NOTE: This episode contains explicit language. Born in 1963 in the Bronx, Noa moved with his family multiple times before finally settling in Connecticut at age 14. By this time, he had already been drinking for four years. And he had already attended 9 different schools, many of which he was kicked out of. Despite the unwavering love of his family, Noa never felt comfortable in his own skin — he never fit in with the other kids and always felt inadequate when he compared himself to everyone around him. After multiple fights, blackouts, car crashes, violence, dead friends, suicide attempts, family tears, failed marriages, empty bank accounts, failed stints in rehab, and brushes with the law, Noa finally found himself asking for help and wanting to change. While life has not been a straight path from the bottom, Noa has worked for decades on creating and sustaining a beautiful and rewarding life filled with love, career satisfaction and overall contentment. Noa learned early in his sobriety that perhaps one of his greatest innate gifts was his ability to connect with and inspire others to improve their lives. The ability to help other people is the single greatest asset he has had in helping himself stay sober, stay content and stay in the light. Noa — now a cult favorite instructor at SoulCycle — will help you find what he describes as “Mental Wealth.”
NOTE: This episode contains explicit language.
Born in 1963 in the Bronx, Noa moved with his family multiple times before finally settling in Connecticut at age 14. By this time, he had already been drinking for four years. And he had already attended 9 different schools, many of which he was kicked out of. Despite the unwavering love of his family, Noa never felt comfortable in his own skin — he never fit in with the other kids and always felt inadequate when he compared himself to everyone around him. After multiple fights, blackouts, car crashes, violence, dead friends, suicide attempts, family tears, failed marriages, empty bank accounts, failed stints in rehab, and brushes with the law, Noa finally found himself asking for help and wanting to change.
While life has not been a straight path from the bottom, Noa has worked for decades on creating and sustaining a beautiful and rewarding life filled with love, career satisfaction and overall contentment. Noa learned early in his sobriety that perhaps one of his greatest innate gifts was his ability to connect with and inspire others to improve their lives. The ability to help other people is the single greatest asset he has had in helping himself stay sober, stay content and stay in the light. Noa — now a cult favorite instructor at SoulCycle — will help you find what he describes as “Mental Wealth.”
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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage To Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame. I am your host. Today, we have Noa Shaw. Noa was born in 1963 in The Bronx. Noa moved with his family multiple times before settling in Connecticut at age 14. By this time he had already been drinking for four years and he had already attended nine different schools, many of which he was kicked out of. Despite the unwavering love of his family, Noa never felt comfortable in his own skin. He never fit in with the other kids and always felt inadequate when he compared himself to everyone around him.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
After multiple fights, blackouts, car crashes, violence, dead friends, suicide attempts, family tears, failed marriages, empty bank accounts, failed stints in rehab and brushes with the law, Noa finally found himself asking for help and wanting to change. While life has not been a straight path from the bottom, Noa has worked for decades on creating and sustaining a beautiful and rewarding life filled with love, career satisfaction and overall contentment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Noa learned early in his sobriety that perhaps one of his greatest innate gifts was his ability to connect with and inspire others to improve their lives. The ability to help other people is the single greatest asset he has had helping himself stay sober, stay content and stay in the light.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Noa has been in the therapy field for over 20 years and is a well known and loved SoulCycle instructor in New York.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, I am pleased to present you with the famous SoulCycle instructor, Noa Shaw, and his incredible story.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All right, episode 44, let's do this.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that our egos are such a big part of this whole thing, right? It's just such a big part of it that it's easy to see how someone can take all of that reinforcement and use it to fill that God shaped hole we talked about. I can see how that happens.
Noa Shaw:
In my little world of SoulCycle, I'm an F-list celebrity. You know what I'm saying? I'm so far down below A that I'm like F, maybe even G or an H, but I'm so cognizant and so aware of not falling into that trap of believing what everybody says about me and I think people like my class and they come to my class. They come back because I'm very f’ing real about it. I'm like, "Listen, I'm a f’ing SoulCycle instructor. I'm a fitness instructor." I come into class with the object to entertain, bring love, bring kindness, bring joy, but I'm not a f’ing celebrity.
Noa Shaw:
People are like, "You're so f’ing famous." I'm like, "No, I'm not. I'm not famous at all," and even if I was I wouldn't f’ing admit it. I would f’ing shut that shit down immediately because ... so DJ AM was a good friend of mine. He wasn't my best friend. We weren't the closest people in the world, but his best friend, Derek, was one of my best friends. We shared a best friend. That's the level of our friendship. It wasn't like when he died and f’ing everybody was Adam's best friend and I'm like, "Every f’ing body came out of the f’ing corner." Like, "I'm his best friend." They were so broken up and they were f’ing meetings and I'm like, "I know he used to talk shit about you. He didn't even like you and you're now his best friend in a meeting?"
Noa Shaw:
This ego thing that I'd heard for many years before but has become attributed to him, the whole start of the ego feed, the soul thing and I said it at f’ing SoulCycle. I'd said it around to people. He and I used to talk about that decades ago. It's so appropriate especially at this time in our lives where people's egos are being just f’ing filled with likes and Instagram influencers and that's just ego. We're running on a country, we running on a world right now that is just so ego driven, whether in sobriety or not, it's all just f’ing ego. It's like, "Look at how f’ing famous I am."
Noa Shaw:
I know this girl who was a teacher with SoulCycle, she quit just to be an Instagram influencer. I'm like, "You can f’ing do that? You can do that? You can just be on Instagram and that's your living? Is that really living? That may be a source of income but what are you doing for f’ing humanity?"
Noa Shaw:
I had this thing and I'll just ramble for a second is that I was talking ... I've been doing these little Zoom meetings the other day and my goal is to get to 10000 followers. It has nothing to do with ego. It has to do with the swipe up. It has to do with the ability to swipe up and I believe, and I've even pitched this to f’ing somebody at Instagram, one of my friends who's high up in Instagram. I keep saying if I get the ability to swipe up, once a week, at least once a week for 24 hours, that swipe up will be connected to a charity.
