Dave S. was pronounced dead on arrival at 15. By 16 he was in a 1980 "attack therapy" rehab — diapers on heads, break-them-down tactics — and sitting in his first 12-step meeting next to his dad. He stayed clean for 17 years. Then came the wife, the kids, the business… and the idea that he was cured. One "social" smoke later, the disease that had been doing pushups for 17 years took the next 9 years of his life: benzos, opiates, a decade on subs, legal trouble, and losing his house, his marriage, and nearly himself.

Twelve and a half years ago, Dave walked into a meeting high, planning to borrow money — and his old friends trapped him into detox instead. Since then: 144 pounds lost, a bipolar diagnosis that finally explained the self-medicating, peace made with the mother he'd hated his whole life (he was with her the day she passed), a weekly prison meeting commitment in PA, and Sober Transport — driving people to treatment with his rescue dog Henry riding shotgun. Today he builds AI answering and text-message re-engagement tools that help treatment centers reach the people everyone else gave up on.

⏱️ CHAPTERS
0:00 Meet Dave S
6:26 Dead on Arrival at 15
10:43 Seventeen Years Clean, Then Relapse
15:59 Benzos, Subs, Rock Bottom
22:55 Sober Transport and Henry
28:37 Bipolar and Self-Medicating
31:51 Weekly Prison Meeting Service
37:25 AI for Treatment Center Admissions

One Last Hit Podcast — real stories of addiction, survival, and coming back from the edge.

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Barb Nangle spent 37 years in therapy and never once heard the word that explained her whole life: codependence. She'd been numbing since she was a baby — thumb, cigarettes at thirteen, weed at fourteen, alcohol at sixteen — and when she "just stopped" the substances, food took over. Her bottom came in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot: buying six donuts so the cashier wouldn't know they were all for her, crying while she ate them, then hiding the box in her own garbage — in a house where she lived alone. On April 20, 2016 she woke up feeling electrocuted by sugar, texted a friend "just for today, I'm not having sugar" — and hasn't touched it since.

Now a boundaries coach, speaker and host of Fragmented to Whole (top 1% of podcasts worldwide), Barb tells Austin how a manipulative houseguest sent her to Google at fifty-two, how ACA's "what happened to me" version of step four unlocked decades of intergenerational trauma, and how she shed over a hundred pounds by treating hunger as an emotion. They dig into boundaries as the antidote to codependence, internal safety — not abandoning yourself when things get uncomfortable — caring more what you think of you than what others do, and why she's "full awesome: awesome AND flawed." This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

Colleen Clifford spent 36 years as a commercial fisherwoman on the Bering Sea — and more than four decades hiding a story she swore she'd never tell. At nineteen, a single shaming moment convinced her she was unlovable, and binge drinking became the way she reinforced it: near-death nights she now calls a self-imposed death sentence. Fourteen years ago she lost her husband Scott to alcohol-related suicide. Her own turning point came five years ago on one last drunk drive home — a double yellow line, and a desperate prayer: "God, get me home and I swear I'll quit." She kept the promise.

Now in her sixties and alcohol-free, Colleen is honoring a second promise — the one she made to Scott to bring something good out of his death. She just published her book, Life Beyond the Binge, with proceeds going to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She and Austin dig into why binge drinking hides so easily behind "partying," shame as the story beneath the behavior, signs from the other side, and finally embracing the nineteen-year-old she spent a lifetime running from. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

Dawn Mannion started drinking with her parents at 11 years old and was a full-blown alcoholic by 19. Cocaine came next, then meth — and what followed was over eight years living homeless in the woods around Jacksonville, Florida: sleeping under cameras for safety, building a camp with her boyfriend Tony off a highway on-ramp, surviving hurricanes, arrests, and being robbed of everything she owned. In this episode she and Austin trace the slow, almost invisible slide from a straight-A kid desperate to be loved into full addiction — and the desperate prayer, three days before her camp was raided, that she now believes was the turning point God used to get her sober.

Dawn is nearly a year sober and just published her book, Love Is Greater Than Addiction, which she wrote so other addicts and people in jail cells could hear a real success story instead of hearsay. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

On this episode of One Last Hit, Austin sits down with Barb Varcl-Smith, a UK-based trauma and PTSD recovery specialist and creator of the Ascendance Method. Barb's own path started with a childhood marked by her mother's hospitalization, chronic fatigue syndrome that left her bedridden at 17, and losing classmates to addiction — experiences that pushed her to understand why people turn to drugs and alcohol in the first place.

