 Hi there, this is James Swannick and you're listening to the Alcohol Free Lifestyle podcast where you learn how to take back control over alcohol and live a life of health, wealth, love and happiness. All right, hello again, James Swannick here. And today we are talking to a retired CEO and a best-selling author who has been alcohol free since Memorial Day weekend in 2016. And he has had a very interesting experience with alcohol over the years and he's become a new friend of mine. And I wanted to have him here on the show to talk about his experience. Tarris McMahon, great to have you here, sir. Good to be here, James. And you're sitting very high up in a high-rise north of Miami at the moment, even though you're from the Boston area, I understand. Yeah, I retired, sold my business and recreated myself as an author in the end of 2016. I moved out of the cold. I spent 47 years in New England and the seasons were all good, but it was time to make a change. So I moved down here. I love it. They're right in the beach in the Hollywood Beach, Florida. And you're the author of a book that's named Superhero Self. Tell us about that. Yeah, that's a book I wrote after a journey that I had, you know, was an idea that I wanted to share. It's a little against the grain, so to speak, as it comes to addiction and modalities to stop drinking. I had a unique experience in that, you know, bringing up to speed a little bit. I grew up around alcohol. My father was a big drinker. He also was a great baseball player. My father played baseball out of high school. He was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball team in the States. In fact, he was drafted by all 16 teams and ended up playing at a very young age. He never drank in his life when he went away to play baseball. He made the wrong connections. When he was there, it came back. As I was told by my grandmother and my mother is, you know, he came back a different guy connected with the wrong people and he used alcohol every day. He ended up being in the alcohol business. He sold beer, but he taught us all how to play baseball. And my brother, Eddie, ended up playing with the Minnesota Twins. My brother, Sean, played with the Blue Jays. My brother, Tim and I both went to school on scholarships. So he did teach us how to do some things, but, you know, alcohol is a big part of our lives. I used alcohol pretty regularly, most notably and memorably in college. You know, almost the first day in school at a scholarship was real nervous instead of, you know, dealing with it. I went out and drank. I was having like these panic attacks and alcohol was a good algorithm and then processed to relieve them. And that became a daily habit for, you know, almost 30 years. And I kind of, kind of Peter out of college, because you can't really drink and play high level sports and I ended up knocking on doors, selling life insurance, my first job. I didn't know anybody, didn't know anything, didn't have anything. And I went door to door, low Massachusetts, selling life insurance, which is another high stress job. Alcohol was again part of my life and I, you know, I figured it out, but I also drank every single day and I blew up financially. I figured out some ways to make money, but I also blew up physically, I was 350 pounds. Wow. What are you now? I'm about 218. Wow. Good on you. You look fighting fit. How old are you Terrence? I'm 52. 52. So you're 218 pounds and you're heaviest, you were 350 pounds. 354. You know, I had everything. I built a company that had 600 financial advisors and brokers that worked for me. We had 60,000 clients, a billion dollars in assets we managed, we had a big company, but I had those panic attacks and my algorithm for fighting those was alcohol and then later pills. So in Memorial Day Weekend 2016, I thought I was having a heart attack. I was this big heavy guy and I went into the emergency room and it brought me to a room that was curtain off in the middle of the room because it was so many drug overdoses in New Hampshire. I was in the U.S. that was ground zero for opioids. So I'm in the middle of this room and I hear all these people withdrawing and this horrible noises and the doctors are coming in one at a time. By the fifth one I knew I was in trouble and the guy walked up to me and says, Mr. McMaster, it's not your heart, you're in liver failure. Your liver and your pancreas are shutting down and you are most likely going to die this weekend if we don't go to some extreme measures. So right then on the spot, he looked at me and he said, no amount of alcohol is ever safe for you ever again. And that was a changed moment for me. As he left, I realized a few things. Number one, I realized that I had to go on a liver transplant list to survive. So I went from a CEO with a seven figure income to being labeled alcoholic. And when you're labeled alcoholic, you're put on the end of the transplant list. So I needed someone to die for me to live. And so I had to go through that journey to find a suitable donor and negotiate transplant rules in the states. And the next thing the guy told me is I had my life expectancy was most likely about six months. So the average wait time for a transplant was a year. So I didn't have enough time. I had to get busy. So I spent the first 90 days trying to get into a transplant center, which is not easy to do. And then I finally got into one and I was in Harvard in Boston. And they said I had about 90 days left to live. And about 60 days in, they asked me to leave the program. They accused me of drinking. They accused me of drinking while I was on the transplant list. And I hadn't been drinking. And I said, I wasn't drinking. I've