Steppin' Out Radio

Leigh Steinberg (@leighsteinberg) Sports Agent to the Stars, wrote a best-selling book, Winning with Integrity, providing insight on how to improve life through non-confrontational negotiation. Furthermore, Leigh’s most recent book, The Agent: My 40-Year Career of Making Deals and Changing the Game, details his decades of dominance in the sports industry and sheds light on overcoming his personal stru...

Discovering her daughter’s addiction to opioids forced Maureen Cavanagh into the dark work of caring for a child with addiction.  Now, she is the founder of Magnolia New Beginnings, a nonprofit peer-support group for those living with or affected by substance use disorder. She has been recognized by The New York Times, CNN, and other outlets for her work fighting the opioid crisis and the stigma that surrounds it.  Cavanagh is also...

Born in Europe, Reva’s childhood was an unhappy one.  Depression set in so badly she tried taking her own life at age thirteen by swallowing a hundred aspirins.  She survived her suicide attempt, but upon waking from a deep sleep she learned nobody in Reva’s family noticed she had tried to kill herself.  Reva didn’t start drinking until she was 21, while away at college in New York City.  Instead of class, she was at any open bar s...

Kim grew up in a “beautiful suburb” as an only child of a “severe” alcoholic father. She says he was drunk daily. She remembers as a child telling her father that their lives would be okay if he didn’t keep drinking. But in her early teens, she began drinking herself. Kim would steal booze from her friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet at a party; she became so intoxicated she couldn’t go home. From that moment, she had a new favorite a...

Raymond is an alcoholic and an addict. Growing up in with an alcoholic mother in Brooklyn, he now knows it was booze which killed his mom. As a child, he would sneak drinks but his true drinking began at age 14 when sneaking out with friends. His drinking persisted from that moment on. His drinking took over his life to the point he twice attempted suicide. Raymond would wind up in psychiatric care at New York’s Bellvue Hospital, w...

Tommy was raised in New York’s Staten Island.  He was eleven years old when his father gave him his first drink, declaring Tommy to “be a man, now.”  But his regular drinking started age 13 with friends.  His mother beat him when he came home drunk.  Tommy’s drinking continued though his teenage years, dropping out of school by age 16 and working for a living.  His job allowed him to save money each week in order to go out drinking...

Sophie’s problematic compulsive gambling started later in life, when she was 60-years old. She had achieved sobriety from other addictions much earlier but started gambling as an activity and it quickly progressed into a problem. While making beach walks near her home in Atlantic City, she took a liking to slot machines in the city’s casinos. But her nickel bets turned into dropping hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours. Her att...

Paul’s life revolved around gambling from the time he was young. He played poker and flipped baseball cards. Paul always wanted to be a winner and pursued winning aggressively. He worked in a bowling alley at 12 years old and loved to watch the men play poker afterwards. He liked the “action” of gambling. It wasn’t about winning or losing. Paul’s focus became on gambling and he thought about it all the time. When the game was over,...

David’s first time gambling was at age six.  His father taught him to play poker, making penny bets, and it soon became a family activity.  Later in life, David can see that other kids would enjoy a range of activities but he only wanted to play poker.  Soon his family games went from pennies to dimes.  As an adult, David now knows his father, who showed him how to gamble, had a gambling problem himself.  In his teen years, he woul...

Sean grew up in a neighborhood in which if you didn’t gamble, you didn’t belong.  Bets began at a young age with friends, as they would play baseball with each other.  In his early teens, a friend introduced him to a bookie, and Sean made bets on sports games right away, putting up bets of hundreds of dollars that he didn’t have.  His losses would have the bookie knocking on his parents’ door.  As he got older, he would come to ido...

Compulsive Gambler Joel’s first bet was, as it often is, during childhood.  Joel was a fantastic marble player; and not only one the games among the kids, he would up winning all the marbles and taking them home.  But as a teen, his parents took him to the track, giving him two dollar to play with.  Joel won fifteen.  And from that moment, he just knew he could make money his whole life by gaming.  He became a card player, a pool p...

Andy is a compulsive gambler.  His game of choice was poker, but he would gamble on anything he could.  And all he would do is lose money.  He barely if ever won.  Andy’s legitimate creditors – namely the bank – would often call his house, speaking with him or his wife, asking for him to get his bills current.   Andy wasn’t raised a gambler, but was introduced to gambling by his father-in-law, who later Andy and his wife would reco...

Jenn returns to re-tell her story of teenage alcoholism.  She had her first drink in her first week of her freshman year in high school, but she had wanted to drink for a long time leading up to it.  Jenn was too scared to drink at home, but found friends a couple of hours away whose parents permitted the teenagers to drink.  Her first drunk was with these friends, at a beachside bonfire.   Jenn found the drinking alleviated the st...

Brian comes from a culture where drinking and other bad behavior tends to be congratulated.  He was a child when he convinced an alcoholic adult to buy him booze by paying him for it.  Brian can remember getting drunk that night with a buddy, staggering around the neighborhood, and then blacking out and coming too in his parents home late at night.  His boozing got him in trouble while in Singapore, where he got arrested for drinki...

Barbara is addicted to sex and love, and she shares her story in hopes others can begin to understand the difference between normal sex, love and romance, and those who use them as a “drug of no choice.” Barbara asserts that much of this stems from a need to be approved and accepted. Her own issues began in childhood, with a mother preoccupied with sex. Barbara was encouraged by her mother to have sex often as a teenager. But when ...

Dave is a sex and love addict. He spent most of his life wondering how he became this way. He still isn’t sure. Dave grew up in a upper-middle class home in a family of high achievers. His parents and siblings were very loving. There was no outright abuse. But Dave’s father was very success-oriented, and there was a lot of pressure to perform to high expectations both in school and life. And because of that, Dave found his father w...

Bob’s major use of drugs and alcohol stared after high school, following a bad breakup.  Bob incidentally was taken to a twelve-step meeting which brought him into two years of sobriety, though it ended when he toasted his brother at his wedding.  Years later, he wound up in jail.  Bob was not only an addict, but a serial abuser of his wife and kids.  And in jail, under physical threat by the other inmates, he decided to get sober ...