Episode 393: Lost in Del Valle: How Actor Ned Van Zandt Turned His Darkest Days Into Redemption

0:00All right, everybody, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Wired for Addiction, and honestly, I am so excited about this partnership. You might remember Dr. Evelyn Higgins from when she came on the show to talk about the biomarkers of addiction. That episode landed in such a powerful way for so many of you, and I really believe in the work she's doing. Here's the thing, if you or someone you love has been caught in chronic relapse, addiction switching, or treatment that only works for a while, the issue may not be behavioral. It may be biological, and that changes everything. Dr. Higgins and her team actually measure the underlying biomarkers driving these patterns, dopamine, cortisol, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and then build a personalized plan to bring your biology back into balance.

0:52She put together a free guide for you, the Biology of Addiction 10 Core Biomarkers, downloaded at theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. That's theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. There'll also be a link in the show notes. And I want you to know, you are not broken. Sometimes your biology just needs to be understood, and I think that brings a lot of hope. All right, on to this episode. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Addicted Mind podcast. I'm Dwayne Osterland, and I'm so glad you're here.

1:31I've got it together enough. got a great apartment on both coasts, have money in the bank. I'm okay. I'm going to drink. It was a decision and I drank and nothing happened. And then four days later, I'm being rushed to Bellevue Hospital with a cocaine overdose.

1:51My guest today is Ned Van Zandt, an actor, a playwright, and a man with 19 years of continuous recovery. With 20 years coming in January, You may have seen him in The Blacklist, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, or Painkiller. But the story he tells in this conversation is the one underneath all of that. Ned moved into the Chelsea Hotel the same week Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen did. He partied through the LA music scene. He got sober in 1987, put together almost 13 years. And then on New Year's Eve of 1999, he made a decision to have one glass of wine. And four days later, he was in the Bellevue with an overdose.

2:36Seven years after that, he was in a Texas jail cell, which is where his play Lost in Del Valley gets its name. If you've ever thought you had it handled or thought you were too far gone to come back, this one is going to meet you where you are. We talk about what it takes to actually do the work the second time around, why service is the thing that brings the spark back, and how Ned turned the worst years of his life into something he now performs off-Broadway. But before we jump in, if this podcast has been meaningful to you, take a moment and rate and review The Addicted Mind on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

3:18Even better, write a review. Those reviews help people who are struggling find this show and follow us on social media so you stay connected. All right, let's get into it.

3:35All right, everybody. Welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast. I have an incredible guest today, Ned Venzant. Ned, I want you to just jump in, introduce yourself, and then we're going to get into your story, which I think is pretty crazy in some ways, has a lot of history. And then we're going to get into your story of recovery and what you're doing now and all the projects that you're doing. So, Ned, please introduce yourself. Thank you, Dwayne. I'm Ned Van Zandt. I live in New York City. I'm 19 years in recovery, clean and sober, continuous recovery. I'll have 20 years in January and it's kind of a miracle.

4:16I had recovery previously. I first got sober in 1987 and I I had a pretty low bottom and I put together almost 13 years and went out. You know, I thought, well, I'm not really an alcoholic. I can have a drink. And the next thing you know, I was out on a run for seven years. And it was treacherous and not fun, but it gave me a great story. And it's interesting because I was thinking this morning, well, I'll just tell you a little bit about myself. So I'm from Texas, from Fort Worth, Texas, from a storied family. My great-grandfather was one of the founders of the city of Fort Worth. He brought the railroad in.

4:56He just, you know, he was quite an accomplished man. He was also in Confederacy in the Civil War. And he was a major, actually, for the Confederacy. And when the war was over, he kept his slaves. The story is they wanted to work for him. Anyway, it's kind of a, you know, always made me uncomfortable, that aspect. But anyway, storied family. My second cousin was a talented singer-songwriter. And my dad did a lot of things. He was a writer. He worked for Gulf Oil Company. He was what's called a landman. In my childhood, I spent in Somalia, Venezuela, London, Rome. So I had a very exotic childhood from the age of 5 to 10.