been here playing full out. I want to win. I want to live. But they left. They made me leave the program. And I had to do something because I was going to die with that. I was unlikely to get a transplant with that on my record. So I actually went to a true certification company in Jacksonville, Florida. And I took a lie detector test and they passed. They confirmed I was there was no deception detected because I hadn't been drinking. I took those results to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, which is a transplant center. And they said, fantastic, we'll transplant you, but you've got to go to rehab. I got to spend, you know, the bad news was I had to spend most of the rest of my life in rehab, you know, 30 day rehab program, which by the way, the textbook definition of rehab is to restore someone back to their original condition. But I know what that word means. They're like, well, that's kind of what got me into this trouble. But OK, I got to get a certificate and I go through the process. And that's where I kind of came up with my idea for my book, because in rehab, they tell you, number one, that you're an addict, number two, you have a disease, and number three, that there's no known cure. And I'm like, that's not very, very fun to think about. And their algorithm for, you know, for rehabilitating you, restoring you is to go to meetings every day for the rest of your life and identify as an addict. And I just didn't want to do that. If I got a chance to live, which was unlikely because it was getting late and I was getting very jaundice, my body was filling up with fluid. I wanted to recreate myself, which means to bring something new into existence that never existed before. But that word means like I wanted to be new and come back. And so I get out of rehab and I go to Mayo Clinic with my certificate and they tell me I'm inoperable, so I'm most likely going to die. I'm too safe to be operated on. And then, you know, at that point, I'm in Jacksonville and, you know, they say maybe a month, and I bring my kids down to say goodbye. They come on the hardest days of my life. You know, I knew very soon that one day they would wake up and I would not. And there'd be no really good reason for that. And it was hard to do. And I say goodbye. It was just me and my mother waiting for a miracle because I was inoperable and they were playing with my sodium to try to get it high enough before I'd survive surgery. And the weekend before I was, you know, doing a little bit better. And they said maybe this weekend and then a prisoner had died unexpectedly in Birmingham, Alabama. And he was an IV drug user and he was a prisoner, which meant he was high risk. And you're high risk, you know, a high risk organ. A lot of the doctors don't want to use, you know, use the organ. It's higher risk. They pass on it. And it got all the way down from Birmingham, Alabama to Jacksonville. My understanding was several dozen people passed on that organ. If one person says yes, they die and they called me one night and he said, here you go. You know, we have a liver. It's high risk. He's a prisoner and I took it. And, you know, the guy saved my life. And, you know, they put it on a helicopter to the airport and a jet to Jacksonville to a helicopter, the Mayo Clinic pad. You know, they brought it up to the emergency room and put it in me. And I live. That was the. That was this. That was it. And, you know, ever since then, you know, because I sold my business on January 17th or December, December 31st, I sold my business. So I didn't have my business, who I thought I was going to be gone. And I was in Jacksonville. So I wanted to just kind of like recreate myself and focus on that. And the first thing I did was I got busy with losing weight. I just started doing small, small things, a little bit at a time to lose weight. And as you know, if you stop drinking, right? And you work on yourself, getting healthy is a matter of momentum. And that, you know, that's what that's what that's where it all started. And, you know, that's when I came up with the idea like. Like if I wanted to recreate myself, I kind of built a three step process to do that. And the first step was, you know, it was just simply deciding not to do certain things anymore, because that's what decisions means. You know, decisions. The word decision, the etymology of it, of course, is the means away from like a detour or divorce, decision means to cut. So it's not about adding to your life. It's about cutting away. So I cut, you know, I cut lots of things. Covey says, if you want to change the fruit, you got to change the roots. So I chopped away. First thing I chopped away was my my persona, you know, my identity. That's what the the Greeks say your your your mask. It's a Greek word for mask. It's the shell of who you think you are. So I killed that person. And, you know, then the places like I moved, I moved to Jacksonville. I sold my company. I was no longer the CEO. I was this guy on a journey and there was people that had to leave behind. That was the first thing that it was embedded in decisions. But the biggest decision was I decided to be some, but I decided not to be that person anymore than the party guy that made a lot of money. I was like, I was like the intersection of Tommy Boyd and the Wolf of Wall Street or the big fat, crazy party guy, you know, with lots of money and a lot of fun to be around. But it wasn't it wasn't anything to be proud of. I give myself that reputation games, you know, you created that persona for yourself, right? Like you created that persona, the party guy with lots of money. And I can imagine that you probably got a lot of