Barb breaks down addiction as a trauma response (not a moral failing), explains the four trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn), why 12-step recovery often stops short of the root cause, and how subconscious tools like hypnotherapy, body coding, and quantum healing can release stored trauma that talk therapy can't reach. She also shares her reframe on victimhood ("the best revenge is to live your life fully") and why even high-achievers secretly numb out through workaholism and hidden drinking.

One Last Hit Podcast — real stories of addiction, survival, and coming back from the edge.

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Hunter S. is back — and this time he's Austin's sponsor. They open with the anti-12-step movement that's taken over recovery media: the podcasters, the guests, the hour-long attacks on AA. Austin and Hunter aren't interested in firing back. Instead, they go somewhere more useful — a word-for-word breakdown of Step 2. Not the platitude version. Hunter's read: it's not a reprogramming, it's an unbelief — a deprogramming of the old ideas that have always run your life. And it's not a one-time event. At ten years sober, Hunter hit a bottom he didn't hit in rehab. That's how Step 2 works if you let it.

But the most raw moment is Austin's. That morning, before the recording, one of his kids got a bloody nose — a milk carton, a moment of trying to control a chaotic morning, and an accident he didn't even see happen. He called Hunter from the car. And now they're unpacking it live: selfish, self-seeking, dishonest, afraid — the four inventory columns. What I did wrong is Step 4. How it affected them is Step 8. Austin almost didn't publish this one. He did anyway, because that's the whole thing: brothers in our defects, not our virtues.

This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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Marc B. was born on the wild west side of Chicago — Murder City, the ghetto, a Puerto Rican neighborhood bordering an African American one — the youngest of four kids whose alcoholic father died of cirrhosis at 46. His stepfather, a Vietnam vet with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, was a monster behind closed doors. He nearly beat Marc to death multiple times before the age of six. Marc grew up across 12 schools and 4 high schools, always the new kid, always trying to fit in, carrying a head full of trauma he wouldn't understand for decades.

What followed was 17 treatment centers, years of homelessness on the streets of Chicago, crack cocaine, heroin, an engagement ring sold for dope money, a fiancée abandoned with their dog, two violent felonies, and a life lived in abandoned buildings, alleys, and project stairwells — surviving on hundreds of dollars a day running cons on strangers. He was a professional, a decorated executive, a man who could build a team and close a deal — and he was sleeping under cardboard and shooting dope the same week.

The turning point came in a jail cell, facing 6 to 8 years in prison, when a probation officer decided to believe him. Marc walked out the next morning instead of into a penitentiary. He hasn't looked back since May 3, 2011.

Today Marc is a Chief Operating Officer, 15+ years sober, married to the woman who never gave up on him, and the father of a little girl who wins Empathy Awards at her Christian school. He lives in Orlando. He still carries the weight of complex PTSD. And he'll tell you plainly: it's all about willingness — and his arrived right on time.

This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

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Episode 8 is a different kind of episode. Matt is back, not as a guest, but as a co-host. We dive headfirst into what it actually takes to stay sober. Inspired by a deep-cut episode of "Three Legacies" featuring Don L., Austin and Matt unpack the practices that hold their lives together: morning prayer and meditation, working with the newcomer, and nightly inventory. They talk about the neuroscience behind why meditation actually works (the prefrontal cortex, Victor Frankl, and the gap between stimulus and response), the difference between sobriety-as-checklist versus sobriety-as-spiritual-practice, and the very real cost of letting the non-negotiables slide. Matt opens up about competing in strongman, his bipolar diagnosis, and how medication finally allowed him to hear the message. Austin gets real about five kids, a busy business, and the mornings where prayer gets swallowed by the workday before it ever starts. They also get into medication-assisted treatment, the danger of self-righteous sobriety groups, and why the nightly inventory is always the first thing to go — right before a relapse.

This is the kind of conversation you have after a meeting in the parking lot when nobody wants to go home yet. Raw, funny, and full of hard-earned wisdom. This is the One Last Hit Podcast.

CONNECT
One Last Hit Podcast: https://onelasthitbook.com/podcast
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Get the Ebook: https://shop.onelasthitbook.com/product/ebook/
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