Noa Shaw:
I think if you have the ability to swipe up, it should be mandated that once a week, if you have that many f’ing followers, if you have that platform, 10, 20, 300000, a million people you should have to ... If you were going to monetize that, you should be forced to monetize that for good. Even for 24 hours. Why are we not bringing more f’ing more good in the world and then sitting and wondering why everything's become so superficial?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that in many ways, the corona ... and this is just my opinion. It may sound silly, but in many ways the coronavirus is forcing us all, everyone in the world except maybe healthcare workers, although I do think them as well, to slow down and stop and look at what really matters. I think it's forcing ... I mean, it's bringing everyone to their knees, except maybe Charmin. It's absolutely changing the landscape of everything we know and believe and I just keep having this nagging feeling that something catastrophic had to happen for the world to put humanity before business, to put environment before business.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
The cruise ships, the airlines, all this, they were never going to stop and think about how to make the sea ... all these things. There was never going to be a break in any of it. Everything has been brought to its knees, and I'm not saying I would have done that. I'm just saying it's not lost on me that humanity is forced to look at its humanity right now.
Noa Shaw:
This is the first time ever in the history of the world where we are simultaneously, everybody, sharing pain. The world is in pain. The entire world is in pain right now. I believe that some good will come of it. I believe some will use it for nefarious purposes and f’ing increase their agenda, increase their ... It's being used for racism and xenophobia and America first and all this shit, but it's allowing ... I don't think it's forcing anybody, but I think it's allowing people the room to grow spiritually.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I like that.
Noa Shaw:
If they choose to take it.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
If they choose to take it. I totally agree.
Noa Shaw:
There is for every three people that are, "Oh my God. I'm going to work on this. I'm going to work on this. I'm going to work on this," there's another two people going, "I can't believe that I'm stuck at home. This really sucks. I miss people." I did my part. I ordered a ukulele because I've always wanted to play ukulele. That's something that I think I can wrap my head around and become good at. You go to AA and do all this spiritual growth, but when you finally have time to relax, you're like, "Cool. It's so easy right now. I can just log into any meeting anywhere in the world at any time," but I think there's other people that are being given time in their lives to go, "Okay, maybe I can just stop and use this for reflection."
Noa Shaw:
That's beautiful. It's giving them, these people who wanted to, but have been too ... The pace of their lives wouldn't allow it. Their work, their job, everything they got so caught up in. It's allowing them to step back and take a look and go, "Okay. Hold on a second."
Noa Shaw:
It's like, I put up a post on Instagram over a week ago saying, "Hey, if you woke up this morning and you have to be in your house, that means you have a house."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I say that, yeah.
Noa Shaw:
I got 5000 likes. It was insane. Shit went viral in my little tiny corner of the world. That resonated with people so much and I'm glad. It's something that was a lesson and a gesture of gratitude that was taught to me. I don't take credit for it. I'm just passing on the gifts, but, yeah, people are stopping and going, "Okay, oh shit, I have a house." They can be upset an hour later, but they've had that moment of clarity which is beautiful.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, it is beautiful. I think we all have to do our part and your story is a lot about that. How long have you been clean and sober?
Noa Shaw:
It'll be 13 years in September. I was sober for 15 years. I had it all figured out. I had the life beyond my wildest dreams. I was working making music videos and so it was really funny because [crosstalk 00:09:54] ... No, First AD, but a lot of my crew was a bunch of sober dudes. It was Mike [inaudible 00:10:03] and [Megajaw 00:10:03], may he rest in peace. We had 10 sober guys on the crews that I was working on. It felt like I was sober and we were talking about it and we were talking about it, but I got into so much spiritual pain. I stopped going to meetings and stopped doing the things that you have to do.
Noa Shaw:
I would say sobriety looks a million different ways. Getting sober looks a million different way. Relapse looks the same every time. "What did you do?" "I stopped going to meetings."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Let stop there. I want to ask about that.
Noa Shaw:
Okay.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I do know people who are sober a long time who don't go to meetings and they do the thing that you're talking about, where they consort with a lot of sober friends and whatever and they've stayed sober for quite some time. When you say, "I had these friends. We were talking about recovery, but I didn't go to meetings." This is reaching people who don't have a lot of exposure to this. We're talking to people who, this might be the first time ... They don't know what happens in meetings or whatever. What is it for you, in your experience, the difference between what you were doing when you were talking to people and your friends and talking about recovery, and what you were lacking? Can you make that connection?
Noa Shaw:
It's the most simple thing in the world. If you don't go to meetings, you don't see newcomers. If you don't see people who are f’ing fresh off the boat, brand new sober, 24 hours shaking and f’ing skipping, you forget what you were like. You lose track and a) you're not seeing them, b) you're not passing along what has been given to you. Yeah, I'm talking to a bunch of dudes who have been sober for a bunch of years. Great.
Noa Shaw:
There was a period ... I can't remember everybody. It was Megajaw, Josh [inaudible 00:11:57], myself, Ron, and a couple other guys. Ron who had the coffee shop on f’ing Sunset. I don't know if you ever knew about [crosstalk 00:12:04]. Do you remember that?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Noa Shaw:
Yeah. It was the [inaudible 00:12:07]. They were like five or seven, I think around seven of us who all had between 15 and 20 years. We had a bunch of f’ing time and we all went out within close distance of each other.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
All of you? Every single one of you?
Noa Shaw:
All of us. Every single one. There were seven guys all with 10+ years and I was just about to hit 15, [inaudible 00:12:31] was about the same and then we all went out. Me and Josh [inaudible 00:12:35] are the only two that are still alive from that entire group.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh, my gosh.
Noa Shaw:
All the rest of them came back and tried to stay sober so I count myself among the incredibly blessed because I got humbled really f’ing quickly. I threw myself back in the meetings. I threw myself back in the ... all the things that ... Listen. It's not for no reason that for f’ing 70 years people have been saying two things: meeting makers make it. Meeting makers make it. You go to meetings. You do the f’ing work, but you got to go to the meetings. That's the first thing.
Noa Shaw:
what's the old school? Go to meetings. Call your sponsor. Don't drink. That was the three things. That was the three things. That was the pillar. Al [Sines 00:13:16], God bless him. I miss him every f’ing day. He's in my mind every day. He used to say, "F’ing sobriety and all the old curmudgeonly guys used to tell me, and told a bunch of people, and this was back when you could smoke and coffee was in mugs, and he'd say, "Sobriety is in the ashtrays and the coffee mugs." That meant you were around. That meant you were at the f’ing meeting. That means you were there before, and f’ing after, helping to clean up.
