This week, we sit down with Carlos Boettcher, a seasoned war journalist whose life story reads like a history of modern conflict. Born during apartheid in South Africa and raised in a household of journalists, Carlos experienced instability and global upheaval from a young age. He recounts his early exposure to chaos, from the Rammstein air show disaster to watching his father report from war zones on television. Inspired by his father and driven by a search for purpose after 9/11, Carlos left college to cover the war in Iraq, launching a career that would take him to multiple frontlines, including the fall of ISIS, Ebola outbreaks, and the COVID crisis.
Carlos opens up about the emotional toll of frontline reporting, describing how the adrenaline of war masked deeper mental health struggles. As he reflects on his post-war years, Carlos discusses how the culture of journalism, particularly in high-stress newsrooms, normalized drinking and gallows humor as coping mechanisms.
He shares how these behaviors escalated into addiction, leading him down a path of self-destruction. While his external persona was that of a successful and jovial journalist, Carlos admits that internally, he was struggling deeply. He eventually recognized his PTSD and alcoholism, and after multiple rehab stints, began a difficult but transformative recovery journey. Carlos credits his support system, especially his mother and close friends (including Elara!), with helping him survive and begin healing.
Through meditation, sleep, and self-awareness, Carlos developed a philosophy he calls “the elegant path”—a more intentional, holistic approach to life. He talks about breaking cycles of consumption, confronting emotional pain, and using his physical fitness as a meditative practice. Today, Carlos is in a much healthier place, committed to maintaining balance and supporting others who may be navigating their own struggles.
We close with powerful reflections on personal responsibility, healing, and the enduring impact of support systems. Carlos reminds us that while rock bottom looks different for everyone, the turning point always comes when we choose to stop digging and start changing.
Roald Dahl's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonderful_Story_of_Henry_Sugar_and_Six_More
Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation: https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/
Lust for Life, by Lana Del Rey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP4eqhWc7sI
SIW Carlos
Speakers: Diana Weil, Elara Hadjipateras, Jon Gay, & Carlos Boettcher
[Music Playing]
Voiceover (00:01):
Welcome to Steeped in Wellness, brought to you by matcha.com. Here we spill the tea on wellness trends, personal growth, and the latest health news. Now here are your hosts, licensed dietitian, Diana Weil, and medical journalist Elara Hadjipateras.
Diana Weil (00:17):
Hello everyone. Welcome to this week's episode. Excited to have you here.
Elara Hadjipateras (00:21):
So excited to have a friend and former colleague here, Carlos Boettcher, who I met during my time at ABC News. Born in South Africa at the height of the apartheid to actually two parents that were journalists.
Carlos likes to say that his life has constantly been marked by chaos. He moved to Germany at a young age, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Since then, he has done a lot of breaking news coverage and has been at the front lines of history. Carlos actually ended up dropping out of college to report on the war in Iraq with his dad, which is kind of the start of his journalism career.
He's been in over four war zones. He's seen the rise and fall of ISIS, like front lines. The COVID outbreak, the Ebola outbreak too, if I remember correctly. And most important he saw the Cubbies winning the World Series.
He has won multiple awards, including Emmys for his work. He now lives in Los Angeles, California, and works on a variety of projects. Welcome, Carlos.
Carlos Boettcher (01:17):
Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Elara Hadjipateras (01:19):
So, let's just roll back the clock a little bit. I know I mentioned in the intro, that Carlos ended up dropping out of college and then joining his dad to do war coverage in Iraq. How did that happen? Bring us back to why you decided that was a good idea.
Carlos Boettcher (01:34):
There were a lot of different reasons. One of the biggest was I wasn't a great student and didn't really know what I was doing. It's interesting talking about that now because I'm working on a project that deals with that, and I'm having to think about exactly why I made that decision a lot.
And a lot of it has to do with the fact that I wanted the same adventure that I grew up hearing from my parents, and I wanted to experience it firsthand, and I wanted to see what had so consumed my father's life.
Diana Weil (02:12):
That's a pretty interesting childhood. How was that? (Laughs) I'm curious, was there time to play, what was that like for you growing up?
Carlos Boettcher (02:24):
Until I was about seven, I was overseas. So, for the first three years or so, I was in South Africa, which I don't remember too much. And then I was in Germany for a few years.
I just remember even at that age, there was a lot of change and a lot of chaos. And oddly enough, I was also at the Rammstein, the Airbase disaster, completely randomly. So, I always had these things going on.