5:37I saw the world and ended up back in Fort Worth, did not want to be there. Begged my dad to go to this hippie boarding school in Lenox, Massachusetts, where I really excelled. I started getting into drugs and alcohol when I was like 13, but I was a weekend warrior. And I didn't really cross that line. And that proverbial line one does until I was in my mid-20s. But I went to this art school in Lenox, Massachusetts, decided I wanted to be an actor, went to NYU for acting school. Olympia Dukakis, the great actress, was my acting teacher. And in my 20s, I was kind of just off and running. I, you know, it seemed at one point everything I turned to gold.

6:18You know, I was in some important movies and got some TV work. But I also liked to party. And so I crossed that kind of proverbial line when I was around 24. At the time, I was bi-coastal living between New York and L.A. I did some work in London and just found out I liked to party. And I ended up, you know, one of the fun, if that's the right word, stories is in the summer of 1978, I was doing Commedia dell 'arte with Harry Hamlin at the Renaissance Fair. I'd been living in L.A. I had this beautiful Bulgarian model girlfriend. We were fighting and I got my agent said, you should go to San Francisco and work on your chops and do some theater, which I did.

7:04And when I was there, I met all these punk rockers who said, we're moving to the Chelsea Hotel. And so I moved into the Chelsea Hotel the same week that Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungin moved in. And my using, drinking, and everything else just went off the charts. Because suddenly I'm hanging out with Sid and Nancy as Steve Baiters from the Dead Boys. I mean, I met all these incredible people within like the first few weeks. First, before you go there, what pulled you into acting? What was it that you loved about acting? Well, as I say in my play is I'm talking to my cellmate, Jesus, in jail. And he goes, what?

7:44He asked me basically the same question. What pulled you into acting? And I say to him, remember when you were five years old and you watched Peter Pan on TV for the first time and you wanted to fly? And he says no. But that's basically it. My mother was a big band singer in the 1930s in New York. She sang with Eddie Duchin and Paul Whiteman. And so she was theatrical. She gave up show business when she married my dad. But from a very early age, I loved movies and I loved playtime and put on skits. And when I was eight years old, so I did some child acting, too, because I was living in Texas. When we got back from Africa and living all over the world, I did all the kid roles in, like, community theater.

8:30And I got my equity card when I was 10 playing Winthrop and the Music Man. And then I played Oliver and Oliver and, you know, various things. And I really loved it. And then I gave it up. But, you know, I don't know. You know, I just loved. It just had a pull for you. So then you started getting the roles. You started moving on up and getting some roles. You were on some soap operas. So you're starting to grow. And then you go to L.A. and you're going back to you went to the Chelsea Hotel. Well, what happened? So it's Hollywood. It's the mid-70s, late 70s. And I started hanging out with some rock and rollers.

9:09My roommate was dating Chaka Khan at the time. And so she more or less moved in our apartment with her entourage. And that kind of put the partying up to another level. and uh you know i love her dearly and she is a real survivor but you know it just accelerated and i know i always realized you know i really really got to keep it together i can't you know i used to pride myself i never showed up for an acting job loaded and that was true but you know how much further could i have gone if i wasn't getting high as much as i was but it didn't really hit the skids until the Chelsea Hotel. So for people out there who are listening and don't know the Chelsea Hotel, can you kind of set the stage there for that?

9:56Like a lot of people don't, may not know what that place was and the history there. Well, it's, I mean, it's got incredible history and there's a couple of documentaries about the place, both of which I'm in. There's one called Ghost of the Chelsea Hotel and then there's one called Sad Vacation. Now, Sad Vacation more about Sid and Nancy, but The Ghost of the Chelsea Hotel, which is a wonderful documentary, which came out a couple of years ago, but it really gives a great history because it was, you know, begun as a bohemian hotel. It was put together for artists and it was owned by this family.