Noa Shaw:
There's something, it's intrinsic about meetings. I see the newcomer. I help the newcomer. I see alcoholics that others see. I give away what's been given to me freely for fun and for free. I give that away and I can talk about it all day long, but I have to go to the meeting to see it working. I have to see that guy come in at 24 hours and then I have to still be there 30 days later when he collects that f’ing chip and that look of like or die or grow that human, and that person get that 30 days and then f’ing go home.
Noa Shaw:
I remember getting 30 days. I remember getting a year. People seeing their first year and being like, "F, yeah. I'm so happy for that person," and watching that change in them. Through osmosis, I change. Through observation, my life and my experience is changed, so that's why.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What year did you originally get sober, '88?
Noa Shaw:
'88, yeah, I got sober in February 28th or 29th, 1988.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you?
Noa Shaw:
25.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What brought you to a place of needing to get sober? You got sober in Los Angeles, right?
Noa Shaw:
No.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No? Okay. Where?
Noa Shaw:
This a long drawn out story. I went to my first rehab in '83, went on runs.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Let's back up. Where are you from originally?
Noa Shaw:
I'm from what we call the Tri-state area. New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Nine schools, 12 years, three different states.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Why?
Noa Shaw:
My father was climbing the corporate ladder in the '70s, new job every other year or year and a half. We were just moving all the time and he kept growing and growing and growing and growing and getting our family out of lower income to very f’ing high income areas. We ended up in Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Noa Shaw:
I was 15, 16. I began dealing large amounts of cocaine. It was the cocaine '70s in New York City. By 1978, let's say, '79, when I was 16 years old, I would go into, on a given day when I wasn't in school, let's say summer time, I would go into the Bronx and hang out all day up in the Bronx where my family is originally from and watch to the beginning of hiphop, watch the beginning of break dancing. I was there on the [inaudible 00:16:08] basketball courts, sitting on the f’ing stands, watching the birth of hiphop. Not know what was happening and then I would chill out, go home, relax, rest up for the afternoon, early evening.
Noa Shaw:
Later on in the evening I would go to CBGB's, the punk rock club, go watch some shows there. After that, about 10 o'clock, 10 pm or 11 o'clock, go out, have some dinner in New York, and then by 1 o'clock, I'd go to Studio 54 and I would sell cocaine there all night long,
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How did you discover and what was that experience like? How did you discover alcohol or drugs, whatever came first? What brought you to the point where you wanted to try it and why did you start to abuse it? What did it do for you that you didn't have on your own?
Noa Shaw:
My father was an advertising. This was '72. I was 10 years old the first time I ever drank and my father was in the advertising business for a newspaper, and to all his customers at Christmas time, his favorite drink was Wild Turkey Bourbon.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 00:17:10] Turkey.
Noa Shaw:
When he would come home at night, this is all in hindsight, I would watch ... He was working for a very f’ing stressful company, doing a lot of work. He was, I hate to say workaholic. He was just driven. He grew up in a f’ing bathtub in the Bronx, in the ghetto, and he was just driven, so to call him a workaholic is to dismiss his inner drive.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right.
Noa Shaw:
It's too easy a f’ing label, but he was working himself like crazy and he would come home and his f’ing hands would be shaking and just because of stress and we knew ... He would sit down and he would pour a Wild Turkey on the rocks or a twist and we would all wait for him ... He was not an abusive person. We would just, out of love, we would wait for him to get a bourbon in him before we started with our day, because we all just saw the stress and the pain that he was going through.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How many siblings do you have?
Noa Shaw:
I have one brother.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
One brother.
Noa Shaw:
He's five years younger. He thinks he's an alcoholic. I don't think he is. He's been sober forever, for 30 f’ing years, but I think his sobriety is more a reaction to my alcoholism and he got worried so he just stopped drinking. I never saw him act in any way like any sort of alcoholic, but I think it just scared him, like scared straight worked.
Noa Shaw:
My father at Christmas time would order 40 cases of f’ing Wild Turkey to give out bottles as presents to all of his clients. He would keep eight cases for himself for the year because he was getting a big discount from his Italian friends in the f’ing northeast who would sell him the f’ing cases of Wild Turkey. He ordered 30 and f’ing paid for 20 because they were all stolen, whatever it was, but he would have 10 cases.
Noa Shaw:
One day I took a bottle with my best friend Vinny and we went to the woods and we were just curiosity. I guess I had seen its effect on my father and I guess, in my little 10-year-old brain, I was like, "We'll just see what happens." Me and Vinny got f’ing brutally sick and threw up all over the place because we got shit faced on half a bottle of bourbon for a couple of 10-year-olds and Vinny was like, "That was horrific." I was like, "Yeah, that was horrific," and I was back out there the next day.
Noa Shaw:
Vinny had two older brothers who were 14 at that time, 14, 15, and I hung out with them a lot. They had a big Italian family who lived across the street. They were like 10 siblings, but his two older brothers, Leo and Ray were twins. Their new thing became, "Noa, you want to try smoking weed?" I was like, "Sure." "Noa, here snort this." I started coke. They gave me a little piece of acid. I tripped. Everything you can imagine between the ages of 10 and 11.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This wasn't like you were a tortured-
Noa Shaw:
No, my f’ing parents ... My parents are the parents you dream of. My parents are everybody's favorite parents. Everybody loves my parents. They couldn't be more f’ing loving and kind. Was there pain? Of course. Was it any greater or less than any other kid who moves a bunch or I was the new kid a lot. I can blame it on that, but that's not the f’ing reason. I'm just an alcoholic. I'm just a garden variety f’ing alcoholic. I don't know why I have it. I know I do, and I [inaudible 00:20:22] people like, "Don't you wonder why you're an alcoholic?" I'm like, "No. Even if God, her f’ing self, came down and stood at the f’ing foot of my bed and told me why I was an alcoholic, that wouldn't change anything."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Right. It doesn't change the treatment.