reinforcement, positive reinforcement from people that that was a cool persona to have like people. Oh, everyone likes likes Terence. He's the party guys, lots of money. He's probably like helpful and having a good time. You probably often got a smile on your face. So you've probably got a lot, you know, positive reinforcement all the time that that persona is a worthy persona. Right. Oh, yeah. And it's a lot of there's a lot of that, you know, that reinforcement and you're always happy because people are giving you attention, but it's not the right attention. And when you kill that person, you know, you killed your old self and you recreate your superhero self. You need to install a new narrative. So I had to give myself a new reputation to live up to, which I got out of Carnegie's how to win friends and influence people. It's the chapter on page 240. It says give a dog a good name. Like the dog's a good dog. Like they'll live up to being a good dog. You'll be telling them. So I didn't want to be an addict, you know, with a disease that had no cure. So I wanted to be a superhero that was on a journey that had a purpose that made that made a difference. And the first thing I had to do to get, get it right was install that narrative in my own mind of who I was. I was a fit person. I was a bestselling author. I spoke all over the world. I helped people recreate and transform themselves. I shared this idea that was the narrative I installed. And that's ultimately the direction at least directly on the path of where I'm where I'm going now. Yeah, I was a big, I was the biggest part of it. Doesn't sound sexy, but that was the biggest part to me. Like when I look in the mirror, I didn't see Tommy boy in the Wolf of Wall Street anymore. I saw someone that did a good job and gave people hope, you know, hope to do this. And it was very rewarding to me for some people connected to the idea because, you know, the addiction industry is a lot like the fat loss industry, the weight loss. Like it's a 97% failure business is high, not low. I mean, most people fail going to traditional addiction facilities and for all steps, they're just statistically a flawed process. So I offer instead of rehabilitating yourself and putting yourself as an addict and, and, you know, claiming that there's no cure, which was invented. That's there's no data that says that there's a lot. You know, I don't identify as an alcoholic. I don't think about alcohol and I ever do anymore. I just don't drink. And now you recreate yourself. It's like, it's like someone's trying to say, what is it like? Is that it's kind of like acupuncture is for like someone's got a bad back. Like all the other shit didn't work. The chiropractors and the stretching and the heat pads said, try this. Like you got almost no downside to saying, I am better. I'm good. I can get this done. I can be better. I'm, you know, I have incredible potential. And that was the second step is installing that narrative. The last step was just a simple miracle of lining up your dominoes that I got from a book I read from Gary Keller. The one thing is a little domino can knock over a bigger domino, a two inch little baby domino has what's called action potential. So when you store a domino down, it stores energy and that energy is potential. And when you use your little finger, put just a little bit of energy behind it, it starts to move that action potential forward to create the domino effect, which as we all seen can go on forever. That two inch domino can knock over millions and millions of two inch dominoes. But what I saw in the book and I talked to about people is the two inch domino has greater action potential than two inches. It actually can knock over something 50% bigger. So if you lined up a three inch domino, ahead of a two inch domino, it'll knock it over. If you line up a four and a half inch domino behind the three inch domino, it'll knock it over. Those progressions never stop and they increase. That's the way to recreate yourself is to identify the greatest beneficial step forward each day. The one thing I do agree with Alcoholics Anonymous is each day at a time, but not the same way as yesterday. Always a little better, you know, harnessing potential and getting better, using books, using relationships, using physical, your physical body, using mentors like yourself and others that lead, you know. Those are the algorithms that excite me. So it's just three simple steps, you know. Yeah, amazing. It's a massive turnaround that you've had at the comeback. I was thinking as you were saying this, I'm like, what a comeback, it's amazing. It was a little wild about it was, we can have that after my transplant. Like I will go up and Donald Trump was president. You know, I was like, how the hell did that happen? That was sick in November of 2016. I wake up, he's president and the Patriots are in a Super Bowl. I'm from Boston. So, you know, I'm sick, but you know, I'm kind of get coming out of it and the Patriots are losing this game. And I'm looking at Brady. I was like, God, you suck tonight, Tom. And then that miracle comeback happens. Remember he came down from three touchdowns with like eight minutes left. It made me feel good. I was like, wow, that's what I want to do. I want to stun everybody. And it kind of, you know, once you have a little momentum and you're using it every day, you're getting feedback in a good way too. And you're becoming, you're having a reputation, not only to yourself, but to others that you are going to be different. You're going to transform. You're not going to be the person that relapses. You're not going to be the person, you're going to be the person people come