And then when I moved to Chicago, it was a bit more stable. But my father was on TV and so I was able to turn on the TV at night and see him in Kosovo or see him in Afghanistan, and then Iraq later and so on.
My show and tells in school weren't like “This is my grandpa.” It was like, “Here's a piece of like a blasted tank my dad brought back from a war.” So, things were at a different speed for me in a lot of ways.
Our Thanksgiving table had generals and spies around it. And so, I really grew up enmeshed in a, you could say, action packed world.
And then honestly after 9/11 happened, I was in high school and things really shifted. It's a long time ago now. But people forget how much the world changed on that day and how much America changed. And for me, a young man, it really was the most formative event in my life and drove a lot of what my father did and what I did after.
Jon Gay (04:16):
That's really interesting to me, as the elder statesman of the group here. I was in college on 9/11, but you heard of so many people signing up and joining the military spurred by what happened of America being attacked on 9/11. It sounds like it really spurred you to follow your parents' footsteps in media in telling stories.
Carlos Boettcher (04:34):
It did. I wanted to do something. Oddly enough. When I went to college before I dropped out, I was studying foreign affairs and stuff in the hopes of becoming a part of the intelligence world. And I did in a manner of speaking, you could say become part of it, but we really can't predict the turns our life takes.
And there's something that Gen Z says now that I like a lot, which is “doing stuff for the plot,” which is something I do consistently. I just will do dumb interesting things. I'm like, “Ah, that sounds like might be a good/terrible idea, but that sounds interesting, so I'll do it.”
Elara Hadjipateras (05:22):
So, off the top of your head, what moments stand out the most, as far as when you were covering the war?
Carlos Boettcher (05:30):
A lot. I mean, it was years of my life. There are so many different things. There were all the battles and all the fights and all the death, which was a lot. But there are the gaps in the sky where there's moments of incredible beauty.
And I always tell the story where I was on the western Iraq border of Syria doing night patrols with the Marines. And it was just darkest desert, completely black, the blackest night I'd ever been in. And we had night vision on, and all of a sudden, the night vision started flaring.
And we thought that something was incoming and flipped our nods off. And it was the most incredible meteor shower I'd ever seen. It was like some hand had ripped open the sky and you could see the light just spill through. That's how dense it was.
And I was standing in the war zone on the Syrian border in the middle of nowhere. I was, what, 22 or 23, had no idea what I was doing, but I was seeing something that was just so incredibly beautiful. And I still think, and I dream about it to this day, and I feel fortunate to be able to see that.
And so, it's a lot of those kind of moments that I hold dear. I spent a lot of time in this region of Afghanistan called Nuristan and Northeast Afghanistan. And it was like Shangri-La, just beautiful mountains and lush forests.
And there were monkeys and birds of paradise. And it was incredibly dangerous. I was in the old Afghan King’s Hunting Palace, and we used to get the bejesus shellacked out of us. And it'd get attacked and then call in the F16s or what have you, and they drop some 1000, 2000-pound bombs on the mountainsides.
Jon Gay (07:39):
He says matter of factly.
Carlos Boettcher (07:40):
Yeah. And after they did that, the kids from the neighboring village would come to the blast craters because this region, the mountains were filled with rubies and emeralds, so they would go into the blast craters. It was like we were mining the mountains for them with bombs and pull it out.
So, I dare say I did get that adventure I wanted so much when I was a kid, maybe a bit too much as it turns out.
Elara Hadjipateras (08:09):
How many years did I meet you, Carlos, after you had been doing war coverage? Was it about 10 years later?
Carlos Boettcher (08:15):
No, it was shorter than that.
Elara Hadjipateras (08:17):
2013, 2014.
Carlos Boettcher (08:21):
Yeah, I got back in 2011.
Elara Hadjipateras (08:23):
Oh, wow. So, you were fresh. Well, it's funny. So, the reason I bring this up is that, like I said before, Carlos and I met at our time at ABC News. We were both on the national desk. Well, Carlos also did the foreign desk. So, he was out covering foreign stories as well at the time for ABC.
And I remember at first, I was just kind of an assistant on the desk. And so, my only interaction with Carlos was booking his flights and accommodation and travel. And I remember some people telling me about him that he was kind of like this big scary successful journalist.