Noa Shaw:
It doesn't change a f’ing thing.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
No, it doesn't.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Hello everybody. This is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, the co-founder of Lionrock Recovery and your host. Lionrock Recovery has introduced a support meeting specifically for people struggling with anxiety related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Structured as an ongoing workshop, the COVID-19 anxiety support meeting will teach coping skills, and be a place to share and connect with others also feeling the effects of this crisis. Everyone struggling with anxiety about COVID-19 is welcome.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Let me repeat that. Everyone struggling with anxiety about COVID-19 is welcome. To view the meeting schedule and join a meeting in session, visit www.lionrockrecovery.com, and click on the orange banner at the top of the page. You can't miss it. Together we will learn to feel more centered and empowered in the face of this great challenge.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think it's good for people to hear that you don't have to have some horrific scenario in order to have this problem. It just is what it is and sometimes I think that, for some people, that's a real struggle. It's a real hurdle for them.
Noa Shaw:
Listen, you've got it. If you got it, you got it. You don't have a hurdle when the doctor goes, "Well, you have cancer." You don't go, "But, really, do I? Why would I have that and why me?" "You have a fungus in your toenails." "Really, do I? What did I do to get this? Why do I deserve that?" It doesn't f’ing matter. Go get your toenail fungus fixed. If you're an alcoholic, go get fixed. Here's the only thing is, somebody with toenail fungus or cancer, and that's a pretty broad spectrum, when they get better, they're back to exactly where they were. The crazy f’ing thing is, if you're lucky enough to be an alcoholic or a drug addict or whatever, if you get sober and if you get clean, use whatever f’ing words you want to use, it's all semantics. It's all the same thing. If you follow the steps and you go to the meetings and you talk to the people, and you do the recommended course of treatment, your life gets exponentially better than you could ever f’ing imagined.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Than you would have been if you had not had it.
Noa Shaw:
Even if you just stopped.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
So true, so true. It's a hard concept unless you've really seen it enough times. I mean, particularly for people who aren't in the program and don't see that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You're living it up in the '70s in New York and ...
Noa Shaw:
That's putting it mildly.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Putting it mildly. When was the first time that you went to treatment?
Noa Shaw:
The first time I went to treatment was 1983. 1983, I went to Silver ... I went to-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Silver Hill?
Noa Shaw:
I went to the Institute for Living for a week. It was a lockdown psych unit in Hartford, Connecticut at one of the oldest psychiatric-
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Institute for Living.
Noa Shaw:
Institute for Living. It's one of the oldest psychiatric hospitals in America and it's a lockdown psych unit and I used to watch the nurses, time the door. I was a runner. I was f’ing young. I was raised in the city. I could run. I could fight. I could f’ing figure things out. I was really crazy good. I was a high end athlete. I would go as fast as f and so I timed it until I saw a door was just about to close and I ran out that door and then ran down a flight of stairs and I literally, out of a f’ing movie, there were orderlies running across me on this 15 acre campus. I'm running and I hit this big brick wall and I jump and f’ing vault over the wall and I run down the streets of Hartford, Connecticut. I go into a blistering f’ing four week just bender.
Noa Shaw:
At the end of that, they checked me into Silver Hills and I was at Silver Hills for a while. It was a rehab and I was sneaking out. Silver Hills is in the woods.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
[inaudible 00:24:36] right there.
Noa Shaw:
Yeah. I would have my friends from Stamford, Connecticut, where my parents were living, and they would meet me in the woods with beers and weed and shit every night. I would go to the meeting.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
When you were at Silver Hill?
Noa Shaw:
At Silver Hills, yeah. I would sneak out to behind the gym and meet my boys out there and we would just sit out there and party all night. I'd stumble back to my room and pass out and then wake up and be like, "Yeah, sobriety's great. I love rehab."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
"I feel great."
Noa Shaw:
I got thrown out of there. It just went on and on. I would try to rehab and it was just a place to recover. It was just a place to get my physical self back because I was just ruining myself. I would just push my body or my mind to the absolute limit. After three suicide attempts, numerous, numerous, numerous car accidents that I had no reason to walk away from, no [inaudible 00:25:31] like state troopers standing next to my bed going, "I know you were drunk, but I don't know why God saved your life. I've never seen anybody walk away, let alone live, through an accident like yours. I'm not even going to f’ing charge you. I'm not even going to give you a ticket. I don't know why you're alive." Multiple times that would happen, I'd wake up with a cop sitting next to me, and be like, "I don't know why you're alive."
Noa Shaw:
They'd show me pictures, Polaroid pictures because this was f’ing so long ago, it wasn't like they had pictures on their phone. They'd taken Polaroid pictures of the accident and be like, "Look at this. How do you walk away from that?" They showed it to the doctor. They'd be like, "Look what he lived through." I'd have a Snoopy bandage on my head or something. It was silly. It was crazy.
Noa Shaw:
Finally, I'm going to make a long, long story very, very short and if anybody wants to hear my full story, I will say, the first three episodes of my podcast are my entire life story. If you go to I'm Here to Help with Noa Shaw on Apple or whatever.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We'll put it in the show notes.
Noa Shaw:
All right. How do I tell this as quickly as possible? I had been living, my parents lived in Stamford, Connecticut. They went away for two months and I went on a horrific cocaine run and all levels of cocaine psychosis and paranoia and I was about to kill myself. I called a friend who lived in Utah. He said, "Come to Utah." I went to Utah. I'd done so much damage at home that by the time my parents got home and they found the house the way I'd left it and hundreds of thousands of dollars I'd stolen from my father's company to pay for my coke habit, they just cut me off and didn't want to talk to me.
Noa Shaw:
That went on for about nine months, almost a year. They finally broke down and they came and visited me and they spent a long weekend in Utah with me. They saw how well I was doing. They bought me a car. They gave me money. They bought me clothing. My father got me a job. They did all ... people call it enabling, and I'm like, "Well, it enabled me to live." I know a lot of parents beat themselves up. "I can't believe I was enabling." I may have been dead if it wasn't for the enabling. I don't ever beat people up for doing that. I think a lot of stigma has been put on that.
