In this candid interview, Adam Jablin recounts his descent from casual substance use to full-blown addiction and his subsequent 18‑year recovery. He describes early exposure to prescription painkillers after a torn ACL/MCL, escalating to alcohol, Xanax, stimulants, and ecstasy, and how he rationalized each habit as a "dependency" rather than an addiction. Adam explains the internal shift from mental obsession to physical craving that marks true addiction, emphasizing that unhealthy dependency does not always lead to addiction but can become a turning point when the mind is consumed. He shares the pivotal moment of entering rehab when his first daughter was six months old, the sacrifice of missing early parenting moments, and the lasting impact of sobriety on his family life, now raising two teenage children. The conversation then pivots to broader reflections on time perception, comparing mindless phone scrolling to intentional practices like cold plunges and sauna sessions, arguing that controlled attention is a key antidote to addictive patterns. Throughout, the tone remains conversational, reflective, and hopeful, offering both a personal narrative and practical insights into recognizing, confronting, and transcending addiction.
Chapters
So I'm taking these fat burners that literally are now like illegal. Yeah, you're sweating it out, but my heart rate's going like this.
Wow.
Taking a Xanax right after, just to relax, just to relax with a cup of coffee, because now I gotta take the baby to school.
Yeah, you gotta focus with the coffee, Xanax, relax.
Dude, this is all day. I had torn my ACL and MCL, which introduced me to Percocet, OxyContin, Darvocet. So I'm popping those.
You're like an architect of like, how do I use these substances to get through my day?
It was exhausting. It was exhausting. But meanwhile, I don't know I'm an alcoholic or an addict. I'm just trying to live. And if I told you the amounts, some of it's disclosed in the book, but I still even minimize it there. Still people wouldn't believe me.
Really?
Yeah, because first off, one of the reasons I try to minimize it a little bit is I don't want people to think that their body can do that. I don't want to give anybody a permission slip.
Yeah, you don't want someone to compare themselves, say, oh, I'm not quite there, so I'm okay. Exactly.
Yeah. Which, if you have the addictive mind, that's exactly what you do.
Yeah.
Because that's what I did.
Sets the level of what's okay. It just keeps getting more further down the line.
Yeah. When I was doing ecstasy with my friends, you know, I mean, he's doing 6, 7 tabs, and, oh, okay, I'm not that bad. I'm at 4. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So the body's Look, I went from a very bad habit to an unhealthy dependency to being a full alcoholic and addict.
Wow.
You know, so just so you know, the middle stage, like an unhealthy dependency, right? I'm the kind of guy where if I take vitamin C 10 days in a row, on the 11th day I'm not leaving the house till I take the 11th. Yeah, until I take the vitamin C. Yeah. Um, but is it really an addiction?
No.
Yeah. I'm just dependent upon it, right? Right. But when you cross that line to becoming a full alcoholic and addict, there's no going back.
Does unhealthy dependency always lead to addiction?
No, not at all. Not at all. As a matter of fact, many people have an unhealthy dependency and either have a moment of clarity or an awakening or something scary happened, or hire a coach, whatever, and realize it's just something that they can't let go of.
Yeah.
But when they get the permission slip that they can live life without whatever that is— yeah, they let it go without suffering.
But it's got to be pretty scary to try to face life without the thing that you're dependent on, because probably subconsciously you feel like people won't see you as worthy because you can't show up.
It's— yeah, I mean, it's challenging, but it's certainly— you don't need to detox from it, right? You know, you're, you're not going to— let's use that word— you're not going to suffer, right? You're not going to suffer, right?
When does it turn into addiction? Is that when you're physically addicted? Like, how do you define the difference between—
so in each human being, it's internal, right? You, you don't, you don't really know.
Yeah.
But when you have the mental obsession that just won't stop, the mental obsession, then you have the physical craving. Yeah. And you have no solution. And now, now you need it. Now it's— you need it like you need air. Yeah. Like you need it to breathe. Right? So imagine the pressures of life and you're, you're an addict and now someone's going to tell you out of nowhere, stop breathing. Yeah, stop breathing. Like, what are you, crazy?
Yeah.
And that's what happened to me. Like, when I— right before I went to rehab, my— we were about to have a baby and I thought— first one. And I thought my daughter was going to be the solution.
Yeah.
I thought it was going to give me such a purpose and such a meaning that I'll be able to stop all of this behavior. Yeah, I really, really did.
Yeah.
And I was woken up to reality very quick because I had never loved anything so much in my life. And it wasn't Disney World and puppies and rainbows. It was sleepless nights and baby monitors and baby formula and It was, it was more responsibility than I ever thought I had within the business.
Yeah.
And now you want me to stop breathing?
Yeah. Wow.
So it, believe it or not, it added, it fueled. Like, I need more. I need more, more, more, more, more.
And so you went to rehab prior to having your first daughter?
I went to rehab when my daughter was 6 months old.
6 months old.
Yeah. So I'm 18 years clean and sober.
Yeah.
My daughter's 18. Yeah, I mean, I kind of grew up with her.
