right? Yeah, yeah. You're there's so much that you're saying, and I just want to highlight and reflect back and then share a little bit. And the you know, f when I think now about root cause of addiction, I think of a a fracturing from self. There's at some point, or at many, many instances, as a young girl in my case, a a split from self because to be my authentic self for whatever reason wasn't okay. And there were enough of those instances stacked on top of each other where I had to shape shift and become something else. And that is why getting to a place in recovery where you've tackled a lot of the symptoms, you've abstained, so the chemical dependency is is gone temporarily at least, but you haven't gotten to mending with self is so unbelievably dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

And what's interesting, especially because too, you you act that another way, absolutely through the pores of your character defects.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

Right. And so how I eventually understood, and it's moved beyond this place at 17 almost years, but it when I look back and think about what happened in my marital crisis when I did the steps differently, it was the beginning of when I was little, I split from authentic Samantha, and then I merged and became the perfectionist, the people pleaser, the performer. And I was gonna do those things at all costs so that you would love me and everything was okay. And that had to utterly fail, and I had to have someone come in and give me permission to see myself, myself, capital S self, as separate from her. So I I split from self, but then I blended with an identity that almost killed me in recovery. And I the healing began by splitting away from the dangerous identity that I was wrapped around and realizing there was some other self inside of me. Some other unresolved. No, but the truest, lots of unresolved, that I now was separate from the perfectionist that told me I deserved what I was getting in my shitty marriage. I deserved my misery.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

But you need to tap into it.

SPEAKER_04 27:18

So it was it was the beginning of parts work. I didn't know that at the time. And now I have all these you know these therapeutic tools. But when she said you can actually make an amends to yourself, I was like, what are you talking about? The self I am is a self who doesn't deserve forgiveness, right? Right? But she's saying I can forgive, which means there's a different self in here. That was the truest, Sam. That was when I finally started to go, wait a minute, if I'm evolving into an identity that is not the perfectionist, then what are the votes I need to cast if I'm trying to speak to myself with love and kindness? And how am I getting into deep communion with that new self? That's the journey I've been on. And what I've come to understand since then is that was behavioral science accidentally. That was this woman going, you are not that identity. You get to consciously create a new one that is actually the truest part of who you are. And then, because the work never ends, as you said, what I always think of now, you know, we think of a boardroom and we think of it as financial. People think, right? A corporate boardroom. When I think of a boardroom, I think of a spiritual boardroom. And every morning, you know, I go to bed at night, I've done the best I can, and I wake up, and it's like I had a spiritual death. And now I'm I'm awakening again, and it's me and God, and everybody in the boardroom, all the little Sam's, the perfectionists, the hyper-vigilant Sam, the controller, the people they just come and they take a seat at the table, and we wake up together, and I try to slide into the seat of CEO and I say, Hello, everybody. Yeah, good morning. How are you doing today? And some days they have so many grievances. I mean, they are just they have a scroll and and my job is to reconcile. And that's when when you said inner child, right? That then then it is this deep layer of I know I'm no longer fractured. I'm I'm back in touch and in congruency with authentic Sam. But depending on the day, depending on the bandwidth, how much sleep I got, what's happening with my children, with my mentally unstable mother, with at any moment, these other parts are gonna come in and they're gonna say, danger, danger, danger. Don't you remember when it looked like this when we were six? Protect, guard. You must do this, you must say that. And I'm gonna be pulled away from my most authentic self, and I'm gonna want to go back into this old pattern that I used for so so long that kept me safe. And my job is to reconcile, is to listen, love them, take their hand, and say, I totally get why you're afraid. I totally get this is activating everything that happened back then, but I'm here to tell you that it's it's not that same situation. It feels like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

But it's not.

