Michelle Glogovac (00:01.034) Hi, Brian. Brian Cuban (00:02.934) How you doing, Michelle? Michelle Glogovac (00:04.202) I am so excited to talk to you. I spent my Christmas holiday like in the stomach of knots reading your books. I did. I wouldn't say it's a holiday read, but it definitely got me through the holidays. Brian Cuban (00:12.302) Well, I hope you enjoyed it. Brian Cuban (00:20.694) Yeah, it's a fast read. It's a fast read. Michelle Glogovac (00:22.929) It was. Before we dive in, can you introduce yourself to everyone, please? Brian Cuban (00:26.68) Sure. I'm Brian Cuban. I'm a person in long-term recovery. I'm heading on to my 18th year of sobriety from alcohol and cocaine. I'm originally from Pittsburgh. I live in Dallas now. I've lived in Dallas for decades, but I grew up in Pittsburgh. have two brothers. You may know my older brother, Mark, and I have a younger brother, Jeff. Went to Penn State undergrad and Pitt Law School, and I practiced law for a while in Dallas. had many struggles practicing law because of my addictions. And finally, I gave up the practice of law, got sober and I began writing and I've written several books. Two of them are memoir style, Shattered Image, which is about my struggle with eating disorders and body image. Yes, guys do get eating disorders. The next one was The Addicted Lawyer, which was more about my struggle with cocaine and alcohol while trying to practice law and how that all came about. and some of the kind of wild stories that took place during that time. And then I transitioned into fiction. I mean, how many times can you tell your own story, right? And so I transitioned to fiction. I've always, you know, I'm always someone who listens and, you know, noodles things in my head and makes notes and, you know, takes little bits and pieces of what other people say, you know, in the coffee shop, not snooping, but more just like, you know, something that stirs, know, using your five senses to generate ideas in your head. And then that finally moved into my first book, The Ambulance Chaser, which has been optioned and is actively being fundraised for a movie. So I'm excited about that. Optioning is one thing and it can never get made, but we actually had people step forward willing to raise money. So that's kind of the second step. so, and then a couple of years later I wrote Michelle Glogovac (02:08.822) Congratulations. Michelle Glogovac (02:14.635) right. Michelle Glogovac (02:19.306) Yeah. Brian Cuban (02:23.33) the body brokers, revolves around the shady treatment centers and sober homes and the fatal overdose fentanyl epidemic. Michelle Glogovac (02:34.134) How realistic is the book? Because not knowing the addiction side, not knowing the treatment facilities, there was a side of it that I went, this could totally be happening. Brian Cuban (02:45.43) It's very realistic. It's ripped from the headlines. Of course, you take creative liberties and you do different things, but it's very realistic. The scenes that revolve around fentanyl overdoses are all science-based. And I would be willing to bet that The Body Brokers is the first novel, of course, there how many novels are written every year. Michelle Glogovac (02:56.012) That's really frightening. Michelle Glogovac (03:04.758) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (03:13.016) But I'll bet you it's the first novel, I'll go on a limb, that accurately addresses the signs of fentanyl explosion. Michelle Glogovac (03:20.032) Incredible. I learned a lot just reading it and it's cringe-worthy to know that this is reality. This is what people go through. This is happening in our own backyards. Brian Cuban (03:34.87) It is, it is. And I specifically address things like, you where you see police officers, you know, face planning, you know, just from touching fentanyl and from being around it, which is just, you know, which is not an overdose. It's total BS pushed by police departments and law, you know, and at one time the DEA. And then I also address, you know, whether fentanyl is really quote unquote, mule over the southern border, you know, by quote unquote, illegals and what the actual data is on that. So I try to put in real life things that people can take from it and weave it into what I hope is a compelling crime thriller. Michelle Glogovac (04:18.848) Yeah, it definitely was. I saw it playing out in a screen in front of me, especially the scene where the attorney, who I feel like she's just a ball buster. She's got to be a short woman with blonde hair. I had her all pictured in my mind. Brian Cuban (04:33.346) Yeah, and I created her from scratch, Andy Coffey. the character Doc in Philadelphia, I created him from scratch, who I love, Doc. And Doc will make an appearance in the third and final book of the trilogy. So yeah, the only character who wasn't really created