10:32And so throughout history, I mean, great writers, Dylan Thomas, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, all lived there. And I mean, Edward Albee, you name it. And so throughout different decades, it was different things for different people. Now, in the 1960s, it became associated with rock and roll and the Stones stayed there. And Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, photographers, they lived there. And so it had this reputation. And so here I am in the summer of 1978 in San Francisco, and I'm hanging out with these punk rockers. And I was not a punk rocker. I mean, I, you know, I like to party with him, but I, you know, I was this kind of preppy guy with wire rim glasses and, you know, tweed jacket.

11:21But they all said, we're moving to the Chelsea Hotel. And at the time, like I said, I'd had this bad breakup with my girlfriend. And I thought, I'm not going back to L.A. And there was, you know, just Graham in L.A. for me, I thought. And so I just like, I'm going. And it was a whole new scene. And, you know, like I said, Sid and Nancy. That's where your addiction started to really take off. I mean, that was a time of just kind of crazy partying and all the stories that I know about, Sid Vicious and all of that. It was crazy. Yeah. I mean, and it was a time in our country, too, where it was just, you know, I mean, I can remember going back to Texas and hanging out with, you know, kind of straight-laced friends, you would think.

12:03And everybody was doing hard drugs and cocaine was coming into the scene. And, you know, heroin was something I said I would never do. but I ended up doing it and I loved it. I mean, I was an addict born for that drug. And so, you know, that became a problem over the years until I got sober. Yeah, no, it was, it was, I mean, New York City in that period, a writer friend, Julie Clam, she described it as New York City in the mid-cock dirty best or Coke, however you say Mayor Coke's name. New York was at its midcoat dirty best and it really was i mean it was just it was like the wild west and celebrated in this scene right i mean just celebrated and just oh of course yeah like when nancy was murdered part of my story is that i was there i wasn't i was there a couple of hours before she was murdered i was in their room but it was like oh everything's going to be shut down you know the cops are going to come in and no they didn't care i mean they had you know it was like i said it was like the Wild West and, you know, open air supermarkets to buy drugs on the Lower East Side.

13:11And yeah, it was a wild time. So meanwhile, you're doing this, you're doing more acting roles, you're moving through this process, but then you have this first stint with sobriety. What was happening? Well, it was kind of performative because I got myself in a little trouble. I would stop the hard drugs and I would just drink or, you know, I would do that thing we do, you know, just drinking on weekends, all that kind of stuff. And so I was managing my use in the 80s, in the early 80s. And then finally, around 1986, I got in some trouble with bad checks. And so I was kind of given a nudge from the judge to go to rehab.

13:52And I thought, okay, I'll go. But in the back of my mind, I'm manipulative. How can I manipulate my way out of this? But so I went to treatment, and I was formative. I, you know, I was a good student, sat in the front row, you know, seminars and CBT, DBT, all that stuff and started going to meetings. I liked meetings. I liked the social aspect of it. Now, in terms of the program and the real work, I kind of thought I was above that. You know, I thought, well, I don't need to delve into that. And I certainly don't need to do service. You know, I'm not. So I had this kind of arrogance. You know, it was what I was.

14:32But I managed to put together some time and my life got better and the cash and prizes came back and I went back to acting and I started, you know, I ended up doing a Broadway show. I was recurring on Law and Order. I mean, all these things that I dreamed of. But again, I had never done the work of the program. Right. Not that deep work where you really dig into yourself to really understand yourself. It's kind of like that surface level work to get by. Absolutely. And I, you know, so consequently, you know, my bank account was big, but I was miserable and full of resentments. And, you know, as they say in the program, resentments are the number one offender.

15:13So fast forward to New Year's Eve, 1999, I'm at a party with some very fancy people here in New York. And I've just come off a run, a show on Broadway, no work on the horizon, just had a bad breakup, another bad breakup. And I'm stewing in my own, you know, self-involvement. And somebody brought out a beautiful bottle of like$300 wine. It was, you know, wine that I was familiar with. And I thought, eh, you know, I never got in trouble for alcohol. I never had a DUI. You know, my problem was with drugs. And I thought, I've got it together enough, got a great apartment on both coasts, have money in the bank.