Fracture From Self And Codependency

SPEAKER_04 30:31

I'm gonna take you through physiologically how to establish a sense of safety right now inside, and then we're gonna go out into the world together, and I'm gonna show you that we're gonna be okay. Yeah, right, right, but that's constant reconciliation work, right? So it's it's constant inner child work to get to the root cause so that I can stay out of the danger zone of fracturing from self. And then to the later thing that you said, which is the relationship, right? It's like these buckets, these layers and layers. And and you know, to recoveries uh to to throw a bone at recovery, they say it's peeling back layers of the onion. It is, but so is any spiritual evolution process, right? It's not just a 12-step process. The deeper you go, the more capable you become in your own healing and staying with self, the more you're going to unpack. And so at every turn, there's always a new spiritual derailment. There's some other thing that comes in, right? And so for me, the most recent is the loss of my sister. And when I look now, it's almost four years to the day, at the ways in which I bravely stayed with self and also consciously or unconsciously strayed from self. They're evident, both are evident, even at all this time sober. And the most recent revelation came through, came through pain, which is codependency. You know, that's my kryptonite. That's my if we were to sort of play a game of like your most recent is relationships, romantic love, mine is platonic love, right? And I'm thinking, you know, in the beginning of healing some of these codependencies, there's judgment and there's, you know, you said the word embarrassment when you look back, right? There's this feeling of like, oh God, girl, you're 43. Like, what do you how are you having trouble having stable? And they say you're the emotional equivalent of when you started using, right? Okay. I remember when I tried to start setting boundaries, which was in my late 30s, and I felt like a child, and I thought about the same thing. Well, Samantha, when you learned to self-abandon, you were, I don't know, four. That's why it feels so scary to now speak up and say what you need and say it kindly but assertively. You are literally even younger around boundary setting than you were when you started abusing substances.

SPEAKER_00 33:06

Say what mean, mean what you say, and don't say it mean.

SPEAKER_04 33:09

Yeah, but I had terror doing that, literal terror in my body upon doing that. I don't have that so much anymore. Still hard for me. The same is true with codependency. You talk about core memories and why it's so important not to dwell in the pain of our past, but for pattern recognition, right? And for healing today. My first memory is four years old marching up to my mother. This is authentic Samantha. And I said, Why do you have to take those pills every night? Because every night she would down a bunch of prescription pills and she was very open about it. She would just do it in a huge plastic Ziploc bag. And it was this crazy concoction, and her eyes would go vacant within 20 to 30 minutes, and she became a ghost that ate more food on the kitchen counter in those 20 minutes than I had seen her eat all day, and she was unrecognizable and it frightened me. So I asked her about it, right? Normal. And she'd bent down and she said, Do you like the things that you have? And I'm like, Yeah. She's like, Okay. Well, in order for me to get you the things that you have, I have to work. In order for me to work, I have to make money and sleep, and these pills help me sleep. That was the end of the conversation. Why am I bringing that up? Why does that matter? Because I then said and did whatever needed to be said or done so mom would love me. And it definitely wasn't speaking my truth. And that shit has been playing out in my friendships for 40 fucking three years. So of course, of course, only now I'm ready to look at it. Right? And and so, yet again, right, it's this fascinating thing of like, how does it present? Can I become, can I, can I have enough pain from it that I'm consciously aware of this pattern so that I can move through the day mindfully as it starts to show up. And it shows up in the body. There's a physiologic presentation of getting excited, like when you do when you first meet someone that you're maybe falling in love with, and you want to you want to do all the things and give them all the things. Oh, now that's not that's not fireworks. Those are sirens, Samantha. So slow down, right? So, what's the presentation in my body? How do I soothe that? What's the mind trap? What are the stories I'm gonna tell myself? If I just if I love them hard enough, then they won't leave me like mom did, right? Like Jess did. That's the story. So I have to change my physiologic state so I can change my psychological state and break the story, and then I can go out.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

And break the cycle.

SPEAKER_04 35:58

Yes, and and then go out and spiritually do God's bidding, right? And and go and go and get those secure attachments that I'm desperately longing for. This is the root of the stuff, right? Like we're talking about the root of it. It's hard to get that in a traditional 12 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Real real friends and um a significant other would understand that. Like they shouldn't be feeding into the triggers of the behavior. They should be understanding and sympathetic to you getting out of those patterns. Yeah, because it's also not the authentic you. It's being done because um look, I'm guilty of it too, you know, I but I recognize it's being done because we look back in a time you shouldn't be mommy or daddy related, yeah, or something within very early on relationship that is not soothed, and it causes us to still act in a certain way as a grown adult that um really is in alignment with who we're trying to be.