Noa Shaw:
They came out on Thursday. They left on Monday. I drove them to the airport in my new car. It was all hugs and kisses goodbye. I drove to my f’ing closest, my favorite bar and that was a Monday morning, and 10 o'clock, I pulled up to the bar in a new car and everything was cool and everybody was like, "Oh, my God. You've got a car." I'm like, "Yeah, check it out. I got a pocket full of f’ing money, like $10000.00 or whatever," and the next thing I knew I woke up. I literally don't remember anything from that moment until I sat up in a hotel room in a bed. There was a girl next to me. I had no idea who she was. The windows were closed. The detritus of a f’ing massive party had happened in this f’ing hotel room. I can't even tell you, like beer bottles and f’ing cases stacked up and just f’ing wrappers of paper, coke and straws and all this shit.
Noa Shaw:
Buck naked, I sat up. I f’ing grabbed a cigarette. I lit a cigarette. I walked over to the window to open the curtains, see what the weather was like outside, and I'm thinking I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I opened the curtains and it's like, "Holy Shit, I'm in a big f’ing city. Dorothy, you're not in Kansas anymore. I'm not in Salt Lake anymore."
Noa Shaw:
I opened the window, the screen, the blinds and I look down and there's a little thing that said, "Welcome to the Holiday Inn Downtown Chicago." I had made it to Chicago in a total blackout. I called my father and he goes, "Where the f are you? We've been looking for you for a week." I'm like, "I'm in Chicago." He's like, "Where's the car?" I'm like, "I sold it." He's like, "Where's the money?" I'm like, "It's gone." "Where's the clothing?" I'm like, "It's gone." "Where's the apartment?" I'm like, "It's gone."
Noa Shaw:
I said, "Dad, I think I'm going to kill myself," and my father, who is one of the kindest, nicest people in the world said, "Noa, if that's what you got to do, that's what you got to do," and hung up on me.
Noa Shaw:
My father realized that the pain that I was in and the pain the family was in, it was better off just ending it. I was literally better off dead. He didn't want to see me in that amount of pain, and he didn't want to see my family or himself in that amount of pain. He knew it was the end, that I just couldn't live, that we would all be better off if I killed myself. I mean, to push your family to a place like that.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I can't imagine.
Noa Shaw:
Narley. I checked into rehab. They transferred me to another rehab. That rehab had a 90 day place they worked with down in Mississippi.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you?
Noa Shaw:
24.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
24? Okay.
Noa Shaw:
24, yeah. I went down to Mississippi to a 90 day program. It took me nine and a half months to complete the 90 day program because I broke every f’ing rule possible. I fed every girl I could find. I broke every rule. I had guns. We were hunting. I broke every rule. I did not listen. Married a girl. They transferred me to Stage Three, which was a halfway house sort of place. Back then they were called halfway houses, and my first night there was Christmas Eve, 1987 and she walked through the door and she was hot. She was super hot. That was the night I met Robin and, against medical advice, I checked myself out of rehab about 30 days later, and then on February 14th we were married. It was two and a half months later and I had about 90 days sober and she still had a week sober, even though when I met her she had a week sober. Surprisingly, that didn't work out.
Noa Shaw:
We moved to Connecticut because I had a job offer from my father so I could support my family because she had two kids. Now I had step-kids. I woke up and I had a seven-year-old step-daughter and a four-year-old step-son. It was super weird. I wake up at 24 and you're f’ing also the dad of two.
Noa Shaw:
Trying to make this as quick as possible. We ended up getting separated. I ended up ... I found an apartment, a loft, very yuppified, brick walls and very '80s, and I had a shower curtain, some towels, some sheets, a couple pillow cases, a basket load of laundry and an alarm clock, and I was sitting on the floor of my apartment and saying, "I'm tired of being the f up." I had a God shot. I had what I call a God shot. I had an awakening and I just had this feeling in my chest. I said, "I'm done. I'm done being a f up. I'm done losing. For once in my life, I'm actually going to try."
Noa Shaw:
That night I went to a meeting by myself, not because rehab was telling me I was supposed to go. I went for myself and I went by myself. That was the day that I believe I got sober, even though I had had about nine months or so, or eight months sober at that point. I went late and I left early. The next day I went a little less late and left a little less early. The next couple of days or so, I showed up on time and then I started showing up early helping out or just saying hello to people I barely knew, but still standing off to the side, but waving at people with my cigarette.
Noa Shaw:
About 60 days into this process, I had made friends because, after 13 or 14 f’ing rehabs, I had the lingo down. I knew the big book backwards and forwards. It didn't matter. I could talk AA all f’ing day, so my shares were really f’ing profound and I knew the right thing to say to make them laugh, make them cry, make them love you. I was sharing at this meeting about what a tough day I'd had, that I'd been at the mall and I really felt like drinking and I got through it and I was like, "Yeah, me." Everybody was like, "Yeah," and I got the claps and the adoration that I f’ing always looked for. This big f’ing guy who looks like Bluto from Popeye turns around. He's sitting in front of me. He puts his arm behind his f’ing chair and looks at me and he goes, "You're an alcoholic. We drink. That's what we do. It's no big deal. You shouldn't be surprised by that." I was like, "Who's this motherfer think he's talking to? Do you know I have almost a year sober? I have this shit figured out." I got f’ing pissed.
Noa Shaw:
We had a cigarette break back then and I saw this guy and he was on the other side of the horseshoe of this hospital entrance, and he started walking towards me and so I did what I did because I knew from my training, I f’ing popped off my rings, popped off my f’ing bracelets, took off my watch and I got ready to f’ing go. I was going to f’ing knock this guy out. He was twice my size, but I was going f’ing fight him. I was never afraid of a fight, and he walked up to me and he opened his arms and pulled me into the biggest f’ing hug I've ever felt in my life, and that man was Johnnie [inaudible 00:34:14], and he saved my life. He loved me at a moment when I needed love so badly I didn't even know I needed it. I didn't need applause. I didn't need admiration or smugs from the crowd. I needed love. He became my sponsor. May he rest in peace. He showed me what it is to be a sober man in this world. I lived that way, and that was the moment that changed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Was that in Chicago?
Noa Shaw:
That was in Connecticut.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That was in Connecticut. Okay.