And I didn't know who he was for a while. Then I finally put a face to a name around Christmas time when we were doing a photo shoot down in the cafeteria with Santa Claus. And so, when I met Carlos and he just had him like, this big jolly like ridiculous ugly Christmas sweater. And I was just like, “This guy's harmless. He's as nice as a teddy bear. This guy covered wars? I can't believe it.”
When we first met, we never spoke about your time over in Afghanistan or Iraq at all. That never came up. And I would say, I didn't necessarily see any negative impacts to your mental health right away from doing that coverage.
But now, upon reflecting back, we did used to like drink quite a lot when we were in the newsrooms. And after doing breaking news stories of shootings and the Boston Bomber and planes going down and at least me, I didn't think anything of it. It was kind of; this is an adventure. We're on the front lines of history.
But now reflecting back, when do you think you noticed a shift in your mental or physical health from reporting in those high stress zones? Or was it more of a gradual thing and then it just hit?
Carlos Boettcher (10:10):
2009 was really the first big shift in me. That was during kind of my first tour. I did a really difficult mission with the Marines, and that was the first time I really encountered a lot of death. And so, that was when I got out of there and going through Dubai, I was just drinking, and I knew how the rest of the story was going to go because I had seen it in my own father who had covered wars for so long and then began to drink and drink and drink.
And he's now since sober, his story makes mine look like nothing, quite frankly. But I was good at hiding it. And I also honestly felt that that I was just part of it.
You spoke about the newsroom and drinking a lot after things and journalism especially high stakes war reporting, there's a lot of pressure and drinking is deeply embedded in the culture, and it's deeply normalized.
But I can also tell you that this is the world I grew up in and my parents were war reporters, their friends were war reporters. And most of us don't really make it out whole. I know people who aren't in one way, or another aren't around anymore. Same as them, there's a lot of people I called my uncles that disappeared in one way or another.
And so, when you met me Elara, I had learned to mask and I had learned maladaptive coping measures and drinking and all that. But it's also part of it too was I was good at masking stuff at the gallows humor and the dark humor.
And it can be pretty funny. I was pretty good at making people feel comfortable because also that was part of my job was going to someone who was having the worst day of their life and be like, “Yo, you want to talk to Robin Roberts?”
(Laughter)
Jon Gay (12:41):
I have to jump in here because I was a broadcast journalism major at Syracuse. I didn't pursue it professionally, but a lot of my close friends and classmates did. And I am on so many text threads with classmates and friends that can never see the light of day because of what you just said, Carlos, that dark gallows humor of the horrible things that you're forced to cover in that industry.
And in some way, as a defense mechanism to survive, the only thing you do is make jokes about it. And out of context, these jokes would be the most offensive things you've ever heard. But it's a bit of a coping mechanism. And I can understand why the drinking would come in too, because you're dealing with really, really serious stuff.
Carlos Boettcher (13:21):
It's funny, I do true crime now, which for me is pretty chill but it's murders and all sorts of terrible stuff.
Elara Hadjipateras (13:33):
Lighthearted though, just so lighthearted compared to conflict journalism. Right?
Carlos Boettcher (13:37):
It is. My writing is, okay, how do I make an entertaining intro to a quadruple murder?
(Laughter)
Elara Hadjipateras (13:46):
It reminds me of Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall when he's doing the music. Like, do, do, do, do.
Carlos Boettcher (13:52):
Yeah. Kind of like that. Humor is such an important way that all of us cope with traumatic situations. It's a way for us to talk about things without actually talking about them. And I think it has a lot of value.
Elara Hadjipateras (14:11):
And then the other thing I'd say we turn to is, you mentioned alcohol. There's a lot of drinking in the newsroom. We were based in New York City, there was also a lot of food and there was a lot of drugs. And cigarettes too. I don't know where we want to wrap that into, but-
Jon Gay (14:24):
I thought you were going to say late nights; you went right into the drugs.
Elara Hadjipateras (14:27):
Yeah, the drugs (laughs). There was a lot of it. I'm not going to lie. And there's a part of me when I reflect back and I was not at all in it as much as Carlos went through it. It's this coping mechanism, and it kind of just puts a nice light on everything that you're doing that's pretty dark and messed up.
To your point of I had to … what was one of the weird things I had to do is I had to go to a hospital in New Jersey and try and convince this gentleman to be on camera and get interviewed, be on Good Morning America, the day after he got attacked in a cave by a bear.
And the Cub Scouts he was in charge of almost got severely injured and this poor guy just got attacked by bear. And I'm like, “You know what's a great idea? Being on television and talking about it and us angling it into making you probably the bad guy. Come on TV.” And looking back, it's not something you feel great about, so-
Jon Gay (15:18):
Can you make your wounds extra bleedy for the cameras?