from scratch is Jason. Michelle Glogovac (04:44.201) Mm-hmm. Michelle Glogovac (04:56.96) Because he portrays you. No? Brian Cuban (04:58.702) Because, well, he doesn't portray me, but there are elements of me. Okay? well, I know what it's like to be in, Jason's in recovery, I'm not really giving anything away there. And I know what it's like to be in recovery. I know the feelings, I know the emotions, I know the five senses, I know the triggers. So I felt that that helped me accurately portray how the characters, Michelle Glogovac (05:03.4) which elements share with us which elements of you he is because I love this part. Brian Cuban (05:26.656) see the outside world and see themselves. So from that standpoint, my journey through addiction is part of Jason's journey. But I don't think, especially in writing fiction, and this is something you learn, I don't think it's good for the character to be the author. What's that? Michelle Glogovac (05:42.528) Right. I just like the parts. I just like the parts of the author that are in there because you know we have to bring reality into it somehow. Right. Brian Cuban (05:48.364) Yeah, you don't want it to be, because then it's a memoir, right? You don't want it to be too derivative. And so I just incorporated those things because I really know, have a good understanding of how characters react. Michelle Glogovac (06:06.796) Let's go to your journey and you go to law school. At what part did addiction become part of your life? Brian Cuban (06:15.65) Well, I had struggled with alcohol starting in high school, right? I grew up, there was a lot of childhood trauma in my life. was an overweight kid. I was bullied severely and fat shamed in high school. And this is really, this is when bullying, this is when bullying and, it was all brick and mortar, right? This was when cell phones were two cups attached to a string and going viral meant. Michelle Glogovac (06:40.652) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (06:43.342) Kids were passing notes around the lunchroom about a crochet hat on a girl. So a much different time in the 70s, but it didn't hurt any less. And I was actually physically assaulted over my weight. An interesting story. My brother Mark had been teaching disco. I don't know if people, you know what disco is back in the 70s. We had the disco craze, Saturday Night Fever and John Travolta. Michelle Glogovac (07:12.758) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (07:13.922) and he would be wearing the platform shoes and the bell bottom pants with flowers. And one day he came home and he gave me this pair of shiny gold bell bottom disco pants, kind of like you see John Travolta wear if you go and watch Saturday Night Fever. So, but they they fit Mark okay. He wasn't a big guy, but I had to jump up and down, spray the water bottle. You know, my butt looked like 15 cats trying to get out as they stretched my stomach. And I wore them to school and one day and the kids make fun of me. And one day I'm walking home with these kids. And in my mind, these kids were the prom kings, the prom queens, the popular kids, the kids going to the football games, to the dairy queens, you know, and the house parties and the concerts together. All the things I wanted to be included in so badly. And you know, getting their first kiss, you know, their first date. but didn't feel I was worthy of because as I was called many times, fat pigs didn't deserve that kind of happiness. I'm walking, because my images were the people I saw every day, right? We didn't have social media. So I'm walking home from school one day with these kids. There are a group of about three or four of them. And I'm wearing my shiny gold bell bottom disco pants. They're making fun of them. It's about a mile from the high school to my house. Michelle Glogovac (08:21.548) Right. Right. Brian Cuban (08:37.214) south of Pittsburgh where I grew up, a community called Mount Lebanon. And we're walking along the sidewalk, they're making fun of them, stomachs bulging out over the belt loop. One of the kids reaches and pulls at the zipper and it rips, okay, right along the seam a little bit. Another kid goes, ooh, and he pulls and he jerks it and rips it right down to the crotch. The next thing I knew these kids were on me like wild dogs. physically assaulted me. They tore off my shiny gold bell bottom disco pants, ripped them into shreds and threw them out in the street. Left me in my fruit of the loom, tighty whities. I remember I was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates t-shirt and they went on down the sidewalk thinking they had done the funniest thing ever. High-fiving, looking back, cubes. That's what they called me, cubes. I waited for traffic to stop, traffic's whizzing by, busy street. I gathered up the shreds, I went back to the sidewalk, covered