to and say, how do I do this? You help me. You need some help. And I'm happy to help people. Why do you think it takes a near-death experience, like in your situation here, in order to make the decision to cut away and then to build the superhero persona? Why can't someone listening or watching us right now who isn't waiting on a liver transplant, who isn't rock bottom, who isn't like at their wit's end, but maybe they're just a societally acceptable drinker and they're meandering along in the drift. They know that alcohol is holding them back and it's compromising their sleep and their relationships and their business and their health and their life, but they're not awaiting a liver transplant. Why can't we just make that decision and build the new persona in that situation? Yeah, if I've talked to a lot of the, actually bought into addiction center after my journey, I thought that was going to be my path and the addiction industry didn't want my ideas and that's a long story for me to be another day. But I had a debate because one of the doctors was a very heavy doctor with a suboxone. The argument I had was he said, well, our patients don't die with addiction because a lot of the addiction was drugs and heroin and I said, well, your patients also don't know they're alive, like they're permanent drug users. You know, that's maybe just as bad as the other way. And he said, well, you had a near-death experience. You were scared straight. I said, that may very well be. I don't entirely know, but I remember the day that I had an opportunity to cut. That's why decisions is such a big point. I had to make that decision on that spot in that emergency room that day. Like I said, he's right. I'll never drink again, like ever. I'm not going to go into a program. I cut a cold turkey. I'm not going to go into a program. I'm not going to go to a rehab center. I'm just never going to drink again. And the following Monday or Tuesday I got to work. I never drank again. I drank every single day for 30 years. Never drank once, never drank since. I've eliminated it from my narrative. It's gone. And, you know, some people say that's impossible. I say, well, I'm living proof because I'm fully ready to take another lie detector test. I'm going to go back to that facility because I know where it is. I want them to ask me because I go to bars all the time. You know, my girlfriend sells alcohol, sells a bourbon. I could care less. I go to restaurants and bars. She is alcohol. I just enjoy her. And I enjoy being there and breathing, being attentive. I'm always the most alert person in the room. I just enjoy that persona. I like that new reputation I have. And so, you know, I don't know for others, do you have to hit rock bottom to change? And I don't think that's the case at all. I think you can install simple decisions. You know, if you start with just people that just aren't the right people to be in your life, there's always the ones that are sabotaged in any momentum. And there's certain places that aren't the places you should be, right? And there's certain conversations you have with yourself that don't need to happen. If you can start being alert and aware, and your narrative is you want to recreate yourself, there's five things you can do. There's your physical body, your mental health, your relationships, your abilities in learning. You wouldn't believe what I've learned since. I mean, more than I learned by a mile in my first 47 years and last three, and then earning. I put the pieces back together. My financial potential is 100x what it used to be. And I have a vision for what that life looks like, a lifestyle-friendly business where I can enjoy myself healthy, happy, and successful in that order. You mentioned before that the rehab business or addiction center business and AA has a 97% in many cases failure rate, which is very interesting. It's just as a little side note for that. When I have run Facebook ads promoting my quit alcohol programs, the people who send me hate messages, the people who are like the most horrendous, who send the most horrific comments, like online haters, 90% of them identify as someone who's going to AA, which I find absolutely, well, I shouldn't say the word hilarious, but I just think it's fascinating that at AA, one of the things in the big book is, and we have stopped fighting anything or anyone. Yeah, right. And yet when I put up a program or I just say, hey, I can help you quit drinking, they say you're a disgrace because you're charging people to help them quit drinking. You go to AA, it's free, you're a snake oil salesman. I can't believe that you are doing it, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, that's a little side note. And I don't want this to be a complete AA bashing thing, but the statistics are very real that AA actually probably only has about a three, depending on what statistics you read, three to 7% success rate, which means it has a 97 or 93 to 97% failure rate. Right. And not many people are aware of that. And the same with rehab clinics. What's your understanding of that, or what are your thoughts with that? Well, I mean after, I bought a rehab center, right? It was, I bought a rehab center to help people to share my idea, my modality of recreation and alternative algorithm. Algorithm is just a recipe to get a result, like a grilled cheese sandwich. There's two pieces of bread, a piece of cheese and some butter and heat it twice and you get a sandwich. You know, AA goes through the 12 steps and you won't drink anymore. Sounds great. I'd sign up for it. It doesn't work, ever. You're actually statistically more likely to get sober doing nothing. Like doing nothing going