Elara Hadjipateras (15:21):
(Laughs), basically it's like you're coming there and you're like, “Here's a, what is that called? Edible arrangement! How are you feeling?” That's a weird thing to be specifically a booker, the people that are in charge of getting people to do interviews on a show. It's not a great feeling. It takes a very specific type of a personality to handle that.
Diana Weil (15:44):
This might be a naive question, but when you would go to do a tour, would you come back to the U.S. and go to therapy? Or would you just dive right back into your life like nothing had changed?
Carlos Boettcher (15:57):
Nah, I didn't need therapy. Not at all. I didn't do therapy for a very long time. I knew I should have; I didn't want to. I knew what opening that can of worms might mean and I wasn't ready for it. But looking back, if I had started therapy immediately, the pressure wouldn't have built so much.
And that's something I always talked about was the fact that — and maybe they've gotten better now, but it seems to make the sense for a major news network, but someone comes back from a super traumatic event, maybe they talk to a therapist or have some time to off to get their head straight.
But there was like, “Oh, you can have access to the emergency plan and then we'll give you a couple days off,” and then you get half of a day off before they call you to do something else. And it just keeps going on and on and on like that. So, it's yeah, you don't have a really good time to ever actually deal with your trauma.
Jon Gay (17:15):
What's really interesting to me, two points about what you just said, Carlos, for those of you listening to the audio version of the podcast, when he said, no, I didn't need therapy, it was obvious on his face that he was being facetious when he said it.
So, the two things that catch me are one to the point about TV news you made earlier. It is such a grind and it's always go, go, go. And that pressure is so intense. Yeah. You wouldn't have time to stop down and process what you dealt with.
But on the other hand, it really struck me when you said … where you kind of implied, rather, that you needed therapy, but you were a bit afraid of it because you were afraid to kind of rip that scab off and see what was underneath.
Carlos Boettcher (17:48):
Yeah. And I had the tools like it like I could have gone to therapy. But it's a bit of a gross metaphor, but it's a bit like I'm clogging a drain and you're like, “Oh, I don't want to see what's actually caught in this trap.” Like, “Oh, ooh, gross.”
Jon Gay (18:11):
That’s a great analogy actually.
Elara Hadjipateras (18:13):
Yeah. Nobody likes taking the hair out of their shower in the drain other than my toddler because he doesn't know what it is.
Carlos Boettcher (18:18):
Yep. There we go.
Elara Hadjipateras (18:20):
So, once again, when I met Carlos, he was kind of the jolly larger chubby successful journalists, we're going there now Carlos. If you're watching the video, not the person here. So, since that time I've known Carlos, he's now how many pounds lighter?
Carlos Boettcher (18:38):
Around 60, 70.
Elara Hadjipateras (18:41):
60, 70 pounds. But it was kind of when I met him, it was just like, this is who I am. I like food, I like drinking. I work hard; I party hard. What was the moment where you realized something needs to change and kind of everything kind of fell apart?
Diana Weil (18:55):
Okay. Wait, before you answer that question, I have one clarifying question for you. Would you classify yourself as a food addict or alcoholic? And were you classified with — did you have diagnosed PTSD or what are we working with here before we get into the answer?
Carlos Boettcher (19:10):
The PTSD and the alcoholism, yeah. Not the food addiction. Sometimes while yes, I have had like the classification of like alcoholism and stuff, sometimes I feel like it's a more general need of to consume, that's how I feel sometimes.
If you're familiar at all with Nintendo characters, I feel a bit like Kirby just kind of vacuuming everything into himself. I've done a lot of work on all that, but I had one fellow basically be like, “Yeah, you've got pretty much the worst case of PTSD I've ever seen.” And I was like, “Thanks. Great. fantastic news.”
It's been a bit of a road but getting through it. To loop back to Elara's question, which is when things started to change, shortly after COVID in summer of 2020, I believe it was, I essentially had an epiphany.
Won't get into all the specifics, but all Elara actually helped me quite a bit in figuring this out. And this kind of a philosophy that I've been developing, you could call it a wellness philosophy that I call “the elegant path.”
A lot of people had their own personal realizations in COVID. And to this day, I don't know precisely why that happened when it did. The November before COVID, I had taken some time off to work on my drinking.