up my underwear and waddled home. And it was, I mean, it was a walk of shame that might as well have been from Boston to Seattle. That's how long it seemed like it took, right, that one mile. And the worst part, I remember the worst part of that walk were the stoplights. There were two stoplights and they seemed to take forever. And I'm standing there in my underwear. and people at the light are just looking and nobody rolls down their window, nobody asks if I'm okay, and I finally make it home. The house is empty, funeral quiet, my mom's off selling real estate, my brothers are doing whatever, my father ran what is known as an auto trim shop with his brother, they reupholster car seats, know, very working class type thing. And I go to I go down into the basement, and Michelle, remember as I walked out to the basement in my underwear with these shreds, it was these blue wooden stairs and they creaked with every step. And as I'm walking down with each creek that I'd never noticed before, each creek felt like I had thrown a rock onto the middle of a pond and it rippled out, the creek rippled out to my father fixing cars. It's a... Brian Cuban (10:56.974) You can't stand up to bullies. You're not a Cuban. Rippled out to my mother, you know, rippled out to my family, who were all gonna be ashamed of me. These ripples of shame going out into Mount Lebanon. So I found a wastebasket and I pulled the newspapers aside and the cans and I put the shreds at the bottom of the wastebasket, hoping that it would... never be spoken of again, it would hide my shame, it would hide my trauma. But that's not how trauma and shame work. Trauma remembers, trauma threads. And trauma and shame have a way of kind of exploding out of the pressure cooker later in life. Could be decades, a decade, could be a week, it could be a decade, at a time when you least expect it and you may have compartmentalized it to such a degree that you don't even know that's what's driving it. Michelle Glogovac (11:50.08) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (11:51.042) You you tell yourself I'm over that, I'm over that, I'm over that. And that's kind of what happened to me. And it first manifested itself in drinking in high school, stealing from my parents' liquor cabinet, creating what I call jungle juice, you know, pouring all the stuff into a mason jar and then filling them with bottles with water so it would be back to the same, know, diluting the alcohol. And... Michelle Glogovac (12:14.304) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (12:18.19) But by college at Penn State, was a full blown alcoholic, drinking alone, drinking, going to class drunk, going out when I would go out alone to the bars. And when I was turned 21, buy a little bottle of tequila, drink the tequila in the alley where the bars were, hoping I would get drunk enough to go up and get even drunker in the bar and be somebody else, trying to turn into somebody else who didn't see a monster in the mirror. And that's what I was seeing. And that's what I started seeing after this physical assault, just this monster, monstrous reflection that wasn't worthy of love by anyone. Not my brothers, not my mother, not my parents who loved me dearly and would have been outraged at this event. But in the mind of a teenager, then in mind of a young adult, you create scenarios that validate not telling anyone and validate keeping it quiet, projection. Michelle Glogovac (13:18.41) Right. Brian Cuban (13:18.446) projection. And so that I went to law, I was a criminal justice major, I wanted to be a cop, that would have worked out well. I'd have been the first guy in the evidence room trading out the blow for the babyl accident. And I decided to go to law school, not because I wanted to be a lawyer, not because I wanted to emulate, be the next Clarence Darrow or emulate Atticus Finch. And I was also bulimic at that time as well. binging and purging. So going through all of these destructive behaviors. And I went to law school because in my mind, it was three more years that I didn't have to face myself or the world. It was three more years where I could drink. It was three more years where I could binge and purge without consequence. And all the behaviors that were allowing me to exist second to second. at the tip of my nose and I couldn't even think about three years out. So that's why I went to law school. The only reasons, I know as strange as that sounds, but you know what's funny, you know what's ironic is I speak at law schools all over the country. And in every law school, there'll be one or two people that are there and don't wanna be there. Not for my reasons, but they're there for all the wrong reasons. Pressure from parents, pressure from family, pressure on self to succeed. Michelle Glogovac (14:30.304) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (14:45.366) It's