Noa Shaw:
I went from Utah to Chicago, Chicago to Mississippi, Mississippi to Connecticut.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. How did you make it to LA?
Noa Shaw:
All right. How did I end up in LA? I was living in Connecticut. The economy crashed. This was '90 I think, whatever it was. It wasn't even '90, '89, '88, the economy crashed and I got a one way ticket to Hawaii, and I lived in Maui for three and a half years and worked program, went to meetings, did all the things. Life got better. I had a beautiful life there. I had a terrible breakup and I was heartbroken so I had one of my ex-roommates who had moved to Boston, so I went to Boston, and, as we say, our life gets bigger because when I was in meetings in Maui and there's usually like, at the place where I lived in [Lahaina 00:35:29], there's usually 10, maybe 12 people in a meeting.
Noa Shaw:
One time, years before, Steve Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith had walked in and we became friends. Of course we did, because I've had a weird f’ing life. We go to the house. We barbecue together and I worked at the restaurant. They would come over to the restaurant and hang out. People would bug out that I was friends with them, so I moved to Boston and after I was there about a month, I went to a concert and somebody tapped me on the back, and was like, "Noa," and I turned around and it's Steve Tyler's then wife Teresa and she's like, "What the f are you doing here?" She only knew me from Maui. I'm like, "I'm working in a restaurant and I'm working in clubs and bars and shit."
Noa Shaw:
She was like, "That's so crazy. Steve and the band are about to open a f’ing club. They've been looking for somebody they could trust to run the club." She's like, "You'd be perfect. They trust you. Everybody in the band trusts you and loves you." We made an appointment. Long story short, I ended up designing, building, running 2000 capacity live music club for Aerosmith in Boston. Met my girlfriend there. Ended up having a bad breakup after three years with the company that was managing the club, who were robbing me blind and stole about $400000.00 from me, which back then was a lot of money.
Noa Shaw:
I wanted to go to LA to be a standup comedian because everyone had been telling me for years, "You should be a standup comedian. You're really f’ing funny." I was like, "Okay, Babe, we're going to go to LA." She's like, "I don't want to go to LA." I'm like, "We're going to move to LA. I'm going to save the day. I'm going to be a famous standup comedian. Everything's going to work out well." She ended up becoming one of the biggest vice presidents, one of the biggest vice presidents of marketing for Universal movies. I had no standup comedy career. I kept running bars. That's how I ended up in LA.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Then you were sober there for many years?
Noa Shaw:
Many years, and then I had a night, a day, I can't remember, an evening in Vegas where I was sitting at this hotel at this table at my deluxe comp suite at the Palms because I was out there so much because my life was so big. I was gambling so much. I had $80000.00 in chips sitting on the table in front of me, just play money. I was killing it. I had massive careers, first [inaudible 00:37:36] making music videos and working with the biggest stars everywhere you can even imagine because videos were the thing to do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I miss music videos.
Noa Shaw:
There's been an online petition to get MTV to just bring the music videos back during this quarantine. I'd be watching it non-stop.
Noa Shaw:
I looked at my friend at the Palms, I looked at my friend and I said, "I'm either going to put a gun in my f’ing mouth or a joint," and he handed me a joint. I relapsed and I woke up the next morning and I woke up like I had had a relapse dream.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Oh God, and yeah, yeah, it's real.
Noa Shaw:
It was real. There was half a blunt sitting on my f’ing nightstand. I did what any reasonable alcoholic would do. I fired up that blunt. I came home, came back to LA, realized there was a niche market because in New York we had these delivery services for weed and I think it was late 2000 or maybe early 2001, I opened the very first ever weed delivery service in LA. I had 3000 customers in 90 days. It exploded from there. I made a ton of f’ing money. I spent it all. I had a ton of money and I ended up on the most random, biggest God shot ever. I got arrested. In all my years of dealing, and I've dealt a lot of drugs for a lot of f’ing years, I've never kept quantity of weed or any drug or money at my house, but one of my guys was going out of town and I had a shipment come in and it had to be delivered to my house. It was the only place that I had.
Noa Shaw:
This massive shipment of weed and this massive pile of money come into my house and the cops knock on my door. They said, "Listen, we know you have a half pound, maybe a pound of weed." I had 50 pounds. They said, "It's going to be a slap on the wrist. Just let us in. This will be over. You'll be out in an hour or two." I'm like, "No."
Noa Shaw:
Somebody had gotten busted and didn't know that I was a big dealer, thought I was a small dealer, and decided I had a gym bag in my room, because that's what the warrant said once they finally got it, and I got arrested and I got locked up and it saved my life because I was facing 15 years in prison upstate in California and I hired literally the best weed dealer there was in the state of California. I shared a weed dealer with Snoop Dog, who never goes to prison, and I started going to an outpatient, [inaudible 00:40:00] and yeah, yeah, I had been in [inaudible 00:40:04] for 90 days when we went back to court and the judge gave me another 90 days in rehab and then two years at [inaudible 00:40:12] as opposed to 15 years in prison and I've been sober ever since.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
One thing that's remarkable about your story, we started talking about the fact that you're a SoulCycle instructor and when I knew you when I was around in Los Angeles, we knew the same people but we didn't actually hang out. We have the same friends and stuff.
Noa Shaw:
We have a very thick Venn diagram.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Exactly. Our Venn diagram is real super close there. One of the things that's ... later in sobriety, you found yourself in Los Angeles weighing 300 pounds and feeling super unhealthy. I mean, no-one thought you would be a fitness instructor. Is that probably an easy thing to say?
Noa Shaw:
A week before my first SoulCycle class I went to my doctor to get a refill on some prescriptions, some random shit, and he was like, "Good news. You're not going to feel a thing." I was like, "Are you going to give me a shot?" He's like, "No, you're about to have a heart attack. It's going to be so big, you're not going to feel a thing. You're not going to grab your arm. You're not going to grab your chest. You're not going to feel any pain. Your heart's just going to explode and you'll be dead before you hit the ground."
Noa Shaw:
I was wearing ... You saw me. I was f’ing enormous. I was like death. I was like, "All right." He was like, "I love you, but it's been good knowing you." He'd been my doctor for a long time, like 15 years before.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
He really laid it out.