And I came back, and I had been sober, and I was actually sober through much of COVID amazingly. I had this epiphany, and I started to kind of reformat my entire body and mind.
And the other thing too is that I talk a lot about tools. I had all the tools to get in shape because when I was in the wars, I was in ludicrously good shape. I'm like carrying a hundred pounds of gear running up a mountain in a hundred plus degree heat. What's the term nowadays? Shredded. It was great.
Jon Gay (22:01):
Well, you were running around with the Marines too. You had to keep up with those guys. Right?
Carlos Boettcher (22:05):
And I trained really hard, and I knew how to lift, I knew how to train. I knew how to do all that. And so, I started that process again. But the biggest thing was, and this is bit longer, but I was able to kind of break my obsession with food. And I was able to change how I eat very, very rapidly.
And it really was the diet component. And when I say diet, I mean standard like breakfast, lunch, dinner, but also, not drinking. That really cuts down on your calorie consumption. Because I could drink like I could drink a crazy amount.
I could crush like 30 beers in a day. And just be like, what up? Kind of advanced calculations you make when you're an alcoholic who is also vain, when you know that a bottle of vodka is has about 1600 calories in it.
And then you have an Apple watch that calculates the rest, and you're like, “How much can I actually eat as a normal human, and still maintain this?” So, it's something in the recovery community we always joke about is just like, you get really good at weird math in addiction.
Jon Gay (23:41):
It sounds from what you're saying, Carlos, is that when you had a little bit of time where you weren't drinking and removed that variable, that enabled you to focus a little bit more inwardly and look at yourself and the food addiction and the rest of it kind of holistically. Do I have that right?
Carlos Boettcher (23:56):
There's a lot that goes into it, but a lot of what I do, it has to do with meditation. And I grew up meditating from a young age. I was taught it and also, I taught it to myself. Because of a book.
If you've ever read Roald Dahl, there's a book called The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More. Anyway, Henry Sugar using meditation techniques, teaches himself to read through cards and basically cheat at casinos.
And so, I was eight and taught myself to meditate and attempt to cheat at cards. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But the side effect, I taught myself to meditate. And so, that's something that I carried through.
When I talk about how I dealt with the food obsession and all that and how I was able to break it, it starts with meditation and most importantly, one of the foundations of meditation awareness. Being aware of not just what I'm feeling, but why I am. And once you're able to determine the why of things, you're able to make a lot of progress on what you do.
Diana Weil (25:16):
I always tell people that what they're putting on their plate, really, there's so much more behind those decisions than just — it's not just what's being put on our plate, there's so much more to food than what we see in front of us.
Jon Gay (25:30):
It's more the psychology than the physiology. Right. Diana?
Diana Weil (25:32):
Yeah. I mean, when I work with people with food, most of the time I'm like, “I should have gone and got a master's in psychology, not in dietetics, because this isn't about the food, it's about the mental emotional piece.”
And what's interesting for me is I feel like … well, I'm curious, do you feel like you had to first confront the emotional, mental piece and then you were able to make these diet adjustments? It sounds like that's the path you took, or do you feel like you started making the physical adjustments first, like training and eating, and then you were able to sort of tackle the mental emotional piece?
Carlos Boettcher (26:04):
For me, the physical piece I was able to make … and you hear this a lot in the running and stuff, but the physical piece of it was able to be part of the meditative piece for me, the physical piece. It had to be all at once, kind of for me.
But there's a difference between just doing something initially and maintaining it. And I had started plenty of I'm going to work out this time. I'm going to eat better this time then in the past. And what made it stick this time was the fact that yes, I was doing this physical component, but I also was delving into this holistic, mental, emotional component.
And so, I really believe that by healing the whole person you're able to make great strides. And I was fortunate in that I had the bandwidth to be able to do all of that. But I view things as a flow, and I have a bit of a longer sense of time these days.
So, sometimes you're working more on your emotions, sometimes you're working more on your physical, sometimes you're working more on this, but it's just maintaining that flow, the rhythm to your life. To me, when I think about sometimes it's like music, sometimes certain instruments will be playing louder or sometimes you get a sweet guitar solo. And sometimes-
Elara Hadjipateras (28:01):
Speaking of which-
Carlos Boettcher (28:02):
The drums are driving it.
Elara Hadjipateras (28:02):
Yeah. Like me, I'm the drum interrupting you, but I have to just interrupt here and just give a shout out to the fact that Carlos has some amazing people in his life and it's not me. His mother is an absolutely spectacular human being, who I think played a huge role in pushing Carlos towards really seeking professional help and just dragging his fucking ass out of New York City and getting him into rehab and just saying like, enough of this shit, you're better than this.