15:58I'm okay. I'm going to drink. You know, it was a decision and I drank and nothing happened. And then four days later, I'm being rushed to Bellevue hospital with a cocaine overdose because within my brain had gone, I need something better. And the interesting thing is that I hate cocaine, but it was the only drug I could find. My drug of choice I couldn't find, which was heroin or meth. But I just needed, you know, the addict had been unleashed and doing push-ups, whatever they say. Yeah, in the back corner waiting for you. Yeah, so I did too much, ended up in the hospital. That scared the hell out of me.

16:39And so I put myself into rehab like the next day. I went to Hazelden in Florida and I thought, okay, I need to get it together. But it didn't take. I couldn't get it. I came back to New York after 28 days, going to meetings, trying to, you know, do the thing. But it wasn't happening for me. And so I put together about four months of sobriety. And then in the spring, I think it was April of 2000, I'm sitting outside in an outdoor cafe. and the man that had sold me the cocaine, he'd come in a Lincoln Town car to my apartment. He was a friend of a friend who had given me this number. And anyway, at the time, because that's all he had.

17:20Anyway, that same man walked by as I'm sitting in an outdoor cafe on Greenwich Avenue and he's got a briefcase. And I said, yo, Joe. And he came over, opened his briefcase and he had every drug I wanted. And so I made that decision. Okay, I'm going out. If it gets really bad, I can always go back to 12-step programs. Well, it doesn't work like that. You know, it's like putting a square peg in a round hole. And so I was out. I owned a house in Austin, Texas. And so I left New York just abruptly. Nobody knew where I went. This is before social media or anything else. And I just, you know, I'm just going to hide out for a while.

17:59You know, in the back of my mind, I'm going, if it gets bad, I'm going to bail on this. But I couldn't. I was too deep in. Yeah, you were in it. The bargain you made with yourself. Yeah. And six years in, I knew it was getting dicey. My money was gone. Anyway, long story short, I ended up getting arrested for possession of drugs with intent to distribute on a dirt road outside Austin, Texas. And it was a serious drug charge. And I got thrown in jail. And the jail was called Del Valle. and thus the title of my play Lost in Del Valle because when I got to jail, the head of the Texas Aryan Brotherhood gang recognized me from the soap opera One Life to Live, which was his favorite soap opera.

18:41And it also turned out he was from Fort Worth. He knew of my family and anything else. So anyway, it's a while. So what was going through your mind as this is all kind of falling apart to the point of like getting arrested for distribution I mean, that's pretty intense from all the way up here, having everything, losing all your money, getting down to this spot. What was going on? Well, I was grateful in a sense because I can remember because like a couple of months previous to getting arrested, I knew this was a dead end. I thought, you know, I'm going to end up killing myself, I mean, from overdosing or something.

19:16I just knew there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know if I believe in God. You know, I believed in something, but I just said, you know, help me, universe. Help me, God. And, you know, the irony is I got arrested. That was the help. But I needed help. I didn't know what it was. So when this did happen, as horrible as it was, and it's no fun being in jail, nobody would bail me out. You know, I had siblings. You know, my parents were long dead. But I had siblings, and they were tough loving me. They were like, nope, you're on your own. Take care of it yourself. Yeah. And so, you know, that's what happened.

19:50And that was the beginning. You're in this prison with this guy who's going to offer you protection. And drugs. And drugs, because he recognized you from the soap opera. So what are you thinking in that moment? Like, what is going through your mind? I mean, it was a very scary place. I'm thinking, how can I sleep? I just, you know, I was unable to sleep. And he had drugs that he could give me. You know, I'm not thinking too far in the future. I'm not thinking, oh, I mean, what happened was the longer I was there. It came to me, I need help. But then again, it was like I had a court-appointed attorney who said I was going to do two years for this, you know, drug possession charge with intent to distribute because I got busted in a really red county in Texas.