to no program than you are any other program right now because about 50% of people in a government study that we're problem drinkers that don't drink anymore, self-identified is just stopping. No program. Maybe by the encouragement of a spouse, by a church and then some of them just stopped. Some of them just connected with something else. And I always said that, I said, you know, when people get really pissed off when you say that that's it, AA works for very few people. It doesn't work for almost everybody. And it's not a predictable, when someone called me and said, I want, you know, it was our addiction center that I bought was a 12 steps program. And I had a very close friend of mine that I'd like to send my husband to your addiction center. He's in serious trouble. And I said, not here. I wouldn't send him here. And that's when I knew I had to get out of the business. I just had to get out. So the, you know, the, it's just like, okay, that doesn't work. Then I looked at Suboxone. That doesn't work. I looked at, I traveled to 12 countries, you know, in Europe, you know, they treated it a lot differently. They, they give them like in the Iceland, they're Sweden, I think it is not Iceland. I guess Iceland, they had a really bad situation. They didn't put them in prison. They gave them, they got them sober. They, they gave them books and they loaned them money to start companies and get back to work. They had, they had the money they used to spend incarcerating them and they educated them and helped them get jobs. They gave them dignity. You know, the reason I never went to alcoholics anonymous and believe me the way I drank, if you don't think someone's asked me to go to AA, it's like, I would never consider going to a place where I had to identify that, that way every day. And then not only that, I'd be in job interviews, asking people to come work for me. And they would tell me that they're an addict. They've been sober 12 years and 13 days and two hours. I was like, well, you, I hope you don't think that that added value to your resume during this interview because I was the employer. I said, it doesn't. It's not helpful. And I got the hate mail too. And I said, I honored that you've gotten sober the way you've gotten sober. You're the exception. It's not a scalable model. You do marketing, right? It's not scalable. Like you and I could open up, you know, addiction centers all over the country and I'm good enough salesman to get people to go there. But I don't believe in the modality and I know the algorithm doesn't work. So if that doesn't work, I found one place that had a crazy, crazy success rate. All right. And I told you about this on the phone and it kind of freaked you out a little bit, I think. Like the, and I learned about it in LA and I'm at a meeting and someone tells me about this program called Narcanon. 80% supposed of curate from addiction. And it was Narcanon's with the church of Scientology. So they have a program where, and they invited me to their program and I lay at a place called Celebrity Center. I walked in and he said, take a look at this program. And it was nothing more than coming to a quiet place where it's safe around supportive people, which is great about AA. Getting healthy, eating healthy, vitamins, water, exercising and books. That's the program. And people connect and they feel good about themselves. They create momentum. They get new knowledge. They have processes to activate it. Whether or not you agree with the church of Scientology and how they do what they do, their process, their statistical express rate is higher than most anybody. But their algorithm is very fundamental. Like that would logically be what you would do if I didn't know anything about it. Like I just got to get away. I got to cool off with some people that are cool. I got to put good stuff in my body and my brain. I'll come back. That's an algorithm that would excite me. That's why, I mean, I found you. I heard your ad. I found you. Remember, I don't know if you know that. I was like, that guy I would agree with. Like not a lot, they hear that because you got the balls to say it. Not because I know that you're gonna get a beating when you say some of that stuff. You're gonna get some hate now because they have that confirmation bias. They have a very powerful belief that they have this condition that is an excuse for what they did. And they're in a part of a community that they named recovery, the recovery movement. And that's a whole nother problem I had with that process is like recovery is a temporary thing. It's not a permanent place to post up. I get a liver transplant. I'm in ICU recovering for a day or two. Then I'm out. Then I re-entered the world and I came back. I'm like, recovery is permanent relief. The definition of recovery, if they look at the word, it's relief from the symptoms of something. That's what it is. It's like a cured. But they've used it as the movement. And that was pretty popular in Hollywood and it's a good thing in many ways. It's helped a lot of people. The community is a great thing. AA puts a, you know, un-flexible canvas over that community. They don't let them get new ideas. I wasn't for me. I'm cool with it. I wasn't for me. I get a lot of people who come to me and wanting to enroll in one of my programs. And sometimes they'll use the word sober. Like they'll say, oh, I've been sober before or I'm two weeks sober at the moment. And I stop them and I say, listen, just my own personal thing. I don't identify with the word sober. The phrase I use is alcohol-free and living the alcohol-free lifestyle. Sober implies that you were, that you are- You're going back here. What's