And just kind of making the train leave the station. Her first name is Chris. She's absolutely wonderful. But I just think that from what I know about friends and family that have gone through similar situations, it's a huge impact if you have a strong support system around you, in a non-judgmental way that's really there for you when you feel like you're at bottom that knows there's nowhere to go but up.
And they're going to be there no matter what. As much as you want to sit on your ass to like, just have their hand extended until you're ready to take it.
Diana Weil (29:08):
So, I have a question about that. I feel like a lot of times when you go from recovery, whether that's for food, alcohol, whatever it is, you create friendships with people who also are in that same community, whether you've built friendships through alcohol or you build friendships through food.
When you began to make changes, did you also feel like you had to change your community and your friends?
Carlos Boettcher (29:28):
No, I was the problem, quite frankly. I was the bad influence in my friend group. They were not the bad influence. I mean, I knew some very sketchy people that I was able to cut out, but I feel very fortunate that, the foremost among them Elara, I had incredible friends who wanted the best for me and knew I needed to make change for years and told me I did, and I didn't listen.
And so, when all this came about, for the most part, they're very supportive. And there were some casualties along the way, but such as life.
To go back to what Elara said I would quite literally be dead without my family, all my family. And a lot of people don't have that. I know this because I've met those people firsthand. I've been in treatment with them. You can talk all day about what makes a difference in someone getting sober and willpower and all that.
But in my opinion, it really comes down to support. And I had a fantastic support group. I have great friends, I have people who love me, and a lot of people, they just don't have any of that.
Diana Weil (30:46):
What advice would you give to someone who maybe, whether they've been through as much trauma as you have, whether they think it's more of a problem or addiction, what advice would you give to someone who maybe doesn't have that kind of support?
Carlos Boettcher (31:00):
There are people will give you unconditional love and support. You can find them in the rooms of multiple 12 step programs or other non 12 step programs. A lot of those rooms have just incredible people.
But the first step is to get out there and reach out for that support. And you don't necessarily have to go there in person either. If you have a phone, online communities are thriving. I know that Zoom meetings were a huge source of support for me during the pandemic. And for a lot of other people, the pandemic affected a lot of people's drinking for the better and the worse in a lot of different ways.
But I think one good thing to come out of all that was the creation and the popularity of these Zoom meetings because I like to get to an actual meeting but sometimes it's not always possible. And then I can hop on the Zoom meeting. And it's also cool because I can hop on the Zoom meeting, of one of the ones in New York, because I live out here in LA if I want to hear a little less like woo-woo crystal stuff. So, yeah.
(Laughter)
Elara Hadjipateras (32:19):
What would you say off the top of your head, was one of the hardest parts about inpatient rehab and what surprised you about it?
Carlos Boettcher (32:27):
What surprised me was how hard getting sober actually was in inpatient rehab to a degree. And when I say sober, I don’t mean just not drinking. I mean actually working on yourself and concentrating on the recovery.
And this might seem very like “well duh Carlos” to a lot of people, but there's a lot of drama in, you know, and it can be distracting. And so, being able to really focus on what you need to do, and again, that's really on you. You take out what you put into it. But I wasn't prepared for all the other things that's around treatment. And what was the second half of your question?
Elara Hadjipateras (33:21):
Well, just kind of, I think you kind of answered both, is what was the hardest part? I think it also happened to be what also surprised you, which is that there's just all of these melodramas and other people's crazy lives unfolding right in front of you. And it's really easy to get mixed up in that.
Jon Gay (33:38):
It makes sense when you think about it because people are doing ostensibly the hardest thing they've ever done. The chemical balances are changing in their bodies. So, emotions are probably extremely high. Then you've got the variables of families, friends and support systems that, again, I'm just guessing here, Carlos, but I'd imagine that all plays in, right?
Carlos Boettcher (33:55):
Yeah. And also, I mean, quite frankly, if you're in rehab, things haven't been going great for you, your life's kind of a disaster probably. And there's a certain person, I'm not going to say everyone, but I was — I still am incredibly self-absorbed, but I was even worse when I was drinking, if you can believe that.
And so, you've got a lot of people who think that the world revolves around them because when you're drinking, it kind of does. Or at least you're able to make it feel like that. And so, it's challenging, I think the hardest moment for me because there was like a really hard moment when I got to my final place, the place that actually got me sober, which was this really tough recovery place in LA, really tough.