20:35And so I thought I need a way out. And part of it was, well, I could always go to rehab again. But I really didn't think that was going to work. But, you know, it did. But anyway, so it was kind of manipulative on my part. That's what I'm thinking is how can I get out of this situation? probation and then i was given you know the offer of well if you do six months in rehab and then you'll have two years probation and then you know it's interesting because i two years ago i went to canada to play rudy giuliani in the netflix miniseries painkiller and i'd never worked in canada before and they said oh one one last thing have you ever had any convictions or anything and you know because canada is very strict about letting in people you know even with drunk driving a lesson.

21:19I said, well, I've actually written a play about it. I told them a little bit about it. And they said, we're going to need to call you back. And they called me back and they said, we need you to get clearance from every city and every state you ever lived in. Scotland Yard, because I lived in London, everything. And so I had to do that and to get to work in Canada. But that was kind of a redemptive moment is they actually sent me an overnight letter that says, we have deemed you officially rehabilitated. Welcome to Canada. But I had to get, you know, I had to get references from people. And so you had to really, really work hard to do that.

21:56So now you make this transition. Tell me a little bit about just going through that process into this second phase of recovery and how this is different from that first phase and putting that all together. It was much harder the second time. And it's much harder. I went to a treatment center in Hawaii. And that's, I thought I was going somewhere where I could learn how to surf. But I had a brother-in-law who was a doctor for the army in Hawaii. And he found this place and I went there. And it just, you know, Hawaii is such a great place to be in recovery. And I was very beaten down. But I thought, you know, if I'm going to do it, it was fake it till you make it.

22:35You know, I didn't really believe it was going to work. I believed in the concept of AA and 12-step and all that, you know, I'd seen it work in other people, but I thought I was broken, but I thought I'm just going to follow directions. And so I did what, you know, I met this guy who became my sponsor and he made me the coffee maker of his meeting. And I started doing service work and I did the steps, which I had never done in those previous 13 years of sobriety. And so that helped and that built, you know, and I got physically better. And then I thought, you know, I've destroyed my life, you know, I mean, my stinking thinking was, what have I done?

23:12And then I thought, you know, I've got some great stories. And so I had this idea, I need to write about it. Didn't know how I was going to do it. I had no money. I'm living in Hawaii. I had some friends in LA. So first of all, I got out of rehab in Hawaii and lived in Hawaii for three years from 2007 to 2010, started getting acting work in Hawaii. You know, at the time there were like five series there, And there was actually a year there where I made my living as an actor. I was like a big fish in a small pond and worked with Steven Soderbergh. I was on an episode of Lost. I did a lead in a Lifetime movie and a couple of other network, you know, just kind of little co-star, guest stars.

23:56And that got me. It's like a return to that creativity, that creative spirit in this new way. Absolutely. But then I moved back to L.A. and I said, I'm back. and nobody, you know, everybody's, you know, I didn't have an agent and I got a pretty crappy agent and nobody cared. And I'm older. I'm not this young. Right. And so that was tough. You know, the hard reality of LA. Yeah, it's tough. But I knew I wanted to, I knew there was something I wanted to write. And so I had a great friend who I knew from the program and I knew from theater in New York and Bill Hoffman, who wrote the Broadway play As Is.

24:34And he also wrote the libretto to Ghost of Versailles. And he was part of the off-off Broadway scene, which I was part of when I first lived there. And when I first lived in New York in the early seventies, and he reached out and said, Hey, come crash on my couch. And so I got myself back to New York in 2012 and just, you know, I mean, it's been amazing. So I wrote this play, started writing this play in 2014. 2014 it's been through many revisions uh several different producers and then in 2015 I had a recurring part on the tv show The Blacklist uh 2015 and 2016 with James Spader and uh I played a character named Leonard Cole and it was you know I mean this you know it was fantastic and I befriended Amir Arison who was a series regular on The Blacklist and one day we got to talking And I said, well, I've just written this play.