that? You're gonna go back to it, right? Yeah, that's right. For the time being, I'm not in the state of a dick, you know, alcohol. Yeah. That's interesting. That's a word that's interesting. Yeah, and also that it also, for me, the word sober conjures up this idea that you're depriving yourself of something. That ordinarily you might perceive to be something worthy of pursuit, that being this attractively packaged poison that we call alcohol. So sober to me implies, oh, okay. Under normal circumstances, I would choose to consume this attractively packaged poison. But for now, I'm sober. Whereas I look at it a completely different way and I'm like, no, there is no sober. There is no whatever. You just choose to be alcohol-free. You easily only drink water. You easily only drink soda, water, ice and a piece of lime. You live your life through that lens. There's nothing to deprive yourself of. And a lot of people who come in, like in the beginning of my 90 day program, they mistakenly think, oh, I've just got to get to 90 days. And then I'll be able to maybe celebrate with the occasional drink. And I always say to them, it's like, if this is not 90 days and you celebrate with a drink, this is a lifestyle. This is an ongoing way of seeing the world. Because when you feel like you're in a prison and you're depriving yourself of something fun and pleasurable, what do prisoners want to do? They want to break free, right? Prisoners want to break out of prison. They want to get free. And then so people are looking at alcohol as that's the freedom. Being able to enjoy a glass of wine or have a beer with friends or whatever. I'm like, no, the freedom is just being alcohol-free. And just choosing to live your life with good water and exercise and health and reading books, all the things that you just described and what it sounds like the church of Scientology does in their program in terms of reading, read books, drink water, eat good food, surround yourself with good people, healthy and positive mindset. It was, you know, you walk into the room and there's 25 people reading a book. You know, this teacher's walking around there. I'm just like, well, this is an interesting curriculum. It's like a super human potential self-help place, you know? And I was like, this is really good. And I curated things through my journey. There are things I left behind. I didn't want to include in my life and my identity. And there's things I grabbed. Books was a big part of it. You know, drinking a lot of water, eating food that was almost always alive recently and moving a lot. What does that remind me of? Okay, who used to move a lot? Like 16 miles a day, eat food and forge food that was alive recently and be around a few supportive people. That's how we've evolved as human beings. That's a healthy evolutionary process. And I said, well, what if that's secured to addiction? Nobody gets rich on it, you know what I mean? There's no medication. There's no, you know, there's no mind-altering drugs. There's no labeling and stigmas. It's like, oh, I've just moved more. I eat really good and I'm with people that care about me and I care about them. That's my algorithm for getting healthy men. It's so simple and yet we have to overcomplicate it somehow. The human mind is like not satisfied with that. It's like they have to buy complex programs or drugs or go to a doctor and get a prescription. Like really, the cure for almost anything is eat well, drink lots of water, exercise, be around lots of good people and have a positive mindset. And that's why people find each other when they really are looking for it. When you're on that, when your antennas are up and you're aware and you're commanding yourself to be a superhero, like I am as a subconscious command to be that person. So not only am I working on that identity consciously, but my brain is deploying the reinforcements, the subconscious mind. And it's trying to activate things that are gonna lean me towards healthy behaviors that'll extend my life as a species, as part of the species. Like now, that comes down to every decision you make from the programming. Like if you say I'm an addict, I have a disease, there's no cure. Like the brain's gonna subconsciously direct you to the meeting you gotta go to every day and talk the way you've been programmed to talk and the words, I read that, I've been there. Like I read a book called 1984 where they start to like let you see some things but not other things. They close off, you know, words and stuff like that. Like you would never be able to get healthy any other way, but this way. Because it ruins their internal belief. And that organization is very protective of that. And I'm not involved in it. So it's not, I don't have a dog in the fight. Like when people say you, you're wrong. This is not for me, it worked for me. You can leave it or take it. You know, it's like a bite of an apple. You can take a bite of it, you can always spit it out but it doesn't work for you. You want to recreate yourself. And you want to make a bold statement like you're not an addict. In fact, you're gonna be, you're gonna run a marathon and date a Hollywood celebrity, go for it. You know, because if you don't make it, at least you're living more healthy. You're trying to be that way. You're not gonna have any downside. There's a lot of downside to calling yourself an addict. There's a lot of downside to, you know, only being around people within that mindset. It's a huge downside to that. There's no healthy, healthy ideas. I don't know, I just want, I want a diversity in my interactions with people. I love that, you know. I love that you're in Australia and you and I are connecting