God Shots And Guided Sobriety

SPEAKER_04 37:00

Yeah. I want to know a little more about how God comes to you in your life because you do all these incredible practices, right? And and I can tell so many tales of how God shows up, what it feels like, what it sounds like, the places and spaces I go when I know I need more of that.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

So tell tell me So I I had a friend, Bruce, or that uh when I was in New Jersey, the first 10 years again, Silvery. Sadly, he passed maybe five years ago in Miami. And um he would have uh, you know, he would call them GMCs. God managed coincidences. So he was giving credit because people around the all over the world to the meetings I've gone, they steal it. I'm like, go ahead, he could steal it. It came from my boy Bruce R. And um I've had just some of the most mind-blowing, I mean, top three, probably two years sober. I was living in New Jersey. Literally, the day I got my coin, I go to Montreal to see some corporate clients, beautiful summer night, and I land in Fideau Airport and walk out uh to my driver and just there's something in the air. I'm listening to my AA audio app, a speaker app on the plane. But the minute I get outside, there's something in the air that brought me to, oh God, it was such a great city to party in. The bars, the strip clubs. I started going back to those weirdest stinking thinking at 12:30 that same day. I got my Tiercoin. I'm happy, joyous, and free. And so I was like, I'm not doing anything. I'm gonna call my guys and I'll set up a lunch tomorrow, early dinner. I gotta go back to the hotel room because we hear cunning back baffling and powerful. And um, I don't want to deal with that. I might go to the the uh Bellman and the concierge says there was no Uber back then. I said, uh, can you guys give me like a list of car services? Because I looked at my AA app and I saw a meeting at one o'clock in downtown Montreal. So he gives me and they printed out a list of names and numbers, and there was like five or six, and I just picked it off the name, it was probably the third one down. And um, out of all the ones I could have picked, and I got a text back, uh, you're all set, your driver Nelson will pick you up at 12:30 tomorrow for your one o'clock meeting. And the guy just barely spoke English, spoke French. Um, who's trying to communicate to me? I'm getting agitated in the backseat because I'm like, I had to literally make sure I had to get to this meeting today and rearrange my schedule because I don't like that thought process. We pull up, it's got a tinted glass like this over here with the AA triangle on it, and he lets me out of the car. I'm like, one hour, one hour, I'll be back. I go to open the front door, it's locked. I go to open the side door, it's locked. I look inside like this, and it looks like there's nobody in there. I'm like, son of a bitch. I'm like, damn it. I just went all the way out of my way for this. I really needed this meeting. I got back in the car, I call up the Montreal uh service center, and they said, Oh, Darren from the United States, we're so sorry that meeting closed down two months ago, but we do have another one in the area around four o'clock. I was like, I can't do four o'clock, I just rescheduled my clients. I hang up the phone, the driver turns around and he's like, Are you A. And I said, uh, two years yesterday. He goes like this, and he pulls out a medallion with a 25-year sober coin. And he's like, Me too. 25 years.

SPEAKER_04 40:48

I'm like, I love it, and there you are judging him, you're annoyed at him, you don't want to talk to him.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