25:28And he goes, I want to hear it. He came to my apartment. I read it for him. He freaked out, said, I need to direct this. And oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And so but that took time because at the time there was another producer who had optioned it. Nothing was happening there. And then COVID hit. And so all bets were off and got very depressed about that. But then I believe in 2022, I think 2022 or 2023, I went to see Amir on Broadway in The Kite Runner. Amir was starring in The Kite Runner, went backstage after, and he said, what's happening with your play? And I said, nothing. And he said, let's go up to the Orchard Project up in Saratoga Springs, part of Skidmore College.

26:11And so in the summer of 2023, we did a workshop up there and found out we loved working together. and then we did another one in 2024. It's been such a process. Then we went to Edinburgh last August, 2025, to do a production. In the meantime, Craig Balsam, overproducer of Broadway shows, and he's a rock and roll guy, he came to one of our workshops and he said, this needs a rock and roll guitarist. And so he brought, we got a guitarist. So now it's, I play 19 characters, including Sid and Nancy. I tell the story of that night of the murder. I don't think he killed her. That's part of it. And the story of Del Valle.

26:51And then there's the, you know, the redemption stuff without being treacly or preachy or anything else. But I think the gist here, the story here is that I had screwed up my life and figured out a way to make lemonade out of lemon. you know i well i i'm listening to you talk and i'm just wondering you know it takes a certain level of grit a certain level of acceptance of letting go and just really trusting the the creative process to come out and present itself that's what i that's what i hear yeah not giving up, not, you know, show business is a cruel mistress. You know, I don't know what it is, the life force.

27:39And that's something, you know, that I got through sobriety that came back. Because I can remember in early sobriety thinking, is this, is that fire ever going to come back? And it does, you know, and today my job, you know, I work in the recovery business. I'm partner and managing director of a men's sober house on the Upper West Side here called Transcend NYC. And I've been doing this work for almost nine years and became a partner years ago. And so nothing brings me greater happiness than to see the lights come on in someone. You know, I mean, I'm working with guys, you know, it's men from 18 to 35 or 40 is the demographic.

28:17But, you know, we've had guys as old as 80, you know, 60 year old doctor. And I was going to say, you know, being able to, like you said, watch the lights come on in someone else that that creative spirit, that spark that gives you energy and purpose and giving back, you know, through your story, right through your story, Lost in Del Valley is your story. And it's about giving that wisdom back, that experience back to others so that they can learn and grow and pull something from it. Like that's an amazing thing to do. And it's also very dark and rather dirty and very funny. We have a trigger warning at the beginning of the show because I'm playing some pretty unsavory characters.

29:06but also anyway i'm really proud of the writing and i'm proud of my performance and i'm really proud of my director amir arison and my producers and we are opening you know this is our third go round we did edinburgh and then we did a short run downstairs at the soho playhouse last march and april and now we're upstairs on the main stage starts preview september 14th running through the end of October. And, you know, this is like the dream on one hand. On the other hand, I said, you know, sometimes I'm backstage and I go, what the, what am I doing? You know, exposing myself like this. But, you know, this, this is my calling, you know, and it's fun.

29:50I was asked at a talk back for another playwright's show this fall. The topic was one person shows, which I would just flinch from. I mean, someone says, oh, you want to come see my friend's one-person show? I go, no, you know, but there are some good ones. And I, you know, some of my heroes are Mike Berbiglia and John Legazumo and Eric Boghossian, you know, and so I've been influenced by these people. But someone asked me, when are you most happy? I guess that was the question. And I said, when I'm performing this, you know, I'd gotten to a place where acting, you know, I mean, And that love that I talked about, you know, when I'm five years old, you know, that's come and gone.

30:32You know, I mean, there's nothing greater than being on a, you know, on a set of a hit TV show and you've done good work and it's very exciting. But everything else that goes with it and then you don't work for six months and all that. But anyway, I wasn't sure I was ever going to find that love and, you know, that thing. You were able to reconnect with it through your whole journey. I mean, that's amazing. Amazing. And I imagine, too, reconnecting with it when you're doing the internal work in a much deeper way, in a more purposeful way. And I would imagine you're writing your play, you have to look at yourself to do this through the darkness, through the humor, through all of it.