not as wild as it sounds, although my reasons are, you my situation is kind of different, right? Michelle Glogovac (14:52.49) Right. And what amazes me is that you got all the way to law school through law school having been addicted, drinking, doing cocaine. Brian Cuban (15:00.226) Yeah, yeah, well, I had an easy major. No, I didn't discover cocaine yet. It was drinking and my eating disorder. And I had also become exercise bulimic. And what that is, is obsessive compulsive exercise for the primary purpose of offsetting calories. And I was running up to 20 miles a day and I got into long distance running for all the wrong reasons. So I'm engaging in all these destructive behaviors at Penn State. But I did manage to get decent grades, believe it or not. Michelle Glogovac (15:05.545) Okay, okay. Brian Cuban (15:29.922) got good enough to grades and did well enough on the law school admission test to get into Pitt Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law. So I walked through the doors as an alcoholic, bulimic and all these things, all revolving around childhood trauma. And in law school, you can't just pull an all nighter. You have to study. So I didn't do very well at Pitt Law. mean, I was near the bottom of the class, but I did graduate. I took the Pennsylvania bar and I didn't seek help. No one asked. Again, it was a different time. I was rinse, wash, repeat. I was going to class hungover and drunk, not going to class. It was a difficult time, even though as now I'm 22, 23. Michelle Glogovac (16:07.393) Yeah. Brian Cuban (16:24.074) I did not recognize it as such because I recognized it as survival. I was surviving in the exact same way I survived at Penn State, and it was who I was. It was just another day. So I graduated. I wanted to get out of Pittsburgh because it was just, I didn't see anything there for me. I didn't have good grades. Nobody was giving me interview requests or anything like that. And with about 150 bucks to my name and a duffel bag, I took a Greyhound bus to Dallas from Pittsburgh. And my brother Mark met me at the Greyhound bus station and I moved in with Mark and Jeff, my younger brother Jeff. And this was before Mark became, you know, shark tank and Dallas Mavericks famous, but he was still, you know, an outgoing guy. People knew who he was. And so I moved in with them and it was like throwing gasoline on a fire because they're young. This is the, you know, they're out drinking, they're dating. This is the mid going into the mid. the second half of the 80s. And then I hadn't taken the Texas bar yet, so I'm trying to find work. And then I discovered the one thing, the one thing in a bathroom of a nightclub in Dallas, Texas, the summer of 1987, that finally allowed me to look in the mirror and love myself for the first time now in my 20, what, 26 years, discovered cocaine. I did my first line of cocaine in a bathroom in a nightclub and finally saw someone I loved in the mirror after 26 years of hating myself and not even being able to look at myself in the mirror. And it was a feeling I'd never experienced. And when you've spent 20, your first 26 years of your life or your teens hating yourself, right? And thinking everyone else hates you, who doesn't want to look in the mirror and love themselves? So it was a feeling I'd never experienced and cocaine and alcohol took over my life. Brian Cuban (18:26.254) and I still hadn't taken the Texas bar yet. Mark put me to work for him at his first company, Micro Solutions. That's another funny story. So he puts me to work for him and I show up for my first day at work and I'm wearing a suit. I have a briefcase because I'm, you know, I hadn't taken the bar yet, but I'm this lawyer. He looks at me, he rolls his eyes and he says, what the F are you doing? I said, I'm ready to work. Let's go. He says, go home. Michelle Glogovac (18:50.732) You Brian Cuban (18:56.312) put on your radiest jeans and t-shirt, get rid of that idiotic briefcase, come back here, and you were going to go into shipping and receiving, and you were gonna box computers. You were going to learn the business like everyone else starting at the bottom here. There is no nepotism here, there are no lawyers here, there are only people who wanna get rich. Those were his exact words. And so I went home and I changed, and that's what I did, I boxed computers. Michelle Glogovac (19:00.542) Bye. Michelle Glogovac (19:21.217) I love it. Brian Cuban (19:26.552) But I didn't want to, know, in my mind, I'm this lawyer and I, and again, that didn't work out too well. And I had different jobs as an adjuster and stuff, but my cocaine addiction got worse. I failed the Texas bar three times before finally passing and becoming a licensed attorney. The first time I took the Texas bar exam, my study aids, the weekend