Gotcha.
Yeah, I literally—
you've been clean since she's been born? Yeah, since she's been 6 months old.
He's 6 months old.
Wow.
I was— I— she's 6 months old, and from— it's either from 5 months to 6 months or 6 months to 7 months, um, for 28 days there I'm in rehab.
Wow.
I'm missing that time. Oh my God, I'm missing that.
Such precious time.
I know.
I know, but you sacrificed that time for the rest of your time, bro.
I had to. I surrendered because I was gonna die. Yeah, I was really gonna die.
Now you're— you— how many kids do you have now?
I have two.
Two kids?
Yeah, 18-year-old daughter, 15-year-old son.
It's incredible, and it's very inspiring to people that are kind of on the same journey as you because a lot of people don't make it out right? And then their kids look at them and don't— they're not proud of their parents. They're not— they don't— they love their parents, but they don't want to be like their parents because of the choices that they made. And that pain is— it's kind of like nothing is worth that pain.
Yeah.
So like, you sacrifice— I had a conversation with, uh, another person, uh, Lori Van Dusen, on, on the podcast the other day. And it didn't have to do with addiction, but it had to do with You know, for example, you sacrifice time to make your other time better. We were talking about how people say they don't have time for working out or they don't have time to get, you know, to do something good for themselves, meditate, whatever it may be. And we came to the conclusion that the time that you put into that stuff just makes all the rest of your time better. It's an investment of time. It gives you time, gives you more time, makes the other time more enjoyable. Time is a weird thing in and of itself.
100%. 100%. Like, I guarantee you we're gonna do this podcast and we're not gonna know where it went. Yeah, you know, and then again, those seconds— if you take those same seconds and you put your hand on a stove, let's see how long you could stay. Yeah, you know what I mean? So you ever do a cold plunge, dude? I saw— I started with our boy here. I started getting into it like 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks. So I've done them before. Yeah. That makes time slow down.
Yeah, I think that's the slowest time there is for me.
Oh my God, oh my God. I'm still at like the 2— when I make 2 minutes, I'm happy.
2 minutes is great. It feels like forever.
Yeah, where are you at?
I do about 2 or 3 minutes. I mean, I've done more. Sometimes I'll just dip in depending on— I also haven't had a backyard since I moved. We've been renovating it and we, we built a, um, like a 6-foot deep cold plunge you could just jump into now, so you don't have to like slowly get into it. So there's no like— my mind being like, yeah, the sauna and the plunge, right at home. Yeah, that was a big part of my life before I moved to Florida. When I was in Texas, we had the, the barrel sauna that got up to like 220. We had the infrared sauna that was like 170. I could read a book in there, you know. In the wintertime in Texas, it gets down to like in the 40s. I had this saltwater pool that would be like a giant cold plunge. Hit the sauna, go for a couple of laps, recharge, refresh. That's— where do you do it? Do you have a setup at your place?
That's heavy. No, no, dude. Right now I'm going up. I'm going up to Wellington to meet Andrew. Yeah, there are a few in Boca. I don't have it set up for myself yet. That's like— that's part of the journey.
Yeah. You know, but it's great.
It's amazing.
Great.
It's—
but it's weird, though, how 3 minutes or 2 minutes in a cold plunge versus 2 minutes scrolling on your phone, it's such different experiences of time.
Oh dude, those, those 2 minutes in the cold plunge are torture.
Yeah.
And but meanwhile, you and I both know that the reward after— yeah, from 2 minutes on your phone scrolling and you're sucked in.
Yeah.
And now this thing's going, and either, you know, depending on who you are or what state you're in, you're either comparing You're not feeling like things are going fast enough, good enough, or now you're, you're judging other people, right? Or like, you just get into a completely different mindset.
I feel like it has a similar effect on your subconscious self-worth, right, as drugs. Because when you're scrolling on your phone, you never sit down and say, I'm gonna scroll for a half hour. So he's like, let me flick something open. And then after a couple minutes, you're like, I should probably get off. Like, deep down inside, I shouldn't do this. And you ever get sucked into like a hole on your phone where you're like 30 minutes in? Most people do.
Of course.
There's been nights when I'm like, you know, I'm away on a business trip and I'm by myself in a hotel room. I have nothing else to do. I'm scrolling and it's like 11 o'clock at night and I'm like, I should go to sleep, but it's like, I'll watch one more video. And my subconscious is like, what the fuck you doing? Like, stop. My, my mind is like, no, no, one more, one more, one more. And like, now my subconscious is like, you're a piece of shit, you know?
It's like, but do think about it, though. Whatever we're doing when we're scrolling, it is sucking away our attention and intention, right? Like it's sucking it away. When you and I are in a cold plunge together, Grant, we're not happy.
Yeah.
You know what I mean? But we're focusing our attention. We're controlling it.
You have no choice but to.
You have no— breathe. You know what I mean? Go somewhere else. But you're controlling your mind. The other one, it's controlling you. And that's the difference right there. In addiction, you don't control it. It controls you.