here. I mean, Miami, the sun's going down. Like it's cool. Yeah. Do you think it's fair to say, like you said that you built this superhero persona right after you had the liver transplant? Is it true to say that you actually were already living a superhero persona when you were the party guy and you were drinking and you were doing all that kind of stuff? It was just an unhealthy superhero. It was just, it was a persona and you were taking the right actions to live into that persona. It just wasn't a healthy one. And so in fact, in actual fact, you did exactly the same thing as what you were always doing. It's just you changed the persona. Is that accurate? Well, I haven't heard that yet. You're the first person that kind of put that idea in my head. I was getting into some light while you were telling me. That's very interesting that maybe I'm, I have that subconscious, you know, I mean, maybe reputation is that important to me. Because I always, when someone says what's the one thing I can do to be better, you know, and stop drinking or using drugs is like, what do you tell yourself you are? Like, tell yourself you're something that you dream of being. Maybe that's what happened. Maybe that's subconsciously, I had the right grounded ideas and I just installed a new hardware program. Covey has that funeral exercise at the end of the book, Seven Habits, when you're going to a funeral and you walk up to the casket and everybody's very sad. Obviously, this was an amazing person and you look down after you wait in line and it's you, it's your funeral, right? And you find out there's these speakers that are gonna talk about this amazing person that's in the casket. It's your funeral three years out, I think the exercise go. It's your spouse, it's your kids, it's your employer, it's your best friend and it's your, you know, someone at your charity and then this person lived like this. This person loved like this. This person mattered to the world like this. Work backwards from that. I always say work backwards from amazing if that's your big domino. The little domino is where you are today. You gotta line them up so you can become that person. That's directionally on course to where you wanna go. Joe Polish speaks about that. He actually just sent me a book, Life Gives to the Giver. And on page 39, the chapter is you are a million dollar racehorse. And he says in this that he interviewed someone years ago who wrote a book called Working Solo and during the interview the author spoke about the million dollar racehorse idea and that is think of yourself as a million dollar racehorse. If you owned a million dollar racehorse how would you treat it? You wouldn't shove fast food down its throat. You wouldn't cause it to have sleep deprivation. You would make sure it gets the best trainers, the best tracks and the best everything. You would take care of that million dollar racehorse because it needs to win races to make your money. So you are that million dollar racehorse. If you treat yourself any other way you are likely messing yourself up. Part of this is about how you physically take care of yourself. It also involves who you hang out with. Cut all ties with dishonest, lazy people. Look at the environment in which you work. Look at the clients you have, et cetera, et cetera. So... Man, that's a good... I've never heard that. I foul. I believe he's in recovery if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, he's someone who drank a lot and now is not drinking. Yeah. And that's interesting because it isn't. If that's who you say, I'm a racehorse. Like I'm a million dollar racehorse. How does the million dollar racehorse get treated? Like they get treated like gold, they treat themselves. Alcohol is the enemy of success. I don't know one person. I know CEOs all over the world now. I know a lot of them. I don't know one that drank like I did that sustained success and happiness. Not one. It just doesn't ever happen. Never coexist with the greats. And if you wanna work backwards from amazing, modeling is part of that amazing. You wanna model life as close to somebody. When you see that person, very rarely, they're gonna be a big party or a big drinker, drug user. They're gonna have great friends. They're gonna give, they're gonna be in shape typically. Those are, that's a more dignified path. And then lastly, you gotta understand when I was saved by that liver, someone died. And then the fact that I got that guy's liver, someone else died waiting because there's not enough livers in the States. Like people died waiting. So it could have just as easily gone to someone else when I could be dead. So my, you know, my belief is that it needs to be honored and it needs to be purposeful. It needs to be revered and treated well. So that particular idea in my head, every time I take that little pill every day that prevents my liver from rejecting, I remember the man that died for me to get it and the guy who probably died or the woman that died waiting. I didn't get one. No place for alcohol in that relationship but that superior, it's just be dishonorable. Powerful stuff. Yeah. Terrence, thank you so much for sharing your words of expertise and your guidance. I would just like to ask you just to maybe in conc, to just wrap this up. We've talked about cutting away. We've talked about building a superhero persona. We've talked about, you know, statistically speaking, what doesn't work. Excuse me. To the listener or the viewer right now who's who may be feeling challenged with their drinking or I might feel challenged with drugs. I might feel challenged with relationships. It could be anything. It could be like a shopping addiction