before the bar in this roach-infested motel. outside of Dallas were three and a half ounces of cocaine, a fifth of Jack Daniels, a liter of tab, and not quite the recipe for passing the bar. But that's what my addiction looked like back then going into the practice of law. Michelle Glogovac (20:03.392) Yeah. Michelle Glogovac (20:09.056) And then at what point did you get sober? watched a video where you said that Mark and Jeff had taken you kicking and screaming. Brian Cuban (20:15.726) Yeah, so going out, I lost my career as a lawyer, a near suicide attempt in 2005, two trips to a psychiatric facility in this time. Mark put me to work for him again, and that failed miserably. And then in Easter weekend 2007, finally, I had gone out, my girlfriend at that time, now my wife. She had gone away for the weekend and I had gone out and I was a massive liar, liar, liar, liar. And I was getting away with it for the most part. She went away and I went out thinking, okay, I'll go out, have a good time. She knew nothing about my drug struggles. And I went out to this club in Dallas. She was gonna be back Sunday evening and thinking I'd be showered and cleaned up and everything. The next thing I know. It's Sunday evening. She's looking down at me. I'm in bed and there's cocaine spread out everywhere. There's Xanax strewn along my nightstand because I was cocaineing through the night and Xanaxing through the day. And I had had a drug and alcohol induced blackout that lasted from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. I had no idea what had happened in those two days. or one and a half days. So she's a lawyer. She's trying to figure out if she walked in the right house. I'm trying to figure out what lie I can tell to explain this law and order orgy episode orgy of evidence that I just might not be the person I represented myself to be. And all I can think of was kind of a metaphorical running home to mama. I named the psychiatrist. The only I said, take me back to blank. Wait, you've been to a psychiatric facility before? Michelle Glogovac (22:01.59) Sure. Brian Cuban (22:14.533) I won't talk about that later. I just need to think of a better lie, right? To explain what there is no other explanation for. I was, you know, a drug addict and alcoholic and now it's out in the open, which ultimately was the best thing that ever happened to me. So we're standing in the parking lot of this facility twice. Now for me for the second time in my life, the first time was in 2005 after the near suicide attempt when my brothers dragged me down there kicking and screaming. And a few things occurred to me, Michelle. One, there wouldn't be a third trip back. I'd be dead. Two, she was going to leave me. I'd leave, right? I'd leave. But she didn't. She stood by me. We dated for over a decade while I rebuilt the broken trust and found recovery in 12-step, in the limbs of 12-step, and therapy. And we've now been together going on 18 years. So our relationship was able to survive that. Not all will. And then I thought about my father. My father who was the greatest generation, my father who, you know, worked on cars all of his life, very working class guy. My father fought in the Pacific and that he was a CB in the Navy, fought in Korea. And he used to say to Mark Jeff and I growing up, he'd say, guys, whatever you do, whatever happens your life, whether you move across the state, across the country or across the world. You pick up that phone, you call your brother, you make sure your brother's doing okay. You tell your brother you love him. And my father was the middle of three boys like me. And he was passing down this gift of family, which is a privilege, right? Because people come from broken families, estranged families. And he was passing down this gift that he had with his brothers. And it doesn't mean they got along all the time. Michelle Glogovac (23:58.38) Mm-hmm. Brian Cuban (24:10.742) He and his older brother, sometimes it was like a bad marriage, both of them running this auto trim shop. But I thought about that and I didn't want to lose my family. Why at that moment and not when I was ready to take my own life? I don't know. But I decided I was ready, Easter weekend 2007. And the next day I walked into the rooms at 12 step. And when I walked in and sat down, And for those who don't know, the most well-known is AA, but there are other ones. And I sat down and I was crying and I smelled. I'm sitting in the corner listening to people share. And I wasn't thinking about whether I was an alcoholic or any of that. I was thinking, if sitting in this chair will allow me for the first time in my life, wake up, walk to the bathroom, birthday suit naked, look at myself in the mirror and love myself. without the aid of drugs or alcohol, I will sit. And that was the beginning of my journey of