Noa Shaw:
Yeah, but he didn't be like, "You have to stop this." He was very real with me. He was like, "Listen, I love you and I'm going to miss you but you're going to die, so goodbye." I was like, "Okay." It didn't affect me at all. I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to die. I'm not worried." I wasn't concerned and then I went to buy a pair of underwear, H&M on Sunset Boulevard, and it was the day, I came up the escalator and it was the day that SoulCycle opened in West Hollywood, and I walked in and I was like, "Hey, are the owners around?' I introduced myself. They're like, "Oh my God, you're Poppa. You sent us Stacey who's the original instructor and I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "Are you going to ride?" I was like, "Sure." Like, "Okay. How about four o'clock today?" I was like, "Great."
Noa Shaw:
I drove home, put on my 4XL f’ing shorts and slipped into my f’ing sneakers, because I couldn't put on ... I was so fat I couldn't reach my feet to put on a pair of shoes, so all my shoes were slip on. I couldn't reach over my f’ing girth to put on a shoe.
Noa Shaw:
I went and I picked a corner bike in the SoulCycle class near a door so that when I died, they wouldn't have to go in the back row and carry me out. They could just carry me right out the door. I was being considerate. I stayed on the bike for the next ... I just lived on that f’ing same bike for 90 f’ing days. I wouldn't leave and I rode twice the next day and by midway through class, I'm like, "I grew up in a f’ing war zone. In the '70s in the Bronx, are you kidding me? I've been shot at too many times to count. I've watched too many people die next to me, standing next to me or in front of me or around me. I've had contracts out on my life. I've had people try to throw me off f’ing balconies, railings, literally tried to kill me. I've lived through all that insanity. I've lived through all these accidents where I f’ing should have been dead and I'm going to die from too much McDonald's?"
Noa Shaw:
I was like, "F it. I'm going to die trying. Literally live and die trying." I just started going really f’ing fast and I'm like, "If I'm going to die, I'm going to die giving every f’ing thing I've got." I did two classes that day or the next day, and three the day after that and I lost 100 pounds in a little over 90 days just pure f’ing will and determination. When I get going in a certain direction, I'm a real force of f’ing nature.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. I think we all have some of that quality. Once our mind is made up, we go.
Noa Shaw:
We go.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
We go, go. Wow. This was in West Hollywood ...
Noa Shaw:
West Hollywood.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You lose 100 pounds in 90 days because all you're doing is SoulCycle and then what happens?
Noa Shaw:
Then they asked me to be an instructor and they told me the deal is that I'm going to go to New York, train, and teach in New York for a year and then come back to LA. I put all my shit in storage, got on a plane, had a goodbye party, got on a plane, came home, landed at Kennedy, called my Mom, and I said, "Mom. I'm home." She said, "It's going to be so great to have you here for a year." I was like, "No, Mom. I'm home. I'm staying." She started crying. She goes, "I've been praying for this for so many years." My mother, the atheist, has been praying, but it's like, it was time to come home. I've been on the run for too long. I just stayed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You became a SoulCycle instructor and what has that been like going from where you were to that and in a relatively quick period of time?
Noa Shaw:
I've always been a helper, like a life helper. I've always wanted to help people and it's not even wanted to, it's just been this role that I think God cast me in, that I'm here to help other people. I'm at my best when I'm helping other people and I'm at my worst when I'm thinking about me.
Noa Shaw:
When I was in high school, they called me Uncle Noa everywhere I went. I went to college in Texas and there was no internet. There was nobody I know. I got to school in Texas. It's like 2000 miles away, they started calling me Uncle Noa. I've always been that sort of figure. Then I was 30 years old. I was living in Boston. Somebody referred to me as Poppa, then everybody starting calling me Poppa. I went from Uncle to Poppa. Now, to this day, there's still people that call me Poppa. I'm that figure that I'm meant to help. I'm meant to be here doing this.
Noa Shaw:
It was funny because I'm the first and, still to this day, only SoulCycle instructor that comes from a mental health background. I worked in a bunch of rehabs out there. I worked at the [inaudible 00:46:11] Center. I worked at [inaudible 00:46:12]. I went from client to case manager in 90 days at [inaudible 00:46:17] because I had all the sobriety. I knew what to do and I chased it to get back in.
Noa Shaw:
I bring to SoulCycle completely different ... I don't come from an athletic background although I played a lot of sports, but I was the only one hired because of my mental health work and my ability to bring that to a classroom and exercise at the same time. It came very naturally to me, the transition. It was a bigger platform. It was an opportunity to help more people at one time
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How old were you now?
Noa Shaw:
56. Shhh.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I legitimately can't believe that.
Noa Shaw:
56.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Okay. I know it's true.
Noa Shaw:
Because I look 100, right?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, no. You are 56.
Noa Shaw:
56.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You are a SoulCycle, successful fitness SoulCycle instructor. How rad in New York City, after having used SoulCycle to lose 100 pounds? That was how long ago? That wasn't even that long ago. What, five years?
Noa Shaw:
It was eight years ago.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Eight years ago. Okay.
Noa Shaw:
Yeah, I mean it's a trip. Like I said at the beginning, my life is like Mr. Toad's wild ride. You can't make this shit up. How do you go from working with the biggest names in f’ing music to then working for one of the biggest rock bands of all time. Now I'm a f’ing SoulCycle instructor in New York City and people all over the world know who I am. It's super f’ing weird and it's super amazing. It's a great opportunity. I use it to help, you know?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah.
Noa Shaw:
I use it to always be of help and be of service. I have this thing called ... My podcast is based on this idea called selfless help. I believe in the '90s the early 2000's that self help became a really big thing, and I watched it become a big thing, and what I realized is what everybody did with self help was great, but all they started doing was thinking about themselves, so it became so self centered and they gave birth to a bunch of self centered kids. I'm not lumping everybody together. I'm just saying in a global way, especially as I can see it in the United States, the function of society was become really self centered.