31:17And that's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. All right. So where can people find more information about this? They want to see your story. Okay, go to, we have our own website, lostindelvalley.com. Now that's spelled D-E-L-V-A-L-L-E, Del Valle. So it's lost, L-O-S-T-I-N-D-E-L-V-A-L-L-E.com. And it's at Soho Playhouse. You can also go to the Soho Playhouse website, but lostindelvalley.com, you know, give you explanation. It'll give you all kinds of info and tickets. And this next run starts in like a week here, I think, right? It starts in two weeks from tonight. Yeah. Two weeks from today. All right.

32:01We'll get this episode out soon. All right. Before you go, and also for all the listeners, I will put all the links in the show notes as well at theaddictivemind.com so you can check them out there. But before you go, I ask every guest one question. Maybe someone out there is struggling. Maybe they're in that moment where you felt like you had lost it all, right? You've given it all up. And you could tell them one thing in that moment. What would you want them to know? Well, I'm dealing with a fellow right now at my sober house. And it's a realization he came up with. I helped him come up with it.

32:38Is that he's going to feel better tomorrow. If he can get through the night sleeping, the perceptions will change. And that seems to be, I mean, that's what got me through a lot of times. Because, I mean, if you tell me, oh, you know, and especially if you start talking about God or anything else, I'm going to just like recoil. But the only constant is change. Things are going to change. Your life is like a long roll of film. And a lot of times we are focusing on the end. Focus on this one frame here. This is right now. That's where we are. You don't know the outcome. You don't know what you don't know.

33:18I mean, I have these kind of platitudes and, you know, I mean, when I was in my teens, I took a Jose Silva mind control course, which is great because they gave me some mantras every day and every way I'm getting better and better. You know, I do that. Fake it till you make it. You know, that's another one. That's kind of discounted sometimes. But act as if. Just do that. Yeah. Move a muscle, change a thought. All those things. You know, that's a big one. Move a muscle, change a thought. go for a walk just do that because i'm proof you know i am proof i should i should not be here and you know there is magic i said to my 12-step sponsor a while back is like i was bemoaning the fact that oh the magic just gone you know like early recovery was you know good things and right you said what are you doing what are you doing what do you what are you doing for that the whole concept of service.

34:15I mean, I tell people that are further along in recovery, you got to do it. You got to do it. Even if it sounds like some sort of formula. But anytime I'm not thinking about me, thinking about something else, it's better. Oh, awesome. Ned, there's a lot of wisdom in there. I'll put all the links in the show notes. It was a pleasure having you on, talking with you. I wish I was there so I could go see it. I'm in LA, but maybe at some point, who knows? I mean, that's the point is, I've got some irons in the fire. I want to bring it up there. Oh, hopefully. All right. You'll have to reach out and let me know.

34:55That would be awesome. Ned, thank you so much for coming on to The Addicted Mind. Thank you, Dwayne.

35:05What a great conversation. What stayed with me is what Ned said about the role of film. when you're in the middle of it, you're staring at the end, how it all turns out, whether you've already ruined it. And he's saying, look, look at this one frame, this one, that's a kind of hope that doesn't ask you to believe in anything you can't believe yet. And the other piece I keep coming back to is that he got sober the first time and got his life back, but he never did that deeper work and it caught up with him. Now that's not a failure story. That's an honest one. Ned's play Lost in Delvalley opens off-Broadway at the Soho Playhouse with previews starting in September 14th and running through the end of October.

35:50You can find tickets and more about his work at lostindelvalley.com. I'll have all the links in the show notes at theaddictedmind.com as well. And if this episode gave you a little bit of hope, do me a favor, rate and review The Addicted Mind wherever you're listening. Write a review if you can. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and follow us on social media. Every review, every share helps someone who's stuck in the darkness find a conversation that might just be the start of something different. So thanks for being here and I'll talk to you on the next episode.