It was kind of a halfway house sort of. But I remember being there and just having a hard realization. My roommates were: one was trying to stay out of prison for killing a guy and another was trying to stay out of prison for catching a bunch of other charges.
And I go into bed that night. “Wow, Carlos, this is where you're at. You did great work, dude.” Because I had had this big life and I also, preface this, I needed to make a change. And sometimes some changes are more catastrophic than others.
Jon Gay (35:38):
You mentioned the rehab that finally got you sober, Carlos, how many, if you don’t mind me asking, did you go to, how many places did you try?
Carlos Boettcher (35:49):
A few.
Jon Gay (35:49):
Okay. Fair enough.
Carlos Boettcher (35:52):
Not like double (digits). It wasn't a crazy amount. I met people who have just been — they're from like some crazy family and this is their 30th rehab and their family just basically just keeps putting them in ritzy rehabs because it kind of gets them out of their hair for a bit.
And it's not bad. You play a lot of Frisbee golf, a lot of bag, food isn’t too bad. I mean, fancy rehabs are pretty chill. They're basically like spas in a lot of ways, depending on the ones you go to.
Some fancy ones are actually pretty tough. Like I went to Hazelden where Ozzy Osbourne and Eric Clapton went, they always like to name drop the celebrities. But I will say that if a place got Ozzy on the right path and yeah, Hazelden is a really great place.
Diana Weil (36:53):
What does life look like for you now? I mean, you've gone through some really traumatic things. You've done a lot of work on yourself. Where are you at now in your life?
Carlos Boettcher (37:02):
Life is really good. I'd like to say that I am just chilling and I kind of in a lot of ways. But I am a very driven person. I feel like I've been given something that a lot of people aren't, which is a second chance at life. A chance to do things better this time.
And I'm working along on a few things, but it's a pretty amazing feeling these days because I really understand now that, and regret is a notion that you'll drown yourself in if you let it. But I've been fighting my whole life with one arm behind my back.
Because I was drunk or hung over or fat, like all these things, for years and years, I was making things so much harder on myself in an attempt to make things easier on myself, but with a few exceptions throughout really shortcuts to true progress.
I have to work at staying above water. But it gets easier every day that you do stuff. I talk about the flow and my life is an integrative process where I don't really have to concentrate on, fixate on I have to like go this meeting or this is going to blow up. Time is a river, and we dip in and out as we need. And I feel very fortunate that I have a lot of support now. But I also feel proud of the work I've done to reach the point I have.
Elara Hadjipateras (38:48):
So, one of the things — I mean, I'm obviously very proud of you as a friend, Carlos, but people talk a lot about replacing these old bad coping mechanisms with new rituals. And I've seen Carlos go through the ringer in terms of … and I also myself have done this where it's like, you get into yoga, you're doing yoga all the time, you're obsessed with doing yoga, you're obsessed with calorie counting, you're obsessed with running, excessive strength training.
I saw you kind of ride those waves up and down and now more than ever before, you've kind of achieved this flow balanced state, which is so beautiful and wonderful to see.
Are there any non-negotiables in your routine? It could be daily, weekly, that just you feel are kind of helping keep you grounded and level at this point?
Carlos Boettcher (39:38):
The biggest parts of my wellness, mental and physical wellness are actually things where I'm not really doing much, which is meditation and sleep. Meditation is a pretty big non-negotiable for me because I might not always have the time for yoga. Life happens. I might not have the time for yoga or run or something like that.
But even if you take five minutes just to do a quick drop, you can always take some time for meditation. I am a terrible insomniac, which was a large part of my drinking was trying to get to sleep. My brain just does not shut off. And so, meditation has really helped with the sleep component, but I really try to aim to get eight hours of sleep. That almost never happens.
I'm one of those people that can exist off a four-hour sleep, kind of perpetually, but it doesn't feel great and it's not good for recovery or wellness. And if I'm able to actually get some healthy sleep life and that means not dragging myself with, I take a magnesium supplement and that's as far as I go for sleep these days.
And that's also for because I lift for muscle and bone health and blah, blah, blah. Sleep has been the biggest part of wellness I've been chasing my entire life. And I'm finally getting to a place where I think I'm good with it and I think that I'm okay with it. And I think that's in part because I've addressed a lot of other issues in my life.