sobriety and recovery. Michelle Glogovac (25:17.568) That's amazing. Congratulations, and you should be so proud of yourself, honestly, to get through that, to come to the other side, to have learned so much from it and to be putting it to such good use, you know, and not only your books, but as a speaker and talking to people about this. Brian Cuban (25:22.478) Well, thank you. Brian Cuban (25:36.308) I try and if you can get one person to take a step, whatever that step is, my path was abstinence and 12 step, but there are many paths to recovery. But also, I'd be disingenuous. I don't want to be disingenuous here that I've also had a lot of privilege. They say addiction doesn't discriminate well, but recovery can based on privilege. The resources we have and the act that doesn't... and the access people have to those resources. That doesn't mean I took advantage of them until I was ready, but I want to acknowledge that too, that my addiction and recovery went through massive privilege. I've always had health insurance. I've had a billionaire brother who loves me dearly and didn't want to see me dead or living under a bridge. And the vast majority of people do not have that. So I don't want people to think I am not aware of that. Michelle Glogovac (26:34.218) And think your book portrays that as well, you know, perfectly because we do get to see people who can't afford to go into, you know, assistance programs and then we see those who continue down the path of, have to sell it in order, you know, to help myself. Brian Cuban (26:49.57) Yeah, and we see what happens when people are vulnerable and don't have resources, but people with resources get taken advantage of too by shady recovery centers and sober homes. I know people in the real world who are very well off and have gone bankrupt trying to help their kids. And that's not all on the treatment industry. Some is, I believe, but because sometimes people... You just never know, right? You just never know what's gonna be the last line of cocaine, because it's tainted with fentanyl or the last injection of fentanyl or heroin or all those things, whether alcohol. I've known lawyers who have died from straight alcohol misuse and abuse, alcohol addiction. So we don't hear enough about that, how many people alcohol kills. Michelle Glogovac (27:45.578) Right, and I'm sure you saw this last week that the Surgeon General has come out and said that it's a carcinogen and we need more warnings around it. Brian Cuban (27:45.794) But so. Brian Cuban (27:51.938) Yeah, no, we've always known that, right? That alcohol is a policy. Yeah, so now the devil in those details is okay. Now they're saying that it's a lot less than we thought, in terms of what you can drink from a healthy standpoint, Staying healthy standpoint. So yeah, that was interesting. And I'm still digging into those details. Michelle Glogovac (27:55.178) Right, but now it's like, now we're talking about it. Michelle Glogovac (28:10.335) Right, right. Brian Cuban (28:18.604) Because every time I see Link, I want to know what the devil in the details are, So because anything is, you you can drink enough water to kill you. So you always want Michelle Glogovac (28:29.13) Right, that's what I teach my kids. Everything's in moderation, you guys. Everything, good or bad. Brian Cuban (28:33.262) Yeah, so you have, you you can dive, you know, a water boy, you know, water boys, I mean, if you drink too much. So you always have to know what the actual links are. Causation is not correlation. And so we always look into those things. Michelle Glogovac (28:38.188) Right. Michelle Glogovac (28:46.238) Amazing. I'm so grateful that you are sharing your story, that you are here with us today. That in and of itself is a huge feat. Brian Cuban (28:54.882) Yeah, I'm happy to be here and I'm happy when I see others who are on that path. Whenever I speak, always ask a question, what's the one requirement for recovery, right? For long-term recovery. And people say, you gotta want it, you gotta this, you gotta, no, be alive, be above ground. It's the only requirement. That's it, be above ground. Michelle Glogovac (29:14.316) Yes. I love it. Brian, where can everybody find you, the book, follow you, and listen to more of your encouraging words? Because we need it. Brian Cuban (29:26.466) You can follow me at, on many social media platforms. You just have to Google my name, primarily on the new one, Blue Sky, but I'm also on Twitter and LinkedIn, Facebook. My website is www.bryancuban.com. And I do blog a bit on these topics. Michelle Glogovac (29:41.416) Awesome. Thank you so much, Brian. yes. And you speak on it and there's videos and everything. I just stalk you and everybody can find it. Thank you so much. Yes. You're Google level. Brian Cuban (29:51.182) You will find my name on Google. That is... Yes.