Noa Shaw:
I believe in selfless help. I believe now learning to do acts of service and furtherance of the betterment of my life. My life is better. I would say the more I think about myself, the less I think of myself.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I like that. I think that's true and I think that we ... It's a crazy. One of the things that I think is what I want to touch on which is that when you're not bettering yourself, moving forward, doing something to enhance your recovery, you use other things, whatever that is. It's amazing what it is, right, because you talked about going to Vegas all the time and using that and money and all these different things, and then it was food, right? Then it was food. What I would say, I used against my will. I used drugs and alcohol against my will but I'll also use other things against my will, and as long as my addiction [inaudible 00:49:40] my ego. As long as my ego is around, I am going to use something. I have to find the things that are going to fill that self esteem piece because the moment I stop doing that, I just use against my will. It's food. It's sex. It's TV. It's work. It's whatever, doesn't matter.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I think that's such a big part of this ... I love that, the selfless help. It's about continuing the recovery piece in a way that holds that ego at bay.
Noa Shaw:
When there's a natural disaster like a flood and you see people building the walls of sandbags to prevent the f’ing water, we're sort of in the business of always putting more sandbags up against the intrusion of our f’ing addiction into our lives. The day we take over is the day a little water may slip over. You may slip and fall in the water. You may not drown, but you may slip and fall. You have to constantly be creating that wall to be higher and stronger and more durable and able to sustain more, so that when we go through things, which we will, we will go through challenging times. I never say the word hard. I always tell ... I work with a life coach. I tell people we take the word hard out, we use the word challenging. That's all it is. It's just challenging.
Noa Shaw:
Then we're secure and the way we build that is by building community and going to meetings and doing all the things we're supposed to f’ing do. That's what our storm wall is like, is that group of people in the f’ing meetings, praying at the end. That community, that fellowship, all that stuff, holds us for that moment when you're sitting there and you're feeling sad and depressed and you feel like getting high. Your f’ing wall's built well enough, you won't.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
That is a wonderful ... I love, love, love, love that because I can see that and you will, over the course of your sobriety and life, anyone's life, but you will, over the course of your sobriety, those sandbags will be taken down by some event. You better have them stacked because here's the deal. If it's not stacked, you're in the water. The water's coming in, whatever it is.
Noa Shaw:
The water is ego.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. Right.
Noa Shaw:
The water is ego and disbelief.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
You lose that job or things fall apart and you don't have that wall built, I think that's the biggest piece of just doing it one day at a time, stacking those defenses. I think that it's easier to see that after you've been sober a long time and you've seen a lot of people come and go. You and I have both had relapses so we know what that looks and feels like, which is awful. It's terrible.
Noa Shaw:
How long have you been sober?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
14 years.
Noa Shaw:
14 years?
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I got sober at 19.
Noa Shaw:
You got sober right as I was going back.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Noa Shaw:
Right before I came back. You saw me as a newcomer.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, I didn't absorb that you were a newcomer, but I saw you around then, yeah. I got sober in 2006 and then I came to Southern California that same year, at the end of the year and started coming up to LA.
Noa Shaw:
Cool.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. You are incredible and what you've done is incredible and-
Noa Shaw:
As are you.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you.
Noa Shaw:
You're dope. You're dope as f.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Dope AF. I think that people should go and check out your podcast called I'm Here to Help, right? Did I get that right?
Noa Shaw:
Yeah. You did.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Your SoulCycle class, if you're in New York City ... maybe not during COVID, but if you're in New York City-
Noa Shaw:
If I'm still working at SoulCycle. I find out on Monday because everything is shut down because we're completely closed.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, have they said anything about ... no.
Noa Shaw:
We are being paid through Monday, but after I think we're going to talk on Monday, I have a group, a big company-wide meeting and they're going to tell us what their plan is going forward. I have no idea what that looks like. My girlfriend is like, "Are you stressed?" She likes to stress. Don't let her listen to this ... I won't tell her I'm on this podcast. I'm like, "No, I'm not." She's like, "Why not?" I'm like, "I'm going to be okay no matter what."
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
How do you have that mindset?
Noa Shaw:
Look at me. I destroyed my life a hundred times over. I'm f’ing sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn. It's a beautiful f’ing day. I have money in the bank. I have food in the f’ing fridge. I can be f’ing overwhelmed with gratitude. I was sitting on a f’ing bench, handcuffed to a bench and locked in a f’ing jail cell 14 years ago.
Noa Shaw:
How the f ... I remember standing on the steps of [inaudible 00:54:47], my second day there. The first day there I thought I was escaping America and my lawyer was getting me on the run, but the second day after I realized it was rehab and it was right when the economy collapsed and I remember standing there and going, "I'm 40-whatever years old. I'm covered in f’ing tattoos. I'm a convicted felon and my two ... I thought, "I have two best case scenarios. I either do manual labor," which I was f’ing just not built for, because I had done a lot of manual labor in my life and I know how backbreaking that was, "or I would work on a loading dock." That was the best I could hope.
Noa Shaw:
Now I'm a SoulCycle instructor in New York City, in the [inaudible 00:55:29] part of Brooklyn. I have a f’ing hot, beautiful, amazing, smart girlfriend who is the joy of my life, who I love beyond anything. I have an incredible life. I live next door to my best friend, although he's leaving me in July. You're getting [inaudible 00:55:42] back.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
What? He's coming back?
Noa Shaw:
He's coming back, yeah.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Wow.
Noa Shaw:
He lives on the other side of my wall and we take daily walks now in the COVID. We go on COVID walks.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
I want to live next door to my best friend.
Noa Shaw:
I know. It's pretty dope.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah, that's so dope.
Noa Shaw:
That's how I have confidence. I know it's going to be all right. I know we're all going to get to the other side of this. There will be another side. There's always another side.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Yeah. It's amazing. Thank you so much for coming on and talking and sharing your hope and wisdom and I look forward to seeing what is next in this chapter of your life.
Noa Shaw:
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm honored and privileged to be asked to share even a little bit about myself and you guys are f’ing rad and keep doing the good work and keep getting the message out.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
Thank you. Thank you. Will do.
Ashley Loeb Blassingame:
This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock Recovery. Lionrock provides online substance abuse counseling where clients can get help from the privacy of their own home. They're accredited by the joint commission and sessions are private, affordable and user friendly. Call their free helpline at 800-258-6550 or visit www.lionrockrecovery.com for more information.