And we're we drove back and sort of like how you open this with your husband, even though accurate or not, he's like, You inspire me. Uh he goes, my uh he's like my wife says, I I am not going to enough meetings to see you come all the way from America to come to this. It was, I mean, it was just magical because he got he got out of the car, I got out of the car, we're hugging each other. It was just like complete strangers that were destined to meet. And had a meeting for 30 minutes on the way back from the meeting that I missed. And I was like, this is this is God, you can't make this stuff up. And then after my dad passed, I was in Australia with Priscilla, because she was from Sydney, Australia, and I'm on the phone with my sponsor, and I literally went to a 12-step meeting. Um, it's on Pitt Street in downtown Sydney. I'll never forget it in a medical building. And I'm leaving, and I'm supposed to meet Priscilla, but I'm distracted speaking to Steve. My ADD's kicking in, I got completely lost. And he goes, I'm so proud of you that, man, he goes, You're such an inspiration with the meetings you make all around the world. You've got to come back and tell us about it. Because I know your dad would be proud. And I turn the corner, I look up, and it's Martin Avenue. My father's name is Martin Prince. I just Oh my God. It was like, I guess, Steve, you're not gonna. Another one with him. I was out here uh doing my book promotion the first year, and I had to fly back to New Jersey to do some Barnes and Noble's uh book signing appearances and speaking events, and my sponsor, Steve, picks up the phone. I'm on the way to L L A X, and he hits me with Mr. Aiming High, how are you? I'm not even kidding you. Ten seconds later, there's a billboard on the site to LX that said aim high. I'm like, you just can't make this up. But the biggest one, and this one I'll try not to get emotional. So in September of 24, I went back to New Jersey to uh see my mom. And you know, she had a lot of ailments on a lot of prescription medications. You know, the isms came from her side of the family, but she would never you know tell you that. And um just very uncomfortable, 81 years old, just tons of physical pain. But I was excited to see her and my sister, and I had to get an Uber on the way back uh from dinner, and um this driver just for whatever reason starts opening up to me like about his life, like tell me his whole life story, and drugs are involved, and doing cocaine and drinking with his father, like this crazy shit. I'm like, I felt this force so strong, as if like God was like shaking me. This is why you picked this Uber. You got five to choose or four to choose from, and I told the guy who I was and And he literally pulls over the side of the road. He goes, Are you freaking kidding me, bro? He goes, Look, I need treatment, man. He goes, I was in an outpatient. I just can't afford it. He goes, I was like, I have my own foundation. Um I said, I can get you in there tomorrow. This was on a Thursday, or I can get you in first thing on a Monday. He goes, You ain't shitting me. I said, swear to God, I said, bro, look me up online. I'm like, my foundation, I got the perfect place, my boy Brandon Novak, Novak house in Delaware from Brandon from Jackass. He's a very dear friend of mine. They have a detox center right nearby. And um when we by the time he got back to my hotel, same thing, he jumps out of the car and it's like hugging me for dear life. And both of us have tears in our eyes. And he goes, Man, he goes, I I I I really want to believe you're you're legit. He goes, I'm gonna call you tomorrow. He called me first thing in the morning. And we spoke all throughout the weekend to get him to uh you know explain to his family and his kids and his parents who all basically disowned him at that point, and uh we got him in on that Monday, and uh the magic, and he's still doing great of those first 90 days on Thanksgiving, like to send me a picture that they let him out of the treatment center for the day to be with his family. And um he's like, Who would have ever thought on the balls of life, not wanting to live anymore, taking any job I can working for Uber? You were the one that showed up in my Uber. He goes, My family thanks you, my parents, my kids, he's like, brother, he goes, I love you, you know, for forever. Like, that's God because why out of every Uber I could have chosen was that one, why when I was in Montreal, was it that specific car service? You know, a name pops up, boom. I mean, I was at the NBA Allstragum on Sunday with my dear friend Patrick and Nino, and just out of nowhere, he's like, You hear from Jerry West family anymore? Because Jerry was a dear friend and client. I mean, I miss him so much. And uh there's what 30,000, 40,000 people there right around the corner. Guy comes wearing a Jerry West jersey 10 seconds later. He looks at me, he goes, I he's like, That's your your frequency, you know, that's that's how it happens, you know. Like um, most of my clients too, like we all talk about putting God first. May he rest in peace, Hulk Hogan, who was you know the most amazing big brother. We lost him on July 24th. And uh, I just had dinner with his son, Nick, last Thursday in Tampa. And um, I mean, he would call me. He would call me because he there were times where just going through life, you know, one of the most recognized human beings on earth, the greatest of all time, and the WWA. And he's like, brother, he goes, Man, he goes, it's it's people don't get it. It's so much more about this than it is the business. And uh with magic, Goggins, I mean, 99% of our calls him, like, it's not about business. Charlie Sheen, say my it's life, you know. Like um when Charlie tells him about his kids and he just celebrated eager sober like and the feeling he gets to be just present now. I mean, it it's unbelievable because we all understand as you get older, the stuff that we used to care about really doesn't mean anything. It's about being the highest best version of you, being caring and giving to other people, um, and being kind, you know, just to have that you see me around my clients, you see the love and the bond, you know, that we have. And I mean, just not a person that doesn't live in that sort of, you know, God shot, put God first sort of type of thing. I mean, it's hard for me to have anybody in my life that doesn't, you know, because again, it's a it's a vibration. So if I'm spending too much time or giving too much energy of somebody that's not living, that way I think it could pull me down.