or spending addiction or porn or anything. Do you wanna just sum up for us maybe the crutch of your book and the steps again as to how to get out of that misery and into a more powerful way of living? Yeah, it all comes down through, you know, when I was building a program that I was, all of my addiction center, I haven't built. It's in my book. It's called Our Factor Four. And Our Factor Four is four hours and the first hour is recovering and recovering is healing. You need to let your body and brain and you need your relationships to heal because you've been disruptive. So you got to step away and heal and that's disconnecting. And then the second one is reconnecting, okay? And reconnecting is falling in love with something else again. Connecting to something is the opposite of addiction as Johann Harry said in his famous TED talk is not sobriety, it's not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. The loss of connection causes addiction. So you need to install new connections while you're healing because there's a big void, as you know, when someone stops drinking. A lot of their person is gone. A lot of the people are gone. A lot of the time is gone. And water takes over. Like water will seep into there. You got to fill that instantly. You can't just put nothing in there because something useless will go in there. You got to have a very purposeful reconnection process where a lot of people connect with the AA. They go there because they have to. And it's something to do with the time that they used to spend drinking. So reconnecting to something. I connected with books, yoga, riding my bike, hanging out with people, you know, started a podcast. So I got real busy. And, you know, the next part is recreating your entry. You're, you know, that person you're gonna be, which is hope, you know, be hopeful of who you're gonna become. You're gonna recreate that person in your mind. In your mind's eye, have a picture that you look like. And then finally reentering, which is action. You're gonna come in with a plan because one thing I hated about addiction is once you went to an addiction center, which was basically a glorified 12 steps program that you paid 40 grand a month, you know, like driving a brand new car off a cliff because, you know, it doesn't work. And you leave with nothing. There's no plan in place, no solid action plan. So what my book does is it's a 12 week process to recreate yourself, you know, starting with, you know, what do you say no to? Evaluate in your life, bringing your dream team together, you know, finding your purpose. Like these are, there's 12 exercises in there that you do over the course of 12 weeks for the R Factor Four. I'm writing a new book. It's not, you know, I'm writing two books right now. It's gonna be called Recreating One Self, Brain Body and Business. All right, so that you can be healthy, happy, and successful, like health is so important. Mental health, physical health, relationship health. If you have the right business plan, you can become that person that has that beautiful life. Money has very little bit to do with it. It funds it at some level, but it's not only money. You can check out Terrence's book. It's called Superhero Self, How to Recover from Anything and Recreate Yourself, a 12-week plan for personal transformation. Thanks, James. I mean, I have my book on sale at Amazon. It's called Superhero Self, How to Recover from Anything and Recreate Yourself, a 12-week plan for personal transformation. It's on Amazon, but it's also downloadable free on my website, terrencemcman.com, T-E-R-R-A-N-C-E-M-C-M-A-H-O-N.com. And you can follow me on Instagram at Terrence.mcman. And if you have questions, send me a message. Happy to interact and share your ideas. This is a free idea for the world. I'm very little interested in making a living doing this, but I think it's something that people should hear about. Thank you so much for listening. I have some free stuff for you. If you go to JamesSwanick.com forward slash guide, I will send you my formula for reducing or quitting alcohol. If you'd like to watch the video versions of these episodes, then you can watch them at my YouTube channel, which is at JamesSwanick. If you'd like to send me a direct message on Instagram, you can do so at JamesSwanick. If you would like to try a three-day challenge, a free three-day challenge, you can go to JamesSwanick.com forward slash three-day challenge. If you would like to try the 30-day no alcohol challenge, you can go to 30-day no alcohol challenge. If you would like to schedule a 15-minute exploratory call with one of my coaches to see how we may be able to help you in your alcohol-free journey, you can go to JamesSwanick.com forward slash schedule. And my request is, if indeed you enjoyed this episode or you have enjoyed the podcast, would you please go ahead and rate the show in iTunes and would you please write a review? A review might just be a sentence saying, great, listen, hey, this was fantastic. Oh, I really enjoyed this. Whenever you give a rating, whenever you write a review, it surges our podcast up in the rankings, enabling more people to see it and hear it and potentially inspiring someone out there to reduce or quit alcohol and potentially transform their life. So yes, while it does help me to get ratings and to get reviews, you will actually be directly contributing to helping someone's life by having them discover this podcast. So if you are open to inspiring others and to helping me in the process, would you please go ahead and give this episode a ranking and would you please write a review? Thank you so much for listening and I will catch you on the next one.