Diana Weil (41:20):
Elara, I'm so glad you brought that up because I feel like a lot of times people replace one addiction with another, even if it's a healthy addiction like running or whatever it is.
And Carlos, it really sounds like you are in that beautiful middle ground where your obsession, I wouldn't call it an obsession, but the things that you really prioritize are sleep and meditation, which are such beautiful practices and I think is so important for anyone listening to hear that you can get to the other side and that there is life after some really hard things.
Carlos Boettcher (41:55):
I've been very fortunate, but I'm a big believer in second chances and then I'm a big believer in the idea that it's not easy, but you can remake yourself into almost anything that you want. And it's just a longer path than you might expect.
Elara Hadjipateras (42:22):
That's beautiful to hear Carlos. I love it. Just sometimes what we all need to hear is “slow down,” which kind of seems really hard when everything in your head is moving a mile a minute. And you can't stop all the different thoughts from coming in, and the voices.
But it does take time to learn that skill, to meditate, to actually create good sleep habits, to make it a priority. It takes time. So, I credit you for taking the time and now you're reaping the benefits, which is yeah, very nice to see.
So, we like to wrap up the podcast with two questions. I did not let you know what these were before. But just what's something that you've had to learn the hard way?
Jon Gay (43:04):
I say we've covered that in the last 45 minutes.
(Laughter)
Elara Hadjipateras (43:07):
We kind of covered it in the last 50 minutes or so, but if you just want to give us something colorful.
Carlos Boettcher (43:14):
I just talked a lot about support, how I would be dead without my family, but something that I learned the hard way is the realization that sometimes nobody is going to save you. And it is up to you.
That can look different depending on where you are. But that was a hard lesson that I had to learn. And in the recovery community, that's kind of what they call rock bottom. And they also say something else, which is rock bottom is when you decide to stop digging, there's always a deeper bottom. It can always get worse. And so, the moment you stop digging is the moment that you decide to save yourself.
Diana Weil (44:06):
That's beautiful. And I also think that taking accountability for your own life is so important and also really hard (laughs). That's a hard one.
Carlos Boettcher (44:15):
Accountability is huge. Look, a lot of things happened to me, but I mean that's life. Way worse stuff has happened to other people, and they dealt with it way better than I did. I made my own choices and my own mistakes. But it does get better.
Diana Weil (44:33):
Yeah. Okay. So, our last question is kind of the opposite. What is a mantra or a motto or something that you've learned from someone important in your life that you kind of live life by?
Carlos Boettcher (44:47):
I have two. One is a little thing that there is ever a more elegant path, which is the idea that sometimes we try to force things or rush things or force our own solutions. But there is a path of elegance and the path of grace that we can follow.
And this goes into the holistic thing where this intent of the world and by aligning ourselves with that, we can reach a more elegant path. And the other one is my meditation mantra that I just think about and stuff. And props, if you can catch where this comes from. But it's blue skies forever.
Elara Hadjipateras (45:40):
Blue Skies forever. Is that like Top Gun?
Carlos Boettcher (45:43):
It's from Lust for Life, the Lana song. I just like the saying blue skies forever. Just because I think about, and it just makes me think of when I think about things like words and stuff like that, it's like the idea of a blue sky forever in my head, what that means.
And it just kind of for me means summer days in the future, just that childhood idea of waking up and it's a big, bright, beautiful day and the sky is big and so is your future.
Diana Weil (46:22):
I love that.
Elara Hadjipateras (46:23):
Blue skies forever.
Diana Weil (46:25):
Blue skies forever.
Elara Hadjipateras (46:26):
Well, I had a great time hearing about your personal growth story.
Carlos Boettcher (46:30):
I did too.
Diana Weil (46:30):
Carlos, thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your story and your vulnerability. I think I learned a lot from you, and I feel super inspired. So, thank you.
Carlos Boettcher (46:40):
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate that, Diana.
Elara Hadjipateras (46:45):
Thank you, Carlos.
Carlos Boettcher (46:45):
And you too, Elara, for having me.
(Laughter)
Elara Hadjipateras (46:46):
Alright, until next time.
Carlos Boettcher (46:48):
And you too, Jon, it was such a pleasure to meet you. Thank you.
Voiceover (46:52):
Sip, savor and live well with new episodes of Steeped in Wellness every Wednesday. Follow our show free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening right now. Leave your questions and comments below. Find us on Instagram at Steeped in Wellness Podcast, or for more, click on matcha.com.