SPEAKER_04 48:00

I love that, and and uh you know, I'm a person who was a raging atheist, and so I love getting into conversations all these years later about people's relationship with God, and you you you know, you said, and I I imagine it's deep and rich, and we could have an entire episode just on that.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

I gotta interrupt for one second. Do it sorry. So, another one of my magical ones, and I wrote about this in my book, but just in case people haven't read it that are watching. I lost my dad. I was eight and a half years sober, and Steve that runs my agency, calls me up one day, goes, Hey bro, I got an event I don't really want to go to. It's in Akron, Ohio on July 2nd, 2008. I said, What are you should just say? He goes, It's in Akron, Ohio, out of all places 2000, July, July, July 2nd. I go, bro, that's my sober birthday. He goes, Yeah, so I figured you don't want to go either, right? I'm like, bro, Dr. Bob's house. That's where this whole thing started on June 10th, 1935. Are you kidding me? I'm like, that's a god shot. Did I have a chance to be an Akron for a work event and a celebrity golf outing? And I was like, bro, I'm going. Mind you, one of the clients I was with is in recovery. That one of the celebrities that uh was in a very classic comedy golf movie many years ago. I don't want to mention his name, but he's a dear friend and his whole family, brothers and sisters, have decades in recovery. He couldn't go because he actually had to be at the event. So he's like, please tell Bob and Bill, you know, send my love and thank them. On the way there, I spoke to my uncle, who's a big reason that I got sober. He's now past. Um, spoke to my friend Dan Rogers, who's actually Kenny Rogers' nephew. Uh and uh, or he's Kenny Rogers' nephew. And uh we met by chance at a AA meeting in Newport Beach seven years ago. I walked in, he's in the corner, and we became spiritual brothers for life. And then I spoke to my sponsor, Steve. And every sort of call ended with, God, man, you're gonna feel your dad's energy. Like, what are the friggin' odds that on your nine-year sober birthday in Akron? I walk, I get there, the taxi drops me off, and I get to the top staff. For a lot of people that are in recovery that don't know this, there's actually 12 steps to get up to the top of Dr. Bob's house. And there's this older African-American man, and he goes like this, welcome home, son. And he's got a shirt on, the photos in my book, and the the shirt's dad. Oh, and it still gets me because I pulled him in and I was like, I was like, no, you don't understand. I'm like, I just lost my dad five months ago, and you're wearing that shirt, and you I could see the tears. I was like, I now I push him back. I'm like, I got one more for you. Today's my nine-year silver birthday. It was just wonderful. I mean, how does that happen? How does that happen for people that aren't believers? You know, all three claws ended with something my dad, and this guy's there is the greeter in Dr. Bob's house. Just magic.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

It's like when those I I I say it like this, like when those moments happen, like they're so profound, they're so euphoric, they're so out of body that it should make sense to people. I really don't give a shit about the money and the business side of my life anymore. I've been very blessed. I'd rather bless people. It's like I I could say it truly and honestly, if I was left with one client or I had to find something else to do, and all the money was gone. Because those are so powerful, they're so profound. It finally showed me who I was meant to be. The agency life was a byproduct of God's plan. And he was giving me the notoriety for some of the most iconic figures in the world. To them, when I surrendered and I was ready, I could use that platform to be a voice for him.

SPEAKER_04 52:02

So powerful. You know, you talked about a feeling in your body that there was something pulling you. You said that a few times, and and I I think when we're so dialed in, and if we talk about energy and frequency, when we're stuck in a state of fracture, when we're in shame and unworthiness, guilt, regret, we we don't have access to the physiologic feeling of the tools. Anything. Anything. We don't have our nervous system is spun around right, a stress state, and we can't access a feeling of something divine, whatever you want to call it. If you're a listener who who feels threatened or recoils at the word God, like I used to, let alone get into a mental state where your belief system is so open and curious that you're looking for the signs. Yep. Right? So there's a process that requires great amounts of bravery and courage in order to get tapped in, but at the same time, it's available always and to all of us. And that's the wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_01 53:27

Well, you don't ever want to go back. You want to chase it. I know now it all makes sense. And I'm gonna do anything I can to hold on to.

Final Reflection From Younger Darren

SPEAKER_04 53:34

That's right. And and you know, there's a famous quote you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect the dots looking back. And that's a lot of what we're saying. And I think I just wanna I want to wrap up with, you know, uh turning a a question maybe you've been asked before around. A lot of us say we we know now with all the healing what we would want a younger version of ourself to know. What would young, unhealed Darren say if we imagine he's he's inside of you because he is, and he's sitting with you during this podcast, because he is, what would he say right now? What does he now understand about who he is?

SPEAKER_01 54:25

He would say, I wish I would have spoken up sooner, but I'm so proud of how everything worked out. Because if I did, we wouldn't be who we are today.

SPEAKER_04 54:36

Amen. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_01 54:40

That's good, it's great. It felt like one of our everyday